Project Brainstorms

I have been inordinately busy, and also blogging has not necessarily been at the forefront of my "things to do". I did feel impelled to write down a few ideas for some projects which I am tossing around in my head and working on intermittently.

The Penance Cycle
This project hinges on my fixation with Arabic calligraphy and the script itself being very beautiful, as well as a moment in my paltry understanding of the Arabic Language, I fixated on a phrase which had a series of "ye"s in consecutive order. Irhabiyeen is a gross transliteration of it. It means "terrorism", conjugated from the root word Irhabi or terrorist. One of the translators clarified the statement on the psychological operations poster hanging in the company area as a sample of a larger billboard which had gone up ion Baghdad asking the populous to not support terrorism. The message is now gone from my memory, but that word stuck. I'm a fan of language and how language works, I thought about my lessons in my 90 hour Arabic immersion course prior to my deployment and all the "I am, he is, she is, we are" exercises, and I thought "Ena Irhabi" or I'm a Terrorist. The phrase itself is very transgressive and confrontational, even if only written out. But to have "I'm a Terrorist" or "Ena Irhabi" written out in Arabic, with its beautiful undulating script becomes something else all together in a post-9/11 United States. I'm still playing with the idea, and what ways I can create images which are both inviting and also engaging for non-arabic speakers/readers.

Idol Worship/Idle Worship
Teaching High School, one of the teenage behaviors which has caught my attention is the fixation on certain celebrities. Students will tape photos onto lockers, or inside binders, and make up impossible fantasies of running away with said celebrity. This is largely a distinctly feminine phenomenon. The male students usually have a particular female celebrity which they objectify, and use as a base for their physical standards which is problematic in its own way. However students of both genders generally have someone which they fixate on. This is where I get my next idea for a possible series. While I do not devote nearly the amount of time or energy to celebrities, I do have a few individuals who I do fixate on either in the arts, performance or music. I was thinking of drawing parallels between the way people worship in various religions substituting celebrity icons for the religious iconography. In a sense this could be an excuse of drawing and painting images of celebrities I admire, but that might be too idiosyncratic.

Pictures with Veterans
I have met with and taken photos with several military veterans; one whose story I credit with giving me the cognitive push to endure my deployment with far more courage, grit, and preparation to accept any outcome regardless what would happen. I have met many more admirable veterans since separating from the Army, and have taken photos with most of them. I painted one photograph already, and have started a second one in the past 3 months. The work on these is sporadic, but I am pleased with the results. I do think if I keep going with this it can become a coherent series rather than a disjointed jump-start-stall of a body of work I normally do which has little coherence or reason.

One of the reason I articulate these ideas is basic ownership and a rudimentary effort to hold myself to some manner of accountability. Amongst the other things I am trying to nurture and grow, I figure something will come of this.

