Jenny Kim
Arts Scholar
Semester 3
The quote, “A picture is worth a thousand words” coined by Henrik Ibsen comes to mind when I think about how art can recontextualize or reshape an understanding of our learned history, biases, and beliefs. Art can have a significant impact with just its image. I believe the Arts & Activism panel class can attest to this as they discuss the impact that art can have in activism, how they utilize art to tell their message through strong images and the feelings they pour into their art. I believe this is also a part of how art can touch a person’s emotions and connect the artists emotions with the viewers. During class, we discussed techniques that are part of the creative process and that help us initiate the creative process. We discussed conducting preliminary research and developing our own design based off of our research. Then continuing from that, we consistently talked about the process of receiving constructive feedback and the steps of the Critical Response process. When asking questions, we may take their responses to then think deeper about what changes to make to our ideas through specifying or clarifying. In addition, when being asked questions, it brings us to think more in detail about our ideas and also consider aspects that we had not thought of before.
I recently read an article about art and activism named “Memes Are Dominating Attention Spans and Clicks Like Never Before. So Why Is Serious Socially Engaged Art Also Thriving?” The article discusses how many artists are now refusing to separate art from politics and utilizing their artworks as a form of activism. This article greatly reminded me of when we had class specifically on Arts & Activism and talking with multiple guest speakers. Both the article and the Arts & Activism class discussed how art is used as a form of activism.
Recently, I took a course called “Research Methods in Psychology” (PSYC300) which was a class that discussed all the methods that go into research and performing studies in the Psychology field. One thing that was discussed was the importance of having your work peer reviewed which I think can be related to CPSA where we had multiple times of peer review and receiving constructive feedback. I also recently took a course called “Asian American Psychology” (PSYC489Z) which talked about psychology specific to Asian Americans and I think the class just really touched on and portrayed how experiences differ from one another and how those experiences matter when it comes to your mental health. I believe that this can be related to what we have learned in CPSA as our experiences change our artistic views and our perspectives on things. Both of these courses convey the importance of intersectionality in our livelihood in how they have impacted us whether regarding our mental health or how we view art.
My learning was improved through interacting with fellow Arts Scholars both in and out of class. Through talking with my fellow Arts Scholars during TA discussions, we were able to connect with each other when talking about topics involving what character you would want as a best friend or talking about our capstone projects. This made me feel more connected with others even with the virtual format and it helped me be more engaged during class. In addition, I would talk with a fellow Arts Scholars peer to discuss doing pentathlon events together by scheduling a time for us to watch a film together and scheduling a time to do an art activity together on Zoom which made me feel more connected with others and helped remind me to do pentathlon events for class. However, I believe that the virtual format in class overall made me feel less supported which made me more hesitant to reach out or I would want to reach out but I would be so overwhelmed that I would forget.
I have actively contributed to the Arts program through consistent participation in class. When we looked at capstone projects as a whole, I asked questions about each project I looked at in order to clarify things about projects and provide my own thoughts regarding the project as well. In addition, I actively participated in my Zine-making field trip through creating a zine of my own titled “Spoopy Cats” and portraying it to others in the field trip. However, I feel that I could have talked more in class or in my small TA group discussions as I tended to stay quiet or was unsure when was the right time to talk.
I believe that I hold quite similar beliefs and opinions to my peers in Arts Scholars but I do think that the way we perceive those beliefs and opinions vary. This variations provide multiple perspectives that help us see things from a new point of view and also help us build upon our own current views. For class we had to attend a field trip and the one I chose to attend was the Studio A field trip that talked about zines. Afterwards, we posted questions and responses in a discussion board, related to what we learned about at the field trip and question we had. In this discussion board, you can see the various questions and thoughts that people had left the field trip with and the various perspectives on how zines could be used in activism, how zines could be used in your major or planned field to pursue, etc. Seeing all these varying thoughts and perspectives made me think more in depth about the questions, zines, and my own thoughts. In addition, you could see what specific things people took away from the field trip in comparison to yours.
