Week 16 (April 30th- May 6th)

No new hours

This week I’ve focused on my finals. For ideation and process I’m making a bust where if you push down on it the head pops off and you can put in a new one. I had the piece done modeling days ago but my issue has been printing it. Every time I try the printer clogs, two prints have failed. Then Don was nice enough to let me use the dimension printer on short notice. The dimension prints supports that you can get rid of in the acid bath, but my piece had some very small spaces. A bunch of support material got built up in the shaft of my piece so that my mechanism couldn’t work. I tried melting the supports away for two days, but the acid bath wouldn’t reach in the hole. We even tried tying the piece to a chunk of concrete to sink it. Finally, I decided to try and drill out the shaft and it was working great until I realized I couldn’t reach the end of the shaft with any of my bits. I ended up resorting to putting a quarter inch rod into the shaft and hitting my piece against the concrete outside. That cleared most of it but then I spent an hour filing the hole to get the rest of it out. Doing that I managed to finally get my piece working. Other than that, final I also printed another hand crank mechanism and thankfully there were no issues and it printed smoothly. For public art, I’ve been putting concrete onto my foam figure. I got a special kind of concrete that bonds to foam. It’s amazing how much more cohesive the piece is looking with the concrete on. There is a magnification sheet that is in the head so it distorts the world when you look through it. I’m pretty happy with the way it is turning out so far.

Week 15 (April 23rd-29th)

Gregory Rose- MCTC- Residency- 4.25hrs

John Akre- Children's Museum- Shadow- 3hrs

Last week I had talked to Gregory and told him that this week would sadly be my last at MCTC. It has been such an amazing experience being a teaching artist at MCTC and Gregory has helped me grow tremendously as a teacher. I’ve come to think of the students as my own and have loved watching their work develop. Every one of them put in a lot of effort and grew as an artist this semester. Some of them even will be continuing forward into art making degrees. Gregory was wonderful and brought in donuts for my last day. He had told the students on Wednesday that today would be my last in the class. We had a really great critique ate donuts and talked about the student’s finals. Some of the students reached out to me and thanked me for teaching and being a part of the class. It melted my heart they had all been so wonderful! I said goodbye to all the students and told them thank you for a wonderful semester and that it was amazing being a teaching artist in the class. This week I also went to the Children’s Museum. I helped John with another animation. This one was space themed. The camera was set in the ceiling so that the kids could crawl around on the ground and look like they were flying or floating in space. It was a lot of fun and all the kids that participated really got in to it. Me and one of the other helpers made some more props for the animation. I made some wrist bands that had little screens on them that made it look like you were talking to aliens and a strange space pirate ship. Both kids and volunteers had a huge amount of fun with this piece.

Week 14 (April 16th-22nd)

Gregory Rose- MCTC- Residency- 4.25hrs

John Akre- Children's Museum- Shadow- 7hrs

This week at MCTC I came early as usual to help set up for class. Sadly, I had missed the skeleton assignment, but I talked to Gregory about how the students had done and what I had missed. After that Gregory and I talked about artists that use collage in their work and began making our lecture. We compiled 5 artists all of which came from different backgrounds and brought something very different to the table. For their next project the students will make three small collages that focus on creating a narrative, the narratives can be different for each individual piece, or all lead into each other for an overarching narrative. The students have some great resources for this, MCTC has large collections of Times magazine going way back. The students also had a large selection of modern magazines to use, the modern magazines alone took up 3 cupboards worth of space. The students were really excited to have a more relaxed class and to focus on composition and concept rather than technical skill. The majority of class was work time with Gregory and I circling and asking questions about what narratives the students are making. It was a very relaxed and fun class period today. This week was also my first experience going to the Children’s Museum. I was pretty nervous about it at first, finding a place to park and getting there was pretty stressful. Once I was there though, everyone was very friendly and helpful. I ended up helping on the 4th floor. John, the artist I was paired with focused on making stop motion animations with kids. He would have the kids hold up shapes and move them around or “teleport” from chair to chair. It was hard to get little kids to participate, but 7 and up seemed to be really entranced by the process.