Feelings of loserdom, and grappling with the reality of now

I have been away from this blog for a while, and I had a musing which simply begged it's way to my fingertips onto this computer screen. One of my students made a comment to the effect that he believed I was secretly very successful and doing a spectacular job at hiding that fact. There was some stuff that I read into that statement which basically entered the realm of being a teacher was the "Clark Kent" to my secret identity as an art world "Superman". I recognize that as an egocentric grandiose delusion. I'm a part time teacher working two teaching jobs, digging my way out of crippling student debt, living with my parents. I have had the very recent and inordinately fortuitous luck of exhibiting a substantial artwork in a National Museum. That is such a mind blowing occurrence to me as such a drifter in life with such a late start into anything which could be considered a career. And to one of my students I am "successful".
I understand perspective is very much at play here, and this student only sees one sliver of my reality. What he says and believes is a compliment, and I should take it as that, say "Thank you" and move on. But in my warped sense of what a successful thirty something should look like, the idea that I am successful is such a cognitive dissonance in what I understand to be successful.
Now this alone was just some existentialist ennui until I heard a very thought provoking episode of Citizen Radio where a 26 year old listener refers to himself as a live-with-parents-loser. He goes further to articulate how he is trying to make things better for himself. He was both very candid, and really funny in how he wrote about his situation. His plight prompted many people too empathize and reflect on their own very similar situation. This too, resonated with me, and hearing this caused my student's statement to echo. Unfortunately, in reflecting on my own situation and the age disparity, I felt a little bit worse in the apparent solidarity of college graduates in similar situations. I have friends who are married, have a place of their own, have a well established career with some job security and an overall sense of stability. Contrasting that my own life seems frenetic, and stress has a distinct rhythm which is concurrent with the stability of my income. The past four months have been more stable than the past three years.
Given the fact that I am among the generation of college graduates who had the misfortune of graduating into one of the worst economic times in the history of the United States, I can justify my current state. However, my mind has been warped by the narrative which has been pushed in the media, and socially for the past twenty years or so. In spite of my acknowledging the reality of my situation, cognitively, I have a dissonance which upon self-reflection, nags on me, and provokes the self-identification as a loser.

Pitfalls of Finding a Balance and Failing to make Substantial Art during Study Halls

I am trying to find a balance in teaching trying to pair a theme with some fairly technical projects, for what ends up being overall a fairly technical class. I'm tasked by the curriculum to teach my students good composition along with strengthening their skills shading with a pencil. I'm trying to pair the book which they will be reading in their American Literature Classes "The Things They Carried" by Tim O'Brien, and "The Things They Carried" exhibit at the National Veterans Art Museum. I'm expanding it include the Gulf War, Afghanistan & Iraq in the past decade. I am at an awkward juncture where too many of my students are not finished with the previous project for me to pull a proverbial plug on studio work, but I also have close to half the class who is now finished and ready to begin a new project. I'm hoping tomorrow will be a better on this front.

In other news: I am failing at finding an artistic something I can do besides decorating my hall passes during my study hall periods. I am usually reviewing my notes for how class went that day, or lesson planning, or composing presentations, or teacher journal logs, or reading the myriad e-mails I receive. I do get a few moments in which I can sit and observe and let my gears turn, and creativity percolate, sometimes. My issue is that nothing worthwhile has brewed up that is not a lesson plan or image presentation. I have nothing I have created that makes me squee with delight, and proclaim "I made this!" like a kindergartener bringing home a piece worthy of the refrigerator door-and this bothers me.

Adventures in Teaching or Biting off more than I can chew.

I successfully completed my first week of teaching and have been busily coordinating and concocting some plans for the school year. I have no clue how I will be able to balance out working at Oak Forest High School while sponsoring Art Club, Teaching the Community Arts Sustaining Academics Program, and Co-leading and continuing programing for the Vet Art Project. Where there is a will, there is a way. I still have a month in which to set down as much of the groundwork for the Vet Art Project and balance out my schedule of staff, department, and programing meetings as all of this will play a part in how I am able to do my jobs.
At OFHS, taking full advantage of the fact that I am only teaching one section of art, I have compared notes on all my students and touched base with as many of the Social Studies and English teachers to basically get the gears turning on cooperative lessons bridging art and historical context in academics. I already have one teacher who would like to co-plan a lesson on the Reconstruction in post Civil War America, and the Fox Sisters basically purporting to be supernatural mediums, and pairing it with a black & white drawing lesson.
In my concerted efforts to go out and do things and not be such a hermit, Thursday, I had gone to a speaking event at the National Veterans Art Museum. There I met two very cool veterans, Brock & Jake and reconnected with other cool veterans I had met before (Barry & Sabrina). Brock & Jake have been traveling cross country talking about their visits back to Afghanistan and have so many striking, shocking, and beautiful stories about their experiences. I had dinner with all of them afterwards were we chatted and met up with another veteran who had recently come back from Afghanistan the evening before. After this encounter and dropping Brock off at Midway to catch his flight, I stopped by Atomic Sketch afterwards to check out the art and acquired some artwork for my personal collection as well as talking with some of the artists at Atomic Sketch about the possibility of having them come speak to either my class, or for Art Club. Altogether it was a rather busy evening.
This got my gears turning, in which in the most grandiose delusions, I could have a panel of veterans speaking about their experiences and discussing how a decade's worth of war has shaped our culture as is, as well as what is going on as well as giving a first person perspective on what military veterans have had to go through. At its most humble, having a few guest speakers either for my own classroom, or for art club to do demonstrations and share a little bit of their experiences. With everything I will have to do over the course of the school year, it is exciting and new, and at the same time I ask myself: Am I biting off more than I can chew?

