16 Year Old Girl Lectures the World

Greta Thunberg, Nobel  prize winner, is angry for a good reason.https://youtu.be/11FCyUB81rI

“We’re Under Attack From the President.” By Admiral William H. McRaven (ret.)(commander U.S. Navy Special Operation Command

“For everyone who ever served in uniform, in the intelligence community, for diplomats who voice the nation’s principles, first responders, tellers of truth and the millions of American citizens who were raised believing in American values — of all political persuasions, have seen the assaults on our institutions: on the intelligence and law enforcement community, the State Department and the press. They have seen our leaders stand beside despots and strongmen, preferring their government narrative to our own. They have seen us abandon our allies and have heard the shouts of betrayal from the battlefield.”
“We are the most powerful nation in the world because we try to be the good guys...because our ideals of universal freedom and equality have been backed up by our belief that we were champions of justice, the protectors of the less fortunate.” Admiral William H. McRaven (ret.)(commander U.S. Navy Special Operation Command). NYTs, Opinion Section, October, 18, 2019. “We’re Under Attack From the President.”

“A Widening of the Lens” by Antwaun Sargent

“Her gaze is confident, a symbol of black motherhood, beauty and pride.”
“To convey black beauty is an act of justice,” says Tyler Mitchell.
“Tyler Mitchell is a part of a burgeoning new vanguard of young black photographers, including Daniel Obasi, Adrienne Raquel, Micaiah Carter, Nadine Ijewere, Renell Medrano and Dana Scruggs, working to widen the representation of black lives around the world [and] expand the view of blackness in all its diversity...
...they are challenging a culture that still relies on insidious stereotypes in its depictions of black life”...”exclusion of black works from mainstream fashion and galleries, artists are curating their own exhibitions, conceptualizing their own internet sites, and using their social media platforms, [receiving] comments on how their photographs powerfully mirror their own lives.”— black art as universal.” Antwaun Sargent

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/05/arts/design/black-vanguard-photography-antwaun-sargent.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Lee Kasner: “A Solo Limelight” by Jason Farago

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/arts/lee-krasner-barbican-schirn-kunsthalle.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

“Lee Krasner was suspicious of paintings where telltale marks were like alternative autographs.” “She was proud not to have a single style. You had to figure out each painting on its own, she said, or you end up with something “rigid rather than being alive.”

Fine Arts Final Exam to Research 3 Artists Advanced Art Students John Anderson

VISUAL ARTS CLASSES Students Name______________________________   

                                                    Period_______

JOHN ANDERSON 

ROOM E264

• Research three artists from the articles and magazines on the tables. This project will be worth 4 points and will require reading three articles and responding in writing to the questions below. This will take the entire extended period. No one can leave for any reason except to go to the bathroom. 

• Your paper should compare and contrast issues relating your own art/life/jewelry experience with each of the artists.  Ask yourself the following questions and answer them:

1. List each Artist’s name, Article Title, Magazine Title__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

2. What materials have you used in your art and how does that differ with what the three artists

used?__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

3. Did the artists talk about an idea, theme or concept that their art was about?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

4. What life experiences were included by the artist, or did they talk about design instead?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

5. Are you interested in trying some of their ideas in a future art project of your own?__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

6. What do you like most and least about each artist’s ideas?__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

7. How would you do their art differently? Different media/materials, techniques, ideas?__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

8. Can an article about architecture, sculpture, painting, photography, ceramics, drawing or printmaking give you any ideas about jewelry and metalsmithing?____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

9. What does art mean to you and to your researched artists?___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

10. How is the work of your artists different and similar from the work done in Architecture, Science, Marketing, Dentistry, or Journalism, etc. ?_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

11. How has reading these three articles changed your opinion, view, or understanding of art?________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“More Extreme Climate Events”: “Humans’ Effects On Climate”

“Chronicles of the Rings: What Trees Can Tell Us” by Jim Robbins, The New York Times, April 30, 2019.
“The fact that [The North Atlantic Jet Stream] has become more variable only in recent decades suggests that the shift is the result of humans’ effects on climate, Dr. Trouet said.”

https://ltrr.arizona.edu/?smid=nytcore-ios-share
“The lab has helped establish other labs around the world, which in turn has rapidly increased the number of studied trees. There are now roughly a dozen large labs globally and data from 4,000 sites on all continents except Antarctica. The information is stored in the International Tree Ring Data Bank, a library open to all researchers. As more tree data becomes available, a much richer picture forms of the nexus of past climate, ecosystems and human civilization.”

