During a recent conversation I had about female representation in
the current media, someone asked, "How far have we really come?" I
immediately proclaimed, "Well, I'm wearing pants!" I was indeed, in that
moment wearing pants. And, as I
twirl my hair, I will say it loud and proud, "I like math! I'm good at
it! And I'm an artist!" Why do women and even men say they are bad at
math anyway? I hear from time to time, while eating out, "You settle
the dinner bill and just tell me what I owe. I'm bad at math." I never
hear, "Can you tell me what this email says? I'm so bad at reading."
Figure 1. F is for Feminism
I
thought about this while shakily holding Warrior One pose in a yoga
class yesterday. The instructor reminded us that we are always arriving
at our poses. There is always work to be done and small actions to take.
I imagined that asymptote approaching its axis as my right quad started
to shake and my shoulders started to tense. Maybe we
are forever approaching real feminism in the same way we are always
arriving at our postures in yoga, shaking and wobbling. Maybe this is
not unlike these lines
in
Figure 1 traveling for infinity. Yoga and feminism and asymptotes are in
constant effort and action towards perfection while never really
arriving. This is my more complete and ever-arriving response to the
question: "How far have we really come?"
All
of this makes me want to turn to my vintage self-help book collection,
largely augmented by my mother's books she acquired during her lifetime.
One of note is the ever-popular The Woman's Dress for Success Book by
John T. Molloy, Copyright 1977, lovingly underlined throughout with my
mother's ruler and pencil. Five years before my birth, I imagine my
mother dressed for success, with navy-neutral non-overwhelming ensembles
of precision, advised and devised by a male author. She probably got
the job! Thanks, John!
This
past year a woman asked me what I was wearing to a job interview. I
snapped back that I would not entertain that sort of question, not even
realizing myself why I was so offended by a seemingly navy-neutral
non-overwhelming inquiry. Would she have asked my brothers what they
were wearing to an interview? My dear friend astutely commented, "It's
because it suggests that you do not know how to dress yourself."
Perhaps this person who was so concerned about my appearance knows our
culture still values this so much. My success: I must dress for it,
right?
Do I totally understand calculus, or feminism for that matter? No, not yet.
But I'm not going to tell you that. This is partly because I'm stubborn
and partly because my junior year of high school Pre-Calculus teacher
called me up to her desk one class to discuss my qualifications and
options for Math my senior year. She pointed out how high my Calculus
pre-test score was but how little homework I had handed in. I was
capable but maybe not motivated. She suggested A.P English instead.
Would that have been acceptable for
boys? Would I have studied engineering in college like my brothers had I
not been a girl? It didn't help that I liked drawing pictures and
hiding behind books. Did my un-mathing start before I was born?
I've
always felt supported in my interests and never pressured to take one
road over the other. I think it's been known for quite some time I am
going to go do whatever I want to do anyway. But how much un-mathing
sits so deep in my widened pelvic bones, that we're unable to see our
own female mathematical undoing?
So what has led me to this strong sense of independence? This love for
mathematics? This penchant for dressing myself? Was it my own mother's
courage? Was it women's lib? Was it the insane amount of bananas and peanut butter I ate during puberty? The movie Stand and Deliver?
While I think on that, here are some recent portraits taken by my
talented friend William Harper of a woman of questionable success, who likes math. She dressed
however she wanted.
Last month I said I was turning a corner. I forgot I was turning the corner and walking into wretched crabby February. At least February has forced me to appreciate all of the small good things in this grey frozen month.
February is watching steam rolling off the Chicago river on a long restless walk. February is seeing a Justin Bieber blanket on your hour long commute home. February is setting up an old vintage work lamp in your studio and turning it on for the first time in probably 50 years. And thank God it's staying lighter longer each day out the window. February is homemade Pad Thai from the school custodian while you stay late grading. February is looking forward to books you haven't read yet. February is the month of The Big Belly. But don't get me wrong; I still hate February. Life is beautiful and I'm going to go puke in a shoe.
It is an enormous privilege to spend extended periods of time with
middle school students who are growing almost as fast as an infant's brain. I can
literally see them growing, both in height and intellect. I care so
deeply about these students, it physically pulls at my heart. While I was on a run
the other day, one of the eerily warm 60 degree January days, I felt
light opening out of what some people call my heart chakra. It was an orange light. I painted a quick sketch of it (below.) I think
the weather and a hardy run helped, but I attribute it to thinking about
the enormous responsibility of being someone's teacher. I was not on
drugs, everyone, just warm weather endorphins and sensing a real
connection with my students! After the awful obligatory task of reducing a student's learning in art class to a letter grade, I set to reading my mini-surveys they filled out at the end of the semester. I realize more deeply how the smallest and biggest choices I make in the classroom can impact a student. No letter grade or scoring rubric will show that. I love these young people and I'm learning how to show that.
