Residency – Silverwood Park – 5hrs
This week I started working Tuesday mornings in the Doodlebugs class. Doodlebugs is a course for 4 and 5 year olds that happens every week. To be honest, I was pretty hesitant about how I would enjoy working in a class with kids in this age group. However, when I was there working with Noelle and Chelsea and met all of the students, I had a lot of fun. We had play time right away in the morning, read a book about frogs, talked about the different types of frogs, and made frogs out of paper plates. It was such an entirely different mindset than being at MCTC or the senior center and I found I really enjoyed it. Those kids have a lot of energy and the time flew by. After having met Lily Yeh and having experience helping her teach, I felt a new enjoyment in working with children.
Residency – Minneapolis College of Art and Design – John Johnston – 4 hrs
This week lab was pretty sparse. We had one student show up during that time to work. However, we had quite a few more show up for lecture. We went over mounting photographs and John gave a demonstration. We talked about different types of mat board, what traditionally is used and why it’s used. Students do not have to mount photographs if they don’t want to, but I’m hoping a few students will go the extra step to make the work pop. After the demonstration we discussed street photography/portraiture. The students have been working on this project now for about a week and have concerns about pulling a camera out at someone’s face in the middle of the sidewalk. We talked about the shooting from the hip method, the pretend you’re taking a picture of your friend method and a few others that either John or myself have had success with. I was doing a lot of street photography before I came to MCAD and had a lot of those concerns myself so it was nice to try and give some advice on how to overcome it. We went over the work of Gary Winogrand as well as some other photographers to try and get peoples imaginations going. I’m looking forward to see what is being produced and how courageous the students will be!