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Topic of the Week: "Figurative Abstraction" and Handmades

Make It of Paper; Make It of Yarn
Display It; Share It
But Most of All: Talk About It

INTRODUCTION

"Figurative Abstraction" and Handmades: Using a Freeform Art Piece in a Wearable Handmade
To Spark Substantive Discourse

Particularly now, as our country is overrun by another in a long series of "fear" campaigns, it's important that we remember that nothing is as bad as the fear itself. We can't think clearly and make good choices when we're scared. The rush of adrenaline may be fun when a monster leaps out at you on Halloween. But it's no fun at all when you're really scared, and people resort to just shouting at each other instead of talking through both the real issues and the many alternatives open to us to move forward.

There are other times that fear kind of paralyzes us. For some, like my mother, all that it took was to tell her that she had to take an exam. Everything she ever knew, even things she was really good at, emptied out of her head and left her babbling and shaking. I always thought exams were fun. They were like a game - let's see how much I can do. I was lucky.

When I first started using art to teach, I was looking for a way around my mother's fear. Sometimes finding another way to say it, another way to show competence can make the fear go away. Susan and I started with painting. Painting in acrylics, in water colors, in oil pastels. What a mess! But what fun, too!

I was amazed when the students thought I had introduced art to help them relax as exams approached. I hadn't. I was just looking for alternative measurable means of understanding their learning. But it worked to make them feel less fearful as exams approached.

That's often the way when we try things we have a gut feeling will work, but aren't exactly sure how they'll work. That's what the science of experimentation is for. If we could hypothesize all the answers, and merely check for the accuracy of our theories, wouldn't that be nice? But we can't.

Teaching. learning, communication, and collaboration are all complex fields that frequently overlap. I wanted to find ways to collaborate with the students, to help them learn, without scaring them to death. And along the way, we made them happier. Nice job, if you can get it.

. . .

When you rarely get to make or do anything on your own, it's hard to figure out how one got to this stage in the world history. Hand's on individual effort used to get things made, fixed, distributed, and make the world turn. But the last couple of centuries we've become a consumer-driven society. What economists seem to think makes the world go round is our buying stuff. Gee whiz. Some of us are drowing in stuff.

Alienation is the confusion and frustration that results when the darned things we buy don't work, and we don't know how to make them work. Maybe it makes the world go round, but some of us long for the days when we didn't need a whole book of instructions to use the new toaster.

Link to Halloween 2008 for more info on how we applied this theory in one attempt to create local community tradition.

. . . More soon. jeanne

 

References:

Technophilic Craft. Story by Ezra Shales. The American Craft Magazine. April/May 2008. Good history of the relationship between handmades, craft, and the alienation of machine-produced objects. Provides some info for more substantive discussions by mature adults, but should also serve as a source for telling stories to children and young people that could help them understand the importance of craft. jeanne October 26, 2008.

Essay on Michael Dinges' Exhibit, Dead Reckoning An Essay by Antonia Pocock and Nicolas Bourriaud -- Postproduction: Culture as Screenplay. the exhibit was in the Packer Schopf Gallery from September 5 to October 11, presumably of 2008. The essay assumes knowledge of jargon and needs restating for those without an art history, critical sociology background. jeanne October 26, 2008.

Explanation of Alienation from a Marxist standpoint, not necessarily the point of view I was looking for, but it's valid. On the High Beam Encyclopedia website. This explanation is for adults, not young people. jeanne

• Will get up a summary of alienation and how handmades may help with that, right after Halloween. jeanne

Announcements:

• Suspension of Dear Habermas Issue Timing

  Because I'm having to read so much to understand the complexity of the current financial crisis, I'm not going to try to keep up with the regular issue pattern. I'll try to remember to let you know when I've added to this issue, though. Check the new on the site page. jeanne

  When I resume the weekly timing, we will be able to focus on community education on current issues, and on how educational programs already in existence can contribute effectively to sharing acquired knowledge with local community folks and groups.