Week 13 (April 9th-15th)

Sick-No Hours

This week I wasn’t feeling very well on Monday so I was unable to make it to MCTC. In my studio, this week I worked on My public art piece, I used a CNC to cut two inch sections of a figure out and then I began gluing them together. The figure is made out of pink foam but eventually it will be covered in concrete with two windows through it, one in the head and one in the chest. The figure is in a seated position so that he can sit on a ledge in the MCAD sculpture garden. The hope is that visitors to the garden will look through the windows in his body and see altered views of the garden. He’ll be seated in front of a tree and facing towards another student’s sculpture. The way I’m planning on making the piece will make it surprisingly light, it will weigh less than me, so because of this I’ll have to bolt it down onto a cast piece of concrete. The light weight will help a lot in transporting it into the garden though and will make my install hopefully go really smooth. Other than public art I worked on a piece for Ideation and Process, where I’m 3D printing a small bust where if you push down onto it the face pops out and you can put in a new one. The work is an exploration of my kinetics work and an attempt to get people to interact with art in a fine art setting. The real dilemma is getting people to feel like they can use the piece. I believe that people will be able to put together how it works fairly easily but getting them to actually interact with it is a different obstacle. I hope if just one person goes for it others will see and try it out too.

Week 12 (April 2nd-8th)

Gregory Rose- MCTC- Residency- 4.25 hrs

This week at MCTC before class Gregory and I spent a lot of time trying to reassemble a broken skeleton for the students. We had to find metal wire and try to thread it around the skeleton’s joints. We had to reassemble the head, a hand, and a leg. After that Gregory and I worked in tandem to put together our lecture, finding images of the skeleton, and ways of breaking it down for drawing. When class started filtering in we decided to give the students more time to work on their self-portraits. Just about everyone’s needed some final touches. Gregory and I circled the room helping the students with any last-minute questions they had and giving feedback on compositions. After that Gregory had me lead the lecture about the figure and the structure of the skeleton. We decided to push the skeleton project to tomorrow to give the students more time to finish their portraits. After lecture, we gave the students more work time. A little over halfway through the class me and Gregory had the students hang up their work and get ready for critique. Gregory asked me to lead critique today and for the most part it went really well. I didn’t realize how much more difficult it is to lead a critique though. As a student I’ve always made sure to say something for each person’s work, but as a teacher it is so much more difficult trying to lead students into speaking. I think part of it was I needed to think of more open general questions to get the students to respond. I also needed to get used to leaving in some silence to try and goad students into talking. Ultimately though it was an amazing learning experience and something I need to practice more of.

Week 11 (March 26th-April 1st)

Gregory Rose- MCTC- Residency- 4.25hrs

This week was my time to incorporate a lesson plan. It focused around self-portraiture and pattern with a conceptual emphasis on the pattern. The students had a week before hand in order to start thinking about their patterns and the conceptual backing behind them. Today’s class was setup to be work time so they could really start digging into the process and have Gregory and I available if they had any questions. I started class by giving an overview of the project and showing examples of contemporary artist’s work. Artists like Kehideh Wiley, Gustav Klimt, Caledonia Curry, Njideka Akunyili, and Mickalene Thomas. After lecture, we started right into pattern, Gregory and I circled the room helping students one on one. I was excited to see the wide variety of ideas coming from the students. Some students where collaging elements into their hair for pattern or wrapping it around their clothing. There was also a good portion of students using the background as a playground for pattern from abstract to rendered forest with repeating leaves. I can’t wait to see the final pieces they come up with. This is a very challenging project but they all seem to be excited and diving in. I can’t wait to hear how they problem solved and ideated during critique. I felt really prepared for today, Gregory has been helping me prep for this for months now. I’ve been leading lectures, participating in critiques, and incorporated a practice lesson plan with observational line drawing. It’s been amazing how involved in the class Gregory has helped me to become, I truly feel as if I am a teacher and that the students are my own in part. I felt comfortable directing the class today and I’ve become more and more confident in problem solving with the students.

