Perpich residency, 3 hours (no class Monday, Drew Peterson/Juxtaposition shadowing, 3 hours
This week was somewhat low key at Perpich, as the school was off Monday for Presidents day, and the students had a work day in both classes Wednesday. They're in the midst of their projects and tend to be pretty autonomous, but it was nice to get a look at some of their work, see how projects are going and what stage they are at in the process. What did end up happening this week, though, was a good deal of planning for my lessons at both Perpich and MIA in the coming weeks. My lesson plan for Perpich is currently to do a demo on color separations for CMYK/4 color process screen printing to the screen print class, as it's something I've taught myself and used a lot in my personal work. As the students third project is essentially self directed in terms of what students want to work with, Jeremy and I agreed that I can probably work with whatever group of students is interested, but I may also give the demo to the class as a whole. Most students have a good amount of screen printing experience at this point in the semester, so I'll primarily be showing how to do layer separations in Photoshop, as its a somewhat involved process for newcomers. To that end, I've been preparing a Planning Backwards model as well as a leave-behind process packet; students can use this packet to follow along as I'm doing the demo, and later on as a troubleshooting guide when I'm not around. I'll also be preparing a couple of demo screens and prints, to help show how CMYK printing looks in process.
Over at MIA, I'll be leading a couple of the gallery tours for the Creative Saturdays classes and contributing a bit to the overall lesson planning with Witt for the next course in March. That class is centered around creating fantastical creatures from cardboard, so I've been scanning the MIA's digital archives for works that could be presented on the tour. I've been thinking a lot about planes and working from a planar analysis sort of perspective, as well as abstract or simplified sculptures that are more ambiguous or evocative of multiple images. In paying attention to both Witt and Michael Gaughan's tour presentation styles over the past couple weeks, I definitely want to strike a balance between giving the students information, and having them draw it out of the work. We've discussed Liz Lerman and VTS (visual thinking strategies) and how much to "give" the students and how much to sort of draw out of them. Nothing is super concrete yet, but things are ramping up.
This past Saturday was also my last day shadowing Drew Peterson over at Juxtaposition Arts' VALT program. The students were using the day as a general work day, as they were all at slightly different spots in a couple of projects. Some were working on a still life value study, while others were drawing from photos taken by St Paul photographer Gordon Parks. Drew invited me to draw with the students for the day, so I worked from a Gordon Parks photo for a bit and checked in with the students if they needed help. Drew read to the class a bit from Gordon Parks' autobiography, which was kind of an amazing story; I'll definitely be buying or renting it from a library to finish soon. And maybe more importantly, reading to the class was a really powerful gesture and a great way to end my time at Juxta. I was and am super impressed with Drew's demeanor and attitude as a teacher. He truly connects with every student and can joke and have fun with them, but at the same time he is serious and rigorous and expects hard work from his students; he knows they can do well and pushes them to do so. The way he and Leslie handled the classroom and students definitely rubbed off on me, and I'm going to continue coming to Juxta for shows and events whenever I can.