Journal Entry #7

Journal Entry#7: Write a reflection of your fieldwork experience. Provide specific examples you think were successful and not so successful.

Having attended two classes of collage, I found that one was successful in reaching its goal of developing critical thinking on important topics and another was unsuccessful. One class had a mini tour at the beginning where issues of feminism and race were explored in art. In the studio, students worked with collage and demonstrated an understanding on the use of art to address social issues as many topics emerged on poverty, feminism, race and equality. On the other hand, the group that spent the whole time in the studio without a tour made images based on shallow topics. However, they demonstrated a better understanding of formal elements. Thus, I find that students need helpful examples on art as a tool to speak out and address moral and social problems before making their own. I also find that formal elements should be addressed when showing examples, so that both the understanding of portraying social issues as well as formal elements can be better understood and thus demonstrated in students’ artworks.

Another class on printmaking also explored social justice through a mini tour, and presented printmaking as an art that can be easily reproduced to spread awareness on social issues. This class was not very successful as students did not react to the ideas presented in the mini tour in their artworks. Rather, they were much more engaged in discovering the process of printmaking and their thoughts were focused on making sure their images would be properly mirrored when stamped, not the topic of the image itself. I think more time should be given to this activity where the process of printmaking is explained first and the students experiment with it. Then, the mini tour would be presented with the topic of social justice and the students will have already understood how one can make a stamp, and will be ready to explore topics in their work.