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Slide Show of Children's Art: NY Times

Three Ravens from the Sky

Caliifornia State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Created: October 2, 2001
Latest Update: October 2, 2001
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

This is a teaching file, designed to suggest many ways that you can collaborate in drawing and painting, even if you thought you had no talent.

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Paintings of Love and Tenderness

This painting was done in class, in the college classroom, by a grandfather, who was sure he could not draw:

Allan Knox's Granddaughter
Oil and Oil Pastel on Paper, May 2001

Allan recognized, in the process of creating this painting, learning how to use oil and oil pastels even tentatively, and framing the portrait for his granddaughter to express feelings that mattered to him greatly. No professional portrait could ever be more filled with love or more worthy of surviving as a family keepsake. The portrait was done from memory, not from a photo, not from a model, just from a grandfather's memory of loving moments together.

How on earth does this fit into sociology? Well, for a long time the positivist approach to sociology and social theory failed to deal with the interdependence of "reality" and feelings and emotions. The positivist need for "controlled" experimentation left out learning such as that represented in this portrait. The recognition of how important we are to each other as real people who matter to each other is today better acknowledged by an understanding of interdependence. Constitutive theory's recognition of the interdependence of agency and structural context has begun to explain the more complex, human side of who we are. In Europe Actor Network Theory, ANT, focuses on the networks of connections to others that sustain and shape us. (Nag me to put up a recent review on this and on the sociology of emotions. jeanne)

Art, then, even our own rough-hewn art when we are not professional artists, expands our imaginary to help us see the importance of new postmodern developments in the social sciences.

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Paintings in Which Hope Peeks Out

Three Ravens from the Sky

To understand this painting, you need to read Shinsaku Fujikawa's "Three Ravens from the Sky." As I read Shinsaku's poem, I saw the gray clouds rising with flames of fiire, and the ladies kneeling ephemerally. But the ladies I saw were in kimonos. Because the architects were Japanese? I do not know. And then, somehow the paint program began to confuse colors, and the gray clouds turned on olive green, which I'd certainly never intended. But in the midst of this mess, I began to see the Japanese ladies, bathed in gentle colors that made hope come to the forefront. The man with the red tear I had to leave just as he was in the first rough sketch, for the colors were now unpredictable. But overall, the image reflected what I was feeling.

May your program not crash. Play with your own image. Borrow from mine. Change it. Make it fit your imaginary. Oh, and don't be too positivistic with it. Let it develop a life of its own. Let the ladies show hope if that's what happens. I had meant to cover the scene over in gently flaming smoke. But as you can see, that didn't work out so well. In the end. I liked the hope I saw. I read The ZNet Commentary on the construction of the Twin Towers. Maybe, I was reflecting my sorrow for Fazlur R. Khan and for Minoru Yamasaki, the principal architect responsible, who is also dead now.

It's all muddied up. Maybe someone can fix it. But that's when all my colors went. In case you'd like to play with it, here's the first image I saved. Welcome to it.

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Painting When You Don't Know How

The Conference in Reno
Past, Present, Future: Art Project This Week

This is the technique we've been discussing for the last few weeks. I painted this memory of the Reno Conference by random energetic bobbing back and forth of the meetings we had with each of us trying to get ready, confused, nervous, losing each other continuously like little field mice. Each of us were different colors, different patterns, all over the place.

Then came the actual meeting with energy and purpose and strong lines as each of us and our audience members asked and answered questions. We were all there, all together, strong.

Then came the unwinding at the end. When we were content, proud of ourselves. But basking in content.

This is not figurative drawing. It is not representational in the traditional sense. But to each of us who shares the story of that conference, this painting will always be a trigger of pleasant and laughable memories.

I'll bet you could do one for a little Red Hen story.

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jeanne Nurtures New Imaginaries of South Africa

On a Wednesday morning in May 2001, on the front page of the New York Times was Toru Morimoto's photo of chad, Africa.

Chad, Africa

And here is jeanne's imaginary of the bicycle pin she wore on Tuesday. Her imaginary of the real Africa begins to take shape.

After Toru Morimoto's photo in the New York Times, Wednesday morning, May 16, 2001.

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The Human Pixel Who Wouldn't Transparency Now. backup

"Ultimately, the site is based on the idea that all our cultural creations can be made transparent. When they are, we discover that they contain our own understanding -- and misunderstanding -- of our selves and society. By seeing these works clearly, we take a step closer to the classical and humanist vision of education as one in which we learn to know ourselves. When we accomplish this, we find that (clichéd as it may sound) the truth was inside us, waiting to be released."
Ken Sanes

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"The presence we leave behind . . . "

by LaKisha Miller, Teidre Rankins, and LaNesha Brooks. Expressing alterity through art.