أنا إرهابي : فكرة تحديث

أنا إرهابي has been evolving a bit, if not in form and formal presentation, but in applicable concept. I have been presented with two conceptual quandaries. One is the prospect of owning the label of "Terrorist" is far too confrontational. In the face of everything that is happening with what essentially amounts to separate media echo chambers in which each side accuses the other of being terrorists to one degree or another. Generally, I agree with some progressive principals: Equal rights for all, woman's reproductive health is a between a woman and her doctor, and generally speaking, religion likewise is between you and your god or no god if you so choose. To the conservative fringe, and the conservative fringe of the fringe, such beliefs and inclinations are seen as a form of terrorism. There is a myth perpetrated that to go against what are seen as conservative principles is somehow Un-American and you are effectively a 'terrorist'. Or another of my favorite myths, that progressives, liberals, and even center-left people have a deep-seated disdain and hatred for America. I find the thought laughable, and at worst deplorably close-minded. Conceptually, owning the phrase "I'm a terrorist" or "أنا إرهابي" would be seen by this possible audience as a defiant declaration which would validate their worst suspicions. They would totally miss the point. The echo-chamber propaganda spin would be something along the lines of "They admit it! They really are terrorists! We are justified in waging war against the godless liberal left!". It amounts to a rallying cry which poses those who are different as enemy, and attempts to dehumanize stated enemy in order to justify violence as an appropriate response.
The second is the possibility of presenting the project as a passive voice, basically questioning the premise that because people hold beliefs essentially opposed to certain, for lack of better descriptor: biblical moral principles, those people are somehow terrorists. It is another angle for the concept of owning this idea that those who would oppose your views would be your enemy and at worst, terrorists who are looking to destroy one's way of life.
"I believe that the lesbian couple who has been together for thirty years deserve to get married as a symbol of their devotion to each other, and in that receive all the legal benefits that a civil marriage bequeaths unto them. In believing that, I'm a Terrorist?" Rhetorically, phrasing it in that way rings dramatically different. "I believe Planned Parenthood is an important resource for women in low-income circumstances, for that, I'm a terrorist?" Presented in this manner, أنا إرهابي questions the dehumanizing effect which violent rhetoric puts forth on those who politically do not agree with you. We have freedom of speech, but with such freedoms, do we really exercise the responsibility of how the words will impact those who listen?

أنا إرهابي

I have been absent from here for a while. In recent months I have been percolating an idea which is mildly radical, but I have been reticent to move forward on, mainly on account that it is a drastic idea. To the extreme conservative and fringe elements of conservatism, and religion, someone who is homosexual or just not heterosexual, represent something so abhorrently reprehensible that we can be likened to terrorists. I thought about taking this a step further and owning such a term. In order to bridge the link between Wahabi Muslims who have often been the perpetrators of many of the past decade's terrorist attacks, through a simple act of language "I am a terrorist" or "أنا إرهابي" has become the new subject matter. At this point in time I am still playing with the phrase as a calligraphic form, but also as a label. We'll see how this idea develops.