Week 10 (March 19th- 25th)

South High School- David Olsen- 4.25hrs

MCTC- Gregory Rose- 4.25hrs

This week at South High School was my presentation for the students. I came in and had two hours to prep, making sure that the projector worked and that my presentation also worked. For the most part I was really excited by my presentation but I found out that the school’s security system blocked out Instagram not allowing me to use the links I made to show Tom and Hillary’s Kinetic pieces. Still the presentation had a lot of images and showed a wide variety of artists from different backgrounds. I spent about 30 minutes presenting, showing different artists’ works and answering the occasional question. The last portion of my presentation was wholly Q&A though. The students mainly asked me questions about MCAD, tuition, and scholarships. I told them about MCAD’s portfolio day and some scholarship opportunities. They also asked a lot of questions on how I build my hand crank hand and how I hung the concrete cabinet. So, I got to explain French cleats and how to make 90 degree gears which was a lot of fun. At MCTC the students worked on gridding and transferring from printed photos. The students took to it quickly and most of them finished the structure of their drawing by the end of class. I started class by running lecture and I also gave a short introduction to the lesson I will be leading next week and asking students to look at different patterns in the time between now and next week. A few people where enlarging at odd ratio’s so me and Gregory helped with the math. Most of class was spent checking in one on one with each student and helping them to progress with their drawings. A few students brought in multiple photos, so we talked about which one had the strongest composition and why.

Week 9 (March 12th-18th)

South High School- David Olsen- 4.25 Hrs

MCTC- Gregory Rose- 4.25 Hrs

This week at South High School I talked with David about my lesson plan and how I wanted to format my presentation. We talked about my plan to transition it slowly from fine art ceramics to the more expanded world of fine art sculpture. He seemed to like the idea and we ended up talking about MCAD and other artists from there like Hillary and Tom. I talked about wanting to include them in the presentation to show some local artists and some possible next steps for the students. The rest of the class time was spent on gallery day. Students laid out their work and went from table to table writing and leaving comments for other students. They had been working on a mask project where they had to include some non-ceramic elements. They also got to vote as a class for best in show, most original, and most interesting non-ceramics use. It was a lot of fun and was an excuse for the students to move around the room and talk about each other’s work. At MCTC the students were coming back from spring break and finishing up their linear perspective drawings. Before they got to work Gregory had me lead lecture, reminding them of the rules of linear perspective and seeing contemporary artists who use it. Gregory gave them some extra time to work in class on doing the finishing touches of their linear perspective. So, we spent the majority of class going around answering student’s questions and helping them to flesh out their linear perspectives. For the last portion of class, we had critique. The students seemed to have really gotten into linear perspective and their drawings showed a lot of care.

Week 8 (March 5th- 11th)

South High School- David Olsen- Residency 4hrs

This week MCTC was out for spring break so I spent Monday working on my digital fabrication project. I 3D printed a hand that rested on top a box with a hand crank jutting out the side. As you spin the pointer finger of the hand also spins. Its rotation is off center so that it creates an even more eerie scenario of the finger not meshing with its self. It’s printed out of glow in the dark blue filament adding to its phantom esque appearance. I spent around 23hrs in total printing parts for it this week. It feels so amazing to have the final object finally working. At South High School this week I worked on the underglaze of my bat project. I painted recessed areas and edges with a hint of green that blended away to brown. This also created a phantom like appearances. For the nose I combined the green with a red in order to make the nose still have the flesh like look and the bright colorful pop it would have on a real bat. The green tied with the red also helped to unify the piece and make it so that the nose didn’t seem separate from the rest of the piece. A student today wasn’t liking their mask, but with both me and Meg talking to them about all the things they did right with the piece they began to appreciate it more and even added a few more finishing touches. It was a beautiful piece that covered the viewers eyes and had to sets of small curved horns projecting from it. It had a copper triangle set into the forehead and copper wire rapping around the horns. The copper complimented its deep red glaze perfectly. For finishing touches they added frayed rope along the edge of the mask, imitating hair. I also set a date with David for me to teach.

