Chaco Canyon Trip

                                        Arches National Park, Southern Utah Oct. 13, 2016



I went to Chaco Canyon with the Art Education department recently. We went to look at Petroglyphs and ruins. We stopped at arches national park, and a few historic petroglyphic sites in Utah en route to Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. It was pretty awesome. I  really loved driving down into the desert again. I've missed being so near the land, I've realized since I left Anasazi and came to school this September.

Here are some pictures/ sketches / thought I had while on that trip:

 this was a woman i met at one of the sites in Utah. She has been studying Rock art for about 60 years and is on a 3 month trip around the western US looking at different rock art sites.

I did a presentation in my contemporary Art Criticism class about two weeks ago. I t was on the artist Natalia Almada whom I recently posted about. I talked with the class about storytelling. I'm so interested in stories. Like: why do we share them?

Why are they significant to us? 

What do we as Humans learn form telling stories, and just how do they shape us, and by extension of us how do stories in turn shape our culture, our environment; our reality our world?

It was interesting to hear the classes responses. I shared about Almada and how she shares stories through videography. But there are so many ways to tell stories. Whats that saying? A picture is worth a thousand words. A thousand. Mostly I agree with that. And as a minimalist I am intrigued by that concept. How can I say more with less?

I shared this example of powerful storytelling:

There are so many stories in this single image.

Another example we viewed was this short commercial series that was shown in the UK. A powerful use of story to help make an incomprehensible current event more comprehensible, to nations that have little way to really understand what it could mean to be a refugee:

"The most shocking second a day"  the story continues with "still the most shocking second a day"

these two short videos put into story form the refugee crisis.

Stories are so powerful. When told well, when told right they can bring us to truth they can change a nation; they can change a heart. They change us.

Natalia Almada and my reactionary project

My Art 21 artist of Choice is Natalia Almada.

Art 21 Episode video Clip

Natalia deals a lot with communicating stories through the medium of documentary. The stories she communicates are generally those that we may come across in every day life, centered around the people who are most common in our lives- a sibling , a grandmother, perhaps the woman who processes our check at the bank. Natalia examines their stories, their life, and makes it into what it always has been- something worth remembering.



For my project I got thinking about the people in my life that have been regularly there, and what type of record do I have of them ?

I became interested in the voicemails I have saved over the past few years. Some are funny, some impatient, some are so kind they make me cry.  I saved them because it was a piece of someone I love that they left me, and I have it with me always even when countries, miscommunication and sometimes awkwardness have separated me from these people that I care about. these voicemails are not only small pieces of them , they are records of their voice and their day to day happenings. They are important.

For my project I decided to ask  family and friends to leave me any kind of message they'd like on my voicemail. I wanted to gather small histories of them on a regular October day. I created a podcast highlighting some of them.

Here is the link to this episode of  my podcast:

Pieces of Them: Voicemail histories

 These three figures were mentioned by artist Mark Bradford and have had an influence on the post modern movement. They question social conditions such as class, race, gender, and human sexuality, examining their role in modern society. They have been lecturers, professors, authors, and social movers.

Cornel West was born in 1953, the son of a baptist minister. He was the first African American to graduate form Princeton with a PH.D in philosophy. He received his undergraduate education at Harvard University graduating in 1973.
Today he is most known for his work as an American Philosopher, academic, author, activist and as a prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

The bulk of his work focuses on the roles of race, gender and class in American society.




Bell Hooks is the pen name for author Gloria Jean Watkins.
Bell is an author, feminist, and social activist.
Her work deals primarily with systems of oppression and domination, writing about systems such as race, class and gender. Primarily looking through the lens of a postmodern perspective she has addressed said topics as well as sexuality,history and mass media.






Michel Foucault
(15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984) 

Foucault was a french native, philosopher, historian of ideas, philologist, literary critic, and social theorist. His theories addressed the subjects of power and control and how they were used by social institutions  to exact control.

The theme that underlies all Foucault's work is the relationship between power and knowledge, and how the former is used to control and define the latter. What authorities claim as 'scientific knowledge' are really just means of social control. Foucault shows how, for instance, in the eighteenth century 'madness' was used to categorise and stigmatise not just the mentally ill but the poor, the sick, the homeless and, indeed, anyone whose expressions of individuality were unwelcome.

”

— Philip Stokes, Philosophy: 100 Essential Thinkers (2004)