Picture of Bryan and me: delayed

It has been a long while since I have painted anything that attempted to be remotely photo realist in more than 3 colors. Being a bit of a nit picker who likes to pick nits, I usually hold a very fixed idea when I begin a project. The exception to this rule would be my collage panels, since that is a jigsaw with no concrete answer, and i don't know I am done until I glue down something, look at the collage as a whole, and am satisfied with the result. I digress. I will have a very specific vision of what I would like my finished product to look like, and there is little room for error or variance.
Back in 2009, I had a brief and serendipitous encounter with one Bryan Anderson, Army Staff Sergeant, Retired. He was blown up by an Improvised Explosive Device in Iraq, and his story was followed by many media outlets. He received a Purple heart for his injuries, and became a pseudo celebrity in the sense that he is one of the triple amputees who survived his injuries overseas. His story also helped me be at peace with the distinct possibility that if I were injured when I was in Iraq, and came home with a fraction of my physical self, that would be fine, as long as I came home. That is a rather dark and grim thought, firmly grounded in reality, and ultimately a pragmatic and crucial conclusion to come to when the alternative which you have to confront is death. In helping me accept this, Bryan Anderson was by example a hero. I had the opportunity to shake his hand, and his girlfriend was kind enough to snap a photograph of me with him. I have kept this photograph in my laptop and backed up on several different USB Drives, and external hard drives. After some time and wanting to increase my production output, I decided I wanted to make a painting of this photograph. I attempted to pencil in our figures on the canvas prior to painting, however I became increasingly frustrated at subtle variances in what I had drawn and what the digital image was. I would erase, and paint over the failed attempts several times before I resorted to a technique which I use with my students. My printer having bit the dust after many years of loyal service, I headed to a retail print shop and had a transparency of the photo created. I would use the overhead projector at school to project the image onto the canvas. This idea was foiled with the bulb in the classroom's projector being out. As such, I must wait until the bulb is replaced before I can proceed with this particular project.

A Tall Order... and a cool idea

I have been working on focusing my students in learning a little bit about Veteran's Day instead of doing the tired turkey curriculum most elementary art teachers usually push for November. I will state I am not criticizing elementary school teachers for teaching Thanksgiving in November, it is the dominant holiday. My students learned about several different veterans, and my shortcomings fall in how much they learned about each veteran. The stars of the class are Paul Reickhoff, founder of IAVA; and Salvatore Giunta, the first living recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor since Vietnam War. Other veterans include Tammy Duckworth, Dustin Hunter, Matthew Bogdanos, Pat Tillman, and Bryan Anderson. The Assistant Principal at the school where I teach thought it would be a great idea if I were to get in touch with the living veterans, or family members of the deceased veterans to send them copies of the drawings the students are making. I was a little bit stunned when she made this recommendation. I think my students are progressing splendidly in in their drawings. It is a challenge to draw a portrait with little or no drawing experience. However, I do ask my students to try their best. I will push them, sometime to the point where they get angry at me, but the push is worthwhile. But I digress. The idea of getting in touch with all these people, and sending them a series of images to several veterans who have had some manner of media coverage at some point in their lives... makes me a little uncomfortable. It would not be the probable rejection that scares me, but the idea that one or more of them take interest and decide they want to visit my class. I find this prospect highly improbable, but regardless of the improbability, intimidatingly daunting. Art

A little bit of inspiration... back to the drawing board

A few weeks ago there was a particularly spectacular looking sunset on the way home from work. This prompted me to get home and paint almost immediately. Now because of my frenetic studio practices, actually making the painting took a little bit of time. Ultimately I ended up creating a fairly cool image on a 9" x 12" canvas. When I finished the painting, I took a step back and decided that I need a significantly bigger canvas, and should probably consider using stencil for some elements.

