Wk11: Your Turn!

Activity 11 – Your Turn

After mastering the past 10 Activities you’re ready to design a special Art Activity just for yourself. Try something new! Try something meaningful. Challenge yourself. Have fun! Visit the Activity 11 – Your Turn page for full details. If you want help figuring anything out, be sure to ask me! Right behind the Gatov Gallery is the Art Store and we can go visit if you want to know about Canvas or Gouache or any other sort of art material.

Social Production

You can do any art activity you like for Activity 11. By yourself or in a group. But I’d like to encourage you to think about “Social Production.” Here’s a really impressive example of it, and then some ideas about it:

Points

All points through the end of Week 10 are now up on BeachBoard (I still have some of your messages re late posts to look at) We’ve had 580 points awarded so far, and here’s what you should have to be on track for each grade level:

522 points = A pace = 97 peeps
464 points = B pace = 20 peeps
406 points = C pace = 10 peeps
348 points = D pace = 10 peeps
347 points = F pace = 4 peeps

Top 10

1. Anna Joy Floresca – 761
2. Diana Martinez – 759
3. Evan Huang 730
4. Marlyn Castillo – 712
5. Allison Wendell – 676
6. Bowas Yang – 668
7. Celine Phan – 658
8. Nicole Ilagan – 657
9. Antonio Lavermon – 638
10. Conny Ramirez – 634
11. Connor Bailey – 634

Elizabeth Banuelos

Cheyenne Ochoa

Marie Mendez

Antonio Lavermon

Evan Huang

Tyler Hirata

Kianna Lightborn

Connor Bailey

Conny Ramirez

CitizenFour

The documentary about Edward Snowden, CitizenFour, came out on Friday. It’s currently playing in Pasadena. I strongly encourage you to see it. For many of you Snowden might be a hero; for others he might be a criminal – your ideology will be your own, but whatever you believe, his work is at the heart of the culture of your time. Your parents and I are creatures of the 20th century, but the 21st century is your time and while everyone in this class will have a different opinion, it’s essential that you’re informed about the issues and ideas of your century.

On a related note, the documentary about Aaron Swartz, The Internet’s Own Boy came out a few months ago. Again, it contains fundamental ideas about the culture of your time. Again, whether you consider him a hero or a criminal, I urge you to be informed about the ideas of your century.

Documentaries

These 2 documentaries are a good moment to think about documentaries in general. Some of you will go on to be filmmakers. Almost all of your are film watchers. Sure sometimes you’re tired and just want to relax with Guardians of the Galaxy or The Avengers. But so much of mainstream film exists in a narrow range. Documentaries can inform, inspire, create change, and yes, even entertain. To our future filmmakers I’d encourage you to think about making documentaries. And to all of us who watch films, consider watching documentaries. They don’t have “Hollywood Budgets” for advertising, so you’ll hear less about them, but they’re out there and I believe they can enrich your life beyond simply one night’s entertainment.

A few years back PBS did a commercial for themselves. They showed vistas of wheat fields and skyscrapers. The tag line at the end was,

There are a million stories in the streets of the cities that we never finished building. And we intend to tell them all.