Week 7 (February 26th- March 4th)

South High School- David Olsen- Residency 4 1/4hrs

MCTC- Gregory Rose- Residency 4 1/4hrs

At MCTC this week the students focused on linear perspective. I came in early to help David set up and prepare for lecture. We compiled a list of images that explained and used linear perspective. This week that task was made a lot harder by googles new update, we spent fifteen minutes trying to find the best way to put our images together, eventually just leaving them individually open in their own tabs. I brought up some contemporary artists that use linear perspective with startling results like Cinta Vidal. She is an amazing painter who makes these gravity and space defying pieces that show viewers and their dwellings formed into the sides of buildings, upside down, and right side up, creating absolutely stunning compositions. I was very excited to show this work to the students and during the lecture most of their questions pertained to her work. After critique Gregory and I led the class around the school looking at different compositions and talking about their strengths and weaknesses. Afterwards Gregory worked on one on one meetings with the students while I ran around the school checking on all the students and helping them start their drawings. It was a lot of fun running around the school and helping the student’s draw. I filled five pages of my own sketchbook showing students how to find their horizon lines and dealing with odd grid breaking structures. The students seemed to be enjoying themselves as well a few even stayed in their spots to keep drawing after class. At South High School I began to participate in the mask assignment. I made a mask that looked like a fruit bat, I chose them because of their odd flappy nose. I was really happy with how it was turning out and surprised that I managed to keep the nose in one piece.

Week 6 (February 19th- 25th)

South High School- David Olsen- Residency 4 1/2hrs

MCTC- Gregory Rose- Residency4hrs

This week at MCTC the students were continuing to develop further into value. They’re really trying to capture the lightest lights and darkest darks in their compositions. I came in early again to help Gregory set up the class and prepare his lecture. The majority of class today was spent working off of another box still life and having the students experiment with materials like ink and charcoal or conversely with using different mark making techniques to develop value. For the mark making examples we showed the class Van Gogh’s drawings so that they could see the wide variety of possibilities and hopefully begin to visualize their own mark making language. I’m becoming incredibly comfortable walking around the class and conversing with students about their work. They are making some incredible strides with their drawings and seem to be really receptive to feed back. It’s amazing giving a student some pointers and then when I get back to them again to see that they tried to use my suggestion. These short moments are probably my favorite teaching experience so far. It feels wonderful to be able to help someone reach their vision and to see that they really care about their piece. I really love the experience I am having at MCTC. At South High School this week Meg Knutson, David’s UMN TA, introduced the ceramics two and three students to a mask project. They get to make a mask of any form or design they want as long as it is larger than their head and incorporates a material outside of ceramics. Some of the students really took off with the idea but a lot seemed hesitant to make something different than pottery. It’s interesting to see the students being pushed to experiment and expand their knowledge of what their medium can do.

Week 5 (February 12th-18th)

South High School- David Olsen- Residency 4 1/4hrs

MCTC- Gregory Rose- Residency 4hrs

This week at MCTC I incorporated my knowledge of observational line drawing into the class room. This is also the day where once every four years Gregory is observed by the Dean and a fellow art teacher. Before class me and Gregory looked through online sources at examples of artists who used this technique. Once all of that was compiled I set a still life up for the students using only different sized boxes. I tried to make it as interesting as possible with boxes stacked inside each other, overlapping, and tilting at weird angles. Once class started I ran the lecture with Gregory adding in pieces I missed. I also brought in examples of my own college work. 2 of the pieces were contour line with the observational lines showing through for proportion checks. The 3 other pieces I brought in had value layered in over the structure showing how if the students wanted they could erase the lines in the end. I used these as tools to talk to the students about the process and to allow them to see myself put into their same situation. The students seemed really responsive to this and asked me a lot of process questions about the work. Both the Dean and the other teacher as well. From here we went into critique for the their homework and I asked all the students to hang their work in the hall. The rest of class was work time for the students while me and Gregory walked around answering questions. At South High School I helped with a lot of prep work and setting up for class. The rest of the day was spent working on the underglaze for last weeks class example. Painting the interior spaces of the example proved to be challenging but entertaining.

Week 4 (February 5th-11th)

South High School- David Olsen- Residency 4hrs

MCTC- Gregory Rose- Residency 3hrs

In Gregory’s class this week the students worked with positive negative space from a large still life. The still life was constructed of a ladder tied together with random objects like a baby doll, a bike, and a phonogram’s horn. This proved challenging for some students but Gregory and I circled the room answering questions and offering feedback. Gregory and I have talked about slowly having me become a larger part of the classroom and started that today by allowing me to do role. It’s also helping me to learn all the student’s names. Another part of this is I brought observational line drawing up to Gregory and he liked my idea so much that he is going to  help me to incorporate it into the next lesson. I’ll be bringing examples of my own work that show this technique in and helping to make the presentation for how to use the technique. I can’t wait!