Emotional Outbursrsts and Productivity

I will begin first by expressing my unsurprised disappointment with Senate not passing the Defense Authorization Bill. As Rachel Maddow stated "Republicans, your culture war is showing." Because the Republican Party did not want to have to deal with anything which would deal with the repeal of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell(DADT) Policy, the filibustered the whole bill. Politicians cited a whole multitude of reasons why they voted No on SB 3454, but I am a little bit more taken aback by Sen. McCain blatant denial in an interview after the session denying that DADT is not used to witch-hunt homosexual soldiers out of the military, despite that Air Force Major Mike Almy was discharged under DADT for that specific reason. I think I will cease that rant there.

Correlating with my disappointment has been, in my opinion, an alarming rate of art production. Yesterday I had primed several canvases for making something interesting, or maybe inane and un-pretty. I have now before me three recently finished artworks, two of which I intend on exhibiting in November.

This past weekend, I also purchased two particle board panels. It has been one of my artistic wants to have a kitschy collage board, which I intend on making into a 4.5'-5' tall room divider. I will eventually purchase the a third panel so that this project has the base and stability to stand on its own. In the mean time. I will begin adhering different images which I find fascinating and pretty to the panels. Hopefully, it will look like the inside of an old record store with hundreds of images that have been pasted up and taken down over years. It will not necessarily have that aged look, but hopefully a similar aesthetic.

Frenetic Art Making Patterns, or I suck at painting Orchids

My art making can best be described as a frenetic, jump start/stalling, hectic making. I will have the sudden irresistible urge to make something or just get an idea on paper or canvas. When I do, the process seems to flow so smoothly and almost issue and hassle free. With this in mind, I have a canvas panel I have been working on for a while. I was doing some experiments with layering, stenciling, and stamping. Besides the fact that I think I am in love with stamping, and stenciling, I was finally happy with the ground I established for the most part. It is a bad imitation of one of those faux prints you find at Bed Bath & Beyond. It is so tacky and cliche, and I can't really help but like how it looks. In my art making process, I determined that it needed something soft and organic to counter all the hard-edged lines. The prints and stamps have these lovely baroque style curves, but the edges are so clean. After looking through some images of flowers, I determined Phalenopsis Orchids were the way to go. I started setting down the forms for the petals and the under painting for all the lines, and I have come to the determination that I suck at painting orchids. I'm so out of practice at painting flowers, but I suppose that being out of practice implies that there has been practice prior to this attempt at painting orchids. I have never painted orchids before. i think I might have to go with a different approach with this endeavor tomorrow morning.

Private Art Lessons....

Recently a friend of the family had asked me to do a private lesson with his 9 year old daughter since she had shown some interest in the arts. I thought it would be an interesting idea so I went along with it. The little girl was really sweet and very smart. However the experience was a little marred by her dad. He had a preconceived notion of what his daughter should paint and strong-armed the lesson more than I think I should have allowed. However I did not want to sour the relationship my father has with him. He wanted maybe too much at once from an hour and a half of painting. He wanted a landscape painting to put up in his house painted by his daughter, which seemed to be the more pressing goal for him, then getting his daughter interested in the arts. I set out my paints and all the necessary materials ahead of time for the lesson, which included an image which I thought was complex enough and interesting enough to challenge the girl. An Arthur Carles painting "An Actress as Cleopatra". We ended up digging through a Vincent Van Gogh book of my father's finding something which both the girls and her father agreed upon. A Still Life with Sunflowers. The little girl matched up all the colors and I showed her how to mix different acrylic paints to get different tones. She was really smart and more focused than some of the students I teach through the after-school program. It was a pretty cool experience overall. Her painting looked pretty good as far as color matching and technique went. I'm sure that my pushing her to do just a little bit more and more certainly helped the painting look as good as it did. She told me she would certainly love to do more painting in the future. Ofcourse she is still at the age when she will try anything without the proverbial defeatist "but I'm no good at that" which plagues most youngn's.

Better late than never, or I am feeling really honored and really humbled

I needed to get a little bit more grounded and centered before I wrote on this....