“...climate of the last half-century is far outside the historical norms going back thousands of years.
Living bristlecone pine trees are several thousand years old and their information is added to by those that died thousands of years ago, but remained intact in their cold, dry high-altitude environment.”

“Dr. Meko said. “It’s a little worrisome to see the most extreme years right near the present.”

“Other sources — lake sediments; ice core samples; coral; the otolith, or ear bone, of fish; and even the shells from living and long dead geoducks, a large bivalve with a snakelike appendage — add to the broader picture.”

“...the stars give up some of their secrets to trees. The sun and other stars emit radiation called Galactic Cosmic Rays, or G.C.R.s, that react in the atmosphere with nitrogen and change the levels of carbon 14, which is taken up by every living thing and becomes a tracer for cosmic ray levels.”
“Past spikes in G.C.R.s from solar flares...have attracted keen interest from researchers, because if they occur now they could wipe out communication satellites and other technology. An event in 774-775, first found in Japanese cedar trees and since found globally, is the strongest cosmic ray event in the tree ring record, a magnitude larger than the Carrington event, a solar storm in 1859, and apparently noted by people alive at the time.”
“This year also appeared in the heavens a red crucifix, after sunset,” was how the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles reported the event in the mid-eighth century.”
“It was most likely a huge solar flare. “It is unprecedented, there’s nothing else like it,” said Charlotte Pearson, a professor at the tree ring lab. “We’re trying to work out what it is and what caused it but we’re still not sure.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/science/tree-rings-climate.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

The Native American People Need Books

From: Al Franken <heythere@alfranken.com>
Date: April 25, 2019
Dear Friends,

I’ve been working on a project that I’d like your help with: providing books for a school library on an Indian reservation in northern Minnesota. The school is the brand-new Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School at the Leech Lake Reservation.

You can learn all about the school and how you can help on my new website, AlFranken.com.
For years as a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, I fought for funding to replace the old, disgracefully dilapidated and unsafe physical plant. There were rodents, sewage back-up, and the walls and roof leaked so badly that students wrapped themselves in blankets over their coats in the cold northern Minnesota winters. As one of the students told me, “It was as if the federal government was telling us we weren’t worth anything.”

When I first toured the old school years ago, I was particularly struck with the school’s library. It was in a room the size of a closet and contained two small bookshelves. I toured the new school this past August when I spoke at the ribbon cutting. It’s an impressive structure, with geothermal heating, spacious classrooms, and video conferencing technology. The library has the capacity for up to 20,000 books!  And that’s why the library will serve the entire community, from preschoolers to the tribal elders and everyone in between.

We want all kinds of books. Classics that every child in America should read, from Dr. Seuss to Mark Twain. I also wanted the library to have a meaningful collection of books about the history and culture of Native People. There is a very special person at the Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig School working with me - Laurie Jo Villwock, the school’s librarian. With the help of Native authors, educators, and librarians, Laurie has been pulling together literature and non-fiction about the American Indian experience. I also reached out to tribes around the country, and, so far, we have received more than a hundred books about Native history and culture.

There is a link to the list on the website, and we have a format that makes it easy – like a wedding registry. You can donate one or more of the books on the list. Click to find a book that you love and want a student to discover. And if your favorite book has already been chosen, click on another. Or, if you REALLY want to share a particular books and don’t see it on the list, email Laurie.

This email is going to a lot of people, so there’s a chance that when you click on the list, all or almost all, of the books will already have been donated. And if you have a problem selecting, please try again, because the school librarian will be updating the list throughout the school year.

If you would prefer to make a financial donation to the school, you can also do that through my website. 