In David’s class I was introduced to his TA from the University of Minnesota and together we started making examples for his class on Tuesday. We’re building pieces that are constructed out of slabs and have negative spaces that run through them. I spent almost all of my time at SHS today working on it. The only thing I did other than work on the example was to try and find artists that used the same technique for David’s presentation.

Week 3 (January 29th- February 4th)

South High School- David Olsen- Residency 4hrs

MCTC- Gregory Rose- Residency 3hrs

Gregory has allowed me to come in earlier in order to help him prep  for class, so I got to see a lot more of MCTC’s teaching spaces and supplies. I shadowed him as he went about his daily set up, grabbing paperwork from his office, obtaining supplies out of a shared storage closet, and choosing images for his lecture. Through the whole process he talked me through why he was doing each thing and helped me to better formulate an idea of what setup would be like for me as a teacher. He also showed me MCTC’s new display space, which is currently showing alumni work. It’s a very new space so Gregory talked me through how starting it has been going and where he would like to see it in the future. He is very invested in the program and wants to see it grow. Class was more contour drawing and I am continuing to grow more confident about giving students advice about their work.

At South High School David Had me help prep his classes. I used the pug mill throughout the day to build a reservoir of ready clay for the students to use. I also helped prepare student work for the kiln, wiping the bottoms of glaze, and gently placing them onto a cart by the kiln.

Week 2 (January 22nd- 28th)

MCTC- Gregory Rose- Residency 2 1/2hrs

This week South High School finished their semester and was closed for break on Friday, so I only went to Gregory Rose’s class at the Minneapolis Community and Technical College.  I had a great experience in the class, Gregory was very helpful and pushed me to be an interactive member of the class. He’s taking the time to explain why he’s teaching the way he is and showing me his process. We would often head in opposite directions of the room talking with the students and helping them along in their drawings. The students are working on contour line from a still life comprised of chair like objects. A few of them raised their hands and asked for my help. I felt like I was really a part of the class . Diving right into it is helping me to become more comfortable and confident within the classroom environment. The class is also revitalizing my desire to draw. This semester I’ve focused more on the sculpture part of my practice but I’m feeling the urge to do more and more drawings from life in my free time. It’s really interesting the impact the class is having on my personal practice.

Week 1 (January 15th-21st)

South High School- David Olsen- Residency 4hrs

This week I visited my placement at South High School in Minneapolis. It was the first time I’ve been in a high school since I graduated in 2014. It was interesting being around a younger generation, I felt mentally very different, but physically very similar. Most the students are my height or taller and the only real marker of the age difference being my facial hair. When I got into the school I was told to visit the welcome desk, then the main office, and from there I was allowed to go to the ceramics room. The halls were packed with student’s going to lunch. The large amount of students  swarming the halls reminded me of how small and intimate of a school MCAD is.

I met David Olsen at the beginning of his class period, his students were preparing the last of their pieces and getting ready for review. I followed along in class with David’s lecture, taking notes and refreshing myself on the ceramic terms and processes. I was also able to take the semester test and completed almost all of it. For the next period of class David showed me the rest of the art department and introduced me to the other art teachers at the school. He also showed me the clay extruder and the mixer.

During David’s next class he encouraged me to work with the clay and make something. Thinking back to my high school ceramics experience I made a pinch pot head. Using Scoring and slipping I attached multiple pieces into the small head with liberty spikes. In the last period of the day I finished up my sculpture and then helped clean. I rinsed old bottles out so that they could be reused and then helped prep things for the kiln. I used a wet rag to make sure that none of the pieces had glaze on their bottoms.

Pre-Semester Journal

This week I'm going to be going to my first placement at MCTC on Friday. I'm excited to be working with Gregory Rose in a drawing class. It will be wonderful to experience another college environment and work with a medium I love but that I am using less of this semester. Monday of next week I will get to be in David Olsen's class where I will get to work with clay. I've loved clay since my first experience with it in high school and I'm incredibly excited to be using it again while teaching in another high school environment. Overall I'm thinking very optimistically about the semester.