Friday I had lunch with an old friend of mine from my Army days. He was one of the people I deployed with back in 2005/06. Back in November he had sent out a mass message via facebook requesting school supplies which his psychological operations teams would be passing out to struggling schools in Baghdad and the surrounding areas. Seeing an opportunity to help out, mainly because I could and I had the means to help, I forwarded the message to my friends. I asked permission to send out a similar bulletin at the elementary school where I was teaching an art class after school. The Principal gave me the green light, and asked for a message which would be published in the next school bulletin, going out to the parents. By December, I had a drop box in my classroom and little did I know that I was mobilizing a great deal of people to help out with this request. In mid-December I picked up all the supplies from everyone. I made three stops across the city, and basically filled up my car. Some of my friends who did not live near me asked for a mailing address where to send the supplies. Some people mailed me money to help cover shipping costs. When everything was collected and inventoried, I had way more school supplies than I could afford to ship all at once. I was floored. I also felt like I had maybe taken on something which was significantly bigger than myself. I figured out what I could send and slowly mailed off several boxes at a time until everything was in Baghdad.
Skip forward a few months, and we get to this past Friday. My friend wanted to take me out to eat as a "thank you" for sending so many school supplies. I told him that he did the bigger job, I would to eat with him if I could buy him a few beers. So at lunch, his girlfriend was there, and she was overseas as the Operations Sergeant for the company. At lunch as we caught up as to how much the Camp Liberty had changed and how much it hadn't. We caught up on what we were up to in our respective lives. They told me they had something else for me as a token of appreciation for having sent so many school supplies. They presented me with a certificate, and the American Flag that flew outside of the Psychological Operations Task Force-Iraq Command building. I immediately felt the corners of my eyes burn ever so slightly. I thanked them for their appreciation, for the appreciation of the 16th PSYOP Battalion. A frikkin' Battalion!!! I was fighting tooth and nail not cry all out right then and there. There is no feeling so humbling, so grand as knowing that a Battalion appreciates what you have done. I think back on it, I didn't do anything really grandiose... not on my own. I mailed needed school supplies which I stored in my workspace for months. School supplies that a large group of friends and strangers helped contribute. I didn't do it all on my own. They deserve my gratitude as well.

Potentially harsh week, coming right up

I have a show to set up for Tuesday, a Mural to finish and install Wednesday, and students to herd and showcase on Thursday. Friday I can collapse into a couch with a cocktail in hand. Hopefully. And somewhere in all this, I have to schedule a job interview.

This is going to be fun!

Student Achievements - Mural Project

My students are working on a 84" by 84" mural which they designed everything for, proposed to the principal for permission to install. I had given them a time line of two weeks, which at first, my students were protesting as "not enough time". They have been working on this for 3 days and may very well finish today. I really have no clue what I am going to do with my students next week if they finish the mural so quickly.

Working Dilema

So my current work arrangement will be concluding in three weeks. I am on the job hunt for something else at the moment, and some of the job offers have longer career potential. My supervisor has told me that both the school, and his supervisor like my work, and my work ethic. They would love to have me back next year. I would love to be back next year. In spite of the fact that sometimes the students drive me toward a certain special kind of relaxation techniques of questionable health implications for my liver, I am quite happy with myself at the end of the day. If I end up with a job at a place like Starbucks, going back to the After-school Program job, won't be a big issue. However if I land something with greater long term potential, I will have to part ways. I guess that is the choice, I don't want to have to make.

Reconnecting with blogger

By virtue of google having their paws in almost everything internet, I have dug up and dusted off this old nag of a blog. I had started this back when I was in Baghdad Iraq, but generally -e-mail and my livejournal account became my most prolific, and now most well documented blogging.

In the past 5 years since I first started this blog, I have finished college with a BFA in Art Education, gotten out of the military, grown my hair and a beard, Donated said hair once and am growing another batch, and am teaching an after school art program because the the economy fellates and I can't get a regular teaching job because they are being cut cross country.