And thanks!
Al
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Climate Change and School Segregation

For the sake of the future of our world-wide civilizations, world peace, the preservation and protection of the environment, and our American Democracy (or whatever type of government that enables equality, and the optimum potential for all people); we must work together with intelligent, rational thought to synthesize the best ideas, efforts, and actions to save our home (planet earth) from the real threat of uninhabitability. Therefore education for every child is paramount.  jha

The following article describes the extreme difficulties in public education due to obstacles of race relations, economics, and test score levels. If there could ever be a breakthrough into the potential of the human mind; it has to be through a good public education system. A system blind to any and all obstacles. Jha

san-francisco-school-segregation

“In San Francisco, a Hard Lesson on  Integration, NYT, April 26, 2019, By Dana Goldstein
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/us/san-francisco-school-segregation.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

Parents want their children to attend schools close to home.
Fact: “Good” and “bad” parents will always exist; like teachers and other professionals.
The movement of children across the district has success and failure; but no mention of the movement of teachers and administrators. jha

Abstract Expressionist Phillip Guston

Guston was still in his early teens when his Los Angeles public high school art teacher, the improbably named Frederick John de St. Vrain Schwankovsky, introduced him to mystics P. D. Ouspensky and J. Krishnamurti as well as to modernists Pablo Picasso and Giorgio de Chirico, all of whom were equally exotic to Americans of that era.

Following his expulsion from school for coauthoring a satire of the English Department with Pollock, Guston worked at a bookstore and as a film extra, among various odd jobs.

https://www.britannica.com/art/Abstract-Expressionism

“If This Be Not I“ 1945

 

The Chicago Botanical Garden

                  I needed a break today;
              A wellness day was the way.

The Chicago Botanical Garden was mine to take;
          A brisk walk and some photos to make.

There seems nothing quite like the gaze into nature;

            especially when it returns the favor. 

                                    jha

My American Flag Art

The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC)

 I hope some of you can benefit from various methods I use to inform my art.
My focus today was:
1. A three channel digital video installation” about the erosion of the merger between two groups of countries, one group wanting independence from colonization; and another group of countries connected by the same religion. (Informs my need to represent a socio-political reference in my paintings.)
2. Mezzotints of Hamanishi Katsunori. (His images inform my jewelry)
3. And from catalogues in the Ryerson&Burnham Library, abstract prints and paintings by Helen Frankenthaler. (Informs my Painting; Abstract Expressionism is the greatest mystery to me, and therefore the most challenging.)

The Art Institute of Chicago

My goal this year is to visit the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) more often. Every Visit reveals something new. My solo experience allows me to have a relaxed focus on the details in one piece and read the descriptions. I like to spend the whole day for a total emersion. It is important to determine a specific focus for each visit. 

My theme for today was the texture and application of the painted surface. And the resulting tonal gradations of color. I have discovered the abstract expressionism within realist paintings. Without a focus of what you want to accomplish, it is very easy to become overwhelmed with the totality of a visual bombardment to the senses.

The AIC is a world class museum exposing millions of people from all interests and backgrounds. My membership each year makes my experience so much more enjoyable, expansive, and affordable. This place feels like a home away from home. Learning about the world through art is easy and fun.

The Movie “Midnight in Paris”

"The artists job is not to succumb to despair; but to find the antidote for the emptiness of existence."

From the movie: “Midnight in Paris”

More Reasons For The Arts in Schools

“...we live at a time when division is the norm.”
“Art is an antidote for our time...art meets us where we are and invites us in—to think, feel, wonder, dream, debate, laugh, resist, roam, [and] imagine.”
“...social, political and historical connectedness [is] born of...traumatic experience.” “Art instigates true engagement.”
“...filmmaker or photographer, author or actress, poet or painter...[artists] use art as a weapon for dynamic optimism.””...the perils of politics and power pivot to a blade of grass, a note of music, a line [in] a novel, expression on the screen, [and] we breathe deeply and are revived.”
Ava DuVernay Guest Editor “Time Magazine”-The Art of Optimism February 18-25, 2019.“The Art of Optimism” Time Magazine

Ballroom Dancing

Anita and I have been studying with Alex Tecza and Kato Lindholm for about four years.
We have taken private lessons, and danced in competitions and showcases with them.
As professional competitive dance partners, Kato and Alex provide an extra benefit for us to see them dance together. We are inspired to improve our dancing.
As excellent teachers,  Kato and Alex have helped us progress to the next level. They surprise us in each lesson with new ways to approach dance. They demonstrate ease of movement to coordinate with a partner. They are consistent in promoting the correct body position throughout every element of our dance routine.
We love working with Alex and Kato because they make it fun and challenging.
They are truly exceptional teachers and dancers with the ability to communicate the essentials of ballroom dancing at every level.
Thank you Kato and Alex! ❤️John and Anita Anderson