Another part of teaching art to middle school students is emphasizing the importance of respecting your space and the materials you use. Sometimes the emotional maturity needed to perform these tasks (i.e., participate in clean-up time) can only be described through theatrical interpretation by Paul Rudd:
In 2012, I was able to spend time at 3 great lakes in Michigan state park cabins. I don't even want to write about them because I want it to be my little secret. I realize the lack of electricity, no indoor plumbing, and wood fired stoves have kept it mostly that way. I was in a yurt in the Porkies along Lake Superior last May, a cabin on Lake Michigan in Leelanau State Park this past Thanksgiving, and one on Lake Huron in Cheboygan State Park over New Years with friends. It's been one of the more constant things in a year of a lot of shifting and changing: a new teaching job, a new apartment, and most recently a new studio space. I am ecstatic that the saws no longer live next to my couch. Over the holidays I became very sick and had to practice hibernating...even from this blog. It was long and hard but we've made it to 2013. I haven't been able to make sense of what 2012 was really about but I feel I've turned a corner. Cheers!
A new friend of a friend had recently mentioned this cool process of printmaking on gelatine. I was intrigued and invited her over to my place to do whatever it is you do with gelatine.
Deanna brought over a cookie sheet of jello that we broke into pieces on trays. Then we got out paint and ink to brush and roll over the surface of squishy gelatine. We pressed different kinds of paper on top to make simple monoprints and marveled at our happy accidents.
My own Jazz Map from years ago
Then, I immediately put all of my mental energy into how I would take this process to my most difficult class: 6th period 7th grade art. There are 34 of them, 25 boys, 2 who require teacher's aides, and have boundless energy. Did I mention they are in 7th grade? I looked at "map projects" online and started scanning images of cool maps in fantasy novels from the school library. There just was something not quite "gelling" about this fantasy map idea...but my worrying weekend was running out of time and I had to come up with something that connected to my arbitrary constraint (jello) before our class met again...all project runway-style. I decided to just make the prints with them and see what they should turn into...CRINGE! I know, a lesson without a clear outcome. How risky and irresponsible.
To get jello production underway, I made friends with the the Food and Consumer Sciences teacher in the school (Read: Home Ec). She had lots of pans and trays and refrigerator space for the jello. So one dark and stormy Tuesday, I stayed late in the Home Ec kitchen boiling water and Knox Gelatin (found in the baking aisle for $10.) I poured 2 packets of gelatine into each 9x9 inch pan, with about an inch high of water. (There were 16 pans in total that I split into two trays later for two classes of over 30.) I sloppily stirred the jello mixture with boiling water, let it sit for a few minutes, and then I stacked them into a fridge next to the school custodian's dinner. I had no idea if my slapdash recipe would turn out. I was imagining sub-par jello the next morning and emergency plan B lessons for my already disengaged 7th grade class.
Student work
The next morning at 6:45am, as the sun rose, so did the trays of extra firm beautiful clear gelatine up to the art room on a squeaky cart. The tactile qualities of jello are amazing, everyone. Touch your jello. I did the project with two different 7th grade classes and I only had one student eat a piece of jello. Despite my clear rules not to put it in your mouth since it had been touched by several hands and would be covered in paint, one student still did it on a dare. Thankfully, he returned to my next class alive and well.
So just like my own experimenting, I asked the students to experiment with multiple prints off of their jello tray.
Student Work
At this point, I was in the eye of the lesson storm. So they made some weird abstract shapes on paper. Big whoop. I went home and literally saw the writing on the wall...thanks to my friend, Jasmine, who was over at my house brainstorming with me on what to do with these prints. The scribbles/writings on my walls were old "map-like" drawings I had done years ago that I called my jazz drawings. They were supposed to represent energies like I believe improvisational jazz does. Great, now I should teach this. But HOW? I realized they had already been doing warm up drawing exercises in the beginning of class --some teachers call them bellringers, I call them Vitamin A of the Day (A is for art)---The warm ups were tonal drawings in their sketchbooks using cross-hatching, stippling, shading, and tonal scribbling. I took this skill they had just learned and gave them the option to create tonal drawings between and among the continents/islands of their printed maps...whatever mood that had surfaced for them that day. To my relief, the results were beautiful. As often happens at the end of a lesson when I take a long look at the work made, I fear I fetishize the students' pieces and see beauty and value that they don't notice or appreciate. Were they just following instructions in order to fulfill my own dictated aesthetic pleasures? After they finished their tonal ranges using the various drawing techniques, I asked them to serve their artwork on an attractive platter, i.e., a frame made out of colored paper. Then they were asked to title their abstract pieces with a mood. I noticed my own insecurities with making these subjective connections as many of their own titles were tentative and perhaps a bit forced. Showing mood through ink lines and jello prints is no small feat though. If I plan on cooking heaps of jello and doing tonal drawings again, I will push this mood connection a bit more.
A lesson from this lesson might be that ideas and solutions do not come from locking yourself in a room
alone picking lint and crying. It came from processing out loud with other
creatives, namely my great artist and art teacher friends. This is what we do for a living:
problem-solve and create together--sometimes through j-e-l-l-o.
I moved myself and my objects
across town last month. Amidst new jobs, new spaces, and a new allergy
season, I have moved slowly to get this comic up. But with a little bit
of sweat and might, it will go up, it will go up... just like my huge
desk went to the third floor.
