Go Beach!
This is the week we get to go to the beach and make Plaster Casts of our hands or feet. A few of you might hate the beach (and you can do it at home if you use a bucket full of sand) but for most of you, going to the beach is one of the better things in life. Actually that’s why I created this Activity! It occurred to me one day that we go to a school called The Beach but we never actually go to the beach! 😛 I used to host an arts interview show on our campus radio station KBeach, and former CSULB President Robert Maxson told me that someone once told him that we were the only university in America with the word “Beach” in it’s name, and that was what inspired him to coin our famous phrase, Go Beach! Anyway, this week you get to go to the beach for class credit!
- Full details on the Plaster Casting Activity Page!
Irony
I guess it’s a bit ironic that last week so many of you depicted yourselves falling down stairs… and unfortunately, my mom did it for real on Sunday. Well, not “stairs”, just one big step.
Mom goes to St. Thomas Aquinas church in Monterey Park. During Mass on Sunday the pastor put a map on the altar and asked everyone to put a pin in the map for where they were born. My mom was born in the small town of Lamar, Colorado. She was sort of pleased that she was the first person to put a pin in the state of Colorado. Then walking back from the altar she didn’t realize there was a step down – if you’ve ever walked off a curb but didn’t realize it was a curb and your foot crashed down to the street 9 or so inches below – you know this is kind of jarring. In my mom’s case she fell hard and wound up breaking her hip and shoulder.
Some of you commented that the hardest part of the photo was not laughing, and as you can imagine, my mom’s experience was kind of the opposite of that. 5 hours in one hospital that her insurance didn’t cover, then moved to another hospital, then just a lot of pain and waiting. In the end, from her fall at 8am on Sunday to when the orthopedic surgeon finally came to see her at 1pm on Monday was 29 hours. I broke both my elbows once, and I can tell you, it was the longest day of my life. So much pain. So much waiting. Just sitting in a bed in pain forever. Sadly, my mom’s breaks were even worse.
Irony.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, in addition to sharing a sad and ironic story with you, this is actually an overglorified “I didn’t do my homework” note. My hope is to try to grade all your work every Monday so you can see points on BeachBoard by classtime on Tuesday. There are usually a couple of weeks during the semester where that isn’t possible and you have to wait a bit longer. But most weeks you’ll have points on Tuesday. And I’ve never missed the 1st week before. I guess sometimes life happens. Ironically, even.
Good News
On the bright side, 128 out of 128 of you actually got on the roster in Week 1! I don’t think we’ve ever had 100% before! Even though you have to wait a bit longer for your points, you guys really rocked it this week – Awesome, Thank You, and Congratulations!
Cool Videos
On Thursday I showed this video at the beginning of class:
https://vimeo.com/25004046
Morgan Moore liked it enough to email me and suggest that it might also be cool to show this video at the beginning of class sometime:
https://youtu.be/zEQskIsHKT8/
Discussion Groups
Week 2
26-31 Jan
- Discussion: Mass: Mona Hatoum & Anish Kapoor
- Art Experience: Sculpture: Plaster Casting
Tuesday Discussion Groups
Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
Group 4
Group 5
- Cheryl Peng
- Christian Aguirre
- Christine Kim
- Christopher “Morgan” Moore
- Christopher Chadwick
- Christopher Williams
Group 6
Group 7
Group 8
- Dorothyrose McMahon
- Eduardo (Eddie) Castillo
- Eli Yee
- Elidia Ramirez
- Elizabeth Moledo
- Enrique Plascencia
Group 9
Group 10
Group 11
Group 12
Group 13
Group 14
Group 15
Group 16
Group 17
Group 18
Group 19
Group 20
- Sam Tan
- Shannon McGuinness
- Shayenne Prasad
- Steven Costanti
- Symone Pallett
- Tareena Woods
- Tiffany Tran
Comments? Questions? What great art did you see, make, or experience today?