Issues

• Alienation

  One good way to look at alienation is to notice the word "alien" in it. One way to explain might be to say that I feel like an alien in my own home, country, family, whatever.

Visual Sociology

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Online Resources For Governance Discourse

• References to check the truth of facts on political statements, charges, rumors:

• FactCheck.org The Annenberg site, connected to University of Pennsylvania
• PolitiFact

• Fact-checking Political Advertisements for the Upcoming Election:

  "The Need: Sadly, there is a historical gap in Bay Area news media's coverage of campaign advertising. During the 2004 elections, for example, GradeTheNews.org found that Bay Area TV news averaged 1minute 24 seconds nightly covering ballot initiatives, but ran 2 minutes 41 seconds of paid advertising for those initiatives.

  "Help Newsdesk.org and The Public Press fill that gap by supporting a weekly investigative report on Bay Area campaign advertisements, to run from Labor Day through Election Day. Our goal is to help Bay Area residets cut through the barrage of influence advertising, and make truly informed decisions at the voting booth -- from the candidates to the ballot initiatives and propositions."

  Consulted by jeanne on September 27, 2008.

• <0000a0" size="5">References:
  Newspapers: Labeling here is based on an article by Ashley K. Vroman on the impossibility of labeling newspapers by ideology. I personally go along with the conclusion of the conservative Media Research Center's L. Brent Bozell III: "if the paper never met a conservative cause it didn't like, it's conservative, and if it never met a liberal cause it didn't like, it's liberal." But then, what about the Wall Street Journal whose news staff is considered liberal and its editorial staff considered conservative? jeanne

  Liberal Newspapers:

  New York Times - Los Angeles Times - The Washington Post
  The Boston Globe - The Chicago Tribune

  Conservative Newspapers:

  The Wall Street Journal - The Washington Times - The New York Post
  Manchester (N.H.) UnionLeader - The Oklahoman

  The Ideological Labeling of These Newspapers:

  "To test my hypothesis that people cannot classify newspapers as liberal or conservative, I began searching for any source attempting to classify newspapers ideologically. The sole article I came upon was "Rating the Top 10, Left and Right" from Insight magazine, written by Keith Russell. Insight rates what they deem to be the top five liberal newspapers and top five conservative newspapers in the country. A possible explanation of why I could only find one article in this search is because people, including scholars and academics and most popular magazines, do not try to measure how liberal or conservative newspapers are. Some may know that they cannot do it reliably and validly because different methods yield different results. Perhaps others do not formulate methods or measures lest they expose problems of reliability and validity. Unsupported assertions may be politically and tactically superior to dubious investigations."

  From "Slandering" the News: How Labelers Cleverly Undermine the Reliability and Validity of Newspapers," by Ashley K. Vroman, May 5, 1999. Consulted by jeanne, May 28, 2008.

  • Beyond Newspapers

    • The Institute for Public Accuracy The Institute for Public Accuracy seeks to broaden public discourse. With systematic outreach to media professionals, the Institute provides news releases that offer well-documented analysis of current events and underlying issues.

      Paul Loeb, columnist and author, recommended this site for us when we're trying to be sure we've covered multiple perspectives on each issue.

    • OpenSecrets.org "Our Mission: Inform, Empower & Advocate"

      • Inform citizens about how money in politics affects their lives
      • Empower voters and activists by providing unbiased information
      • Advocate for a transparent and responsive government

      David Brooks identified this site in His opinion column on July 1, 2008 in the New York Times. It is a good source of data on issues and the various perspectives on and funding of support for those issues. jeanne

    • I also suggest the use of Arts and Letters Daily the Chronicle of Higher Education Site for clarification on the issues as perceived by other academics. jeanne

    Current Online Sources Freely Accessbile Current list that is being updated and revised, but on which most links are still functioning. jeanne

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