Semester 4
The development of my capstone project has allowed me to grow in presenting my ideas orally in which I was able to grow from refining what to include in a presentation to stay within a time limit but still address the key points of my presentation and the elements of my capstone project. I also believe that my pentathlon assignment have shown immense growth in written communication as I go from simply talking about surface-level thoughts or quite visible notations and my experiences in earlier semesters to exploring in-depth topics related to the events I went to relating it to activism, morals around life, representation, and more.
I think that my perception of art has been influenced by guest artists speaking to us about art in activism and my own pentathlon event that I attended in which I witnessed art as a form of activism through zines in the movie MOXiE! The guest artists showed us ways of art as activism in real life such as in the Black Lives Matter movement and discussed their own involvement of art in activism through murals, paintings, etc. In MOXiE! I was able to see the mass effect that art can have in advocating for support and making people feel supported enough to come out about issues they’ve experienced that have harmed them emotionally, physically, etc. These two different events really helped me build my perception of art in a new way and see/think of how much impact art can have in life, in social issues, and so much more.
My capstone project largely drew upon sewing and embroidery skills that I had learned in my workshop class in Freshman year. It also drew upon the example of art as a form of advocation for support and its role in activism which I discussed in the earlier paragraph. My capstone project involved a lot of sewing and embroidery and those skills I had learned in my Freshman year were greatly helpful as I worked to make my garment for my project. The concept of art in activism or as a form of advocating for support and supporting others translated to my capstone project development as I worked on creating a garment as my way to show support for comfort women and advocate for the support of comfort women. The skills and techniques we learned around time management, creative process development, etc. in our Capstone class was immensely helpful in learning how to let parts of a project go, manage time better, and work on making my capstone project the best I could.
Arts Scholars has deepened my existing artistic talents and interests through providing classes to take for the program and field trips that explored going into more depth about an existing talent and interest I had. Specifically, I would have most likely never taken a dance class in college without Arts Scholars recommending it and it being a requirement for the class. In addition, we had a field trip introducing a specific style of dance that I had never learned about before and without being a part of Arts Scholars I never would have gotten the chance to learn more about the style of dance and actually learn a few movements for the dance style as well. Arts Scholars has expanded my artistic talents and interests through introducing workshop classes and field trips that would allow me to try out and learn new artistic talents and interests. For example, my workshop class from freshman year gave me the chance to learn more about sewing and embroidery and teaching me skills for that interest. In addition, a field trip I went on this year involved learning how to weave and I had never really thought of learning about this before but the field trip gave me the chance to learn more about weaving and how to weave myself.
I believe that I have demonstrated an ability to collaborate effectively with those holding diverse artistic perspectives, interests, and abilities through peer reviews that occurred in class. Specifically, I was partnered with someone who was doing a project involving building characters through voices, music, and drawing character art. This is something I do not have much experience in but I focused on giving advice through answering the questions they had along with acting as a viewer more than a fellow artists. However, I also did my best to try and see how they wanted things to turn out and base my advice that way. I think when working with those who have diverse artistic perspectives, interests, and abilities it’s best to keep an open mind, try to look at what they are looking for in an end result and just learn more about those perspectives, interests, and abilities to try and add them to yourself.
I think that the Scholars experience especially with the capstone project has personally motivated me to continue to do projects that make me happy internally and follow through with them. I also think that the skills and techniques that we learned about in Scholars will be immensely helpful academically with learning how to balance things, setting goals for time management, completing things in time increments, etc. Another part of Scholars that has been helpful for me is learning how to let go of a project or an aspect of something and move on with a fresher mindset to do better next time. Professionally and academically, I believe that I will be looking at a lot of research, gathering past research articles, reading them, and summarizing them along with much more and I think that Scholars has helped with me gaining some experience in that aspect as well.