Class Overview

• Dates: 29 May – 17 August
• Format: 100% online
• Exams: None
• BeachBoard: Not used (will use Slack + Medium)
• Textbook: None (will use Internet, Class Videos, etc)
• Materials: See materials list

Each Week from Glenn

1. Short Art History / Art Ideas video to discuss
2. Name of Living Artist to research & discuss
3. Art Activity to try

Each Week from You

1. On Slack: Discuss Art History video (3 comments – can be original comments, replies to classmates, or both)
2. On Slack: Discuss Living Artist (3 comments – can be original comments, replies to classmates, or both)
3. On Medium: Essay on Living Artist
4. On Medium: Blog About Art Activity

Class Tools

• Slack Team: summer18lb.slack.com
• Slack Join Team Link: Join summer18lb
• Medium blog: medium.com
• Wix websites: wix.com (a good, but not required, choice for your Week 8 ePortfolio activity)

Slack & Medium are free. Wix is “freemium.” Freemium software is free but has optional paid upgrades. In Wix case, you can have it free, with Wix Ads & an address like “me.wix.com”. You can later pay them for No Ads and an address like “me.com”. You do not need to pay for any software for this class. After the class, you might choose to pay for your ePortfolio to be more professional for, for example, a job search.

Some students grumble a little about having to learn Slack & Medium in the 1st week. They’re pretty easy, but new things do take a few extra minutes. By the end of the summer, almost everyone says they liked these tools better than BeachBoard.

Class Pages

• Syllabus (this page)
• Roster
• Materials
• Artist Essay Template

After you make your blog on Medium, go to the Roster page and leave your Name and URL as a comment on that page. After that, you won’t have to “turn in” your blog posts. I’ll just visit your website each Monday and give you points.

Weekly Schedule

• Week Starts on Monday
• Due by Thursday Midnight: Slack Discussion (Living Artist & Art History)
• Due by Sunday Midnight: Blog Posts (Living Artist & Art Activity)
• I’ll grade your work on Mondays and give you your weekly points not later than Noon Tuesday by private IM on Slack

Optional Meetups

As a 100% online course, you’re never required to be at any specific place, and other than deadlines, you’re never required to participate on any specific day or time. This flexibility is probably part of why you chose this summer class.

Still, students do like the chance to meet each other. And while a few of you might be going home to Hong Kong, Stockholm, or Fresno, and taking the class from there, or staying in The LBC, but taking trips to San Diego or Las Vegas, a lot of you will probably be around the Long Beach area at least part of the summer.

So, I’ve arranged for 3 Optional Meetups across the summer. You can totally do these activities on your own anywhere! But here’s a chance to meetup with me and a few of your classmates if you’d like to.

Full Syllabus

Art 110: Introduction to the Visual Arts

• Section 1: Class No.10177
• 29 May – 17 August
• 100% Online Course
• Instructor: Glenn Zucman
• Office Hours: 24/7 on Slack
• Contact: Slack General Channel, or IM
• Alternate Contact: glenn.zucman@csulb.edu

Prerequisites

• None

Objectives

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to Art and Ideas as practiced in the 21st century. Students will try a wide range of art media from traditional tools like Drawing & Paint, to contemporary media like Snapchat & Video. Short videos will introduce artists and art ideas that students will further explore through research and discussions with classmates. Written blog posts will compare and contrast contemporary artists.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of this course, the student will be able to:

• Describe some of the styles, ideas, and issues found in the Western canon.
• Understand and articulate some of the ways that art functions vis-a-vis human culture
• Build upon their direct, introductory experiences, in Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Photography, Animation, and Data Visualization in both Physical and Virtual worlds
• Articulate their understanding of the relationship between art and: culture, speech, creativity, expression.
• Describe the role of the artist in culture/society.

Format of the Course

Each week this course includes:

1. Art Activity – activity to try & post on your blog
2. Art Talk – art ideas & art history discussion on slack
3. Artist of the Week – research an artist online, discuss on Slack & finally write a blog post about

Due Dates

• Discussion Posts by Thursday Midnight
• Blog Posts by Sunday Midnight

No Late Work

• There will not be any late work accepted in this course.
• You may do activities & blog posts early.
• You hopefully can participate in discussions with a smartphone from most places on earth.

Original Work

Your work should be yours. If you plagiarize in this course I will report you to the Chair of your Department, and the Dean of your CSULB College. It is very easy for you to not do an activity and just Google for images. It is also very easy for me to Google for those same images and show where you plagiarized from. Take this course, and your CSULB education seriously, do honest, and great, work.

Schedule

• See the schedule on Trello

Art Activities

During the 12 weeks of summer, we’ll try 12 Art Activities. You can group them into 3 categories:

• Messy Hands Activities: Plaster Casting, Graffiti Writing, Sketching, Finger Painting
• Life Design Activities: vlog, Life Design, ePortfolio, Environmental Portrait
• Other Activities: Secret Architecture, Your Turn, Museum Visit, One More

For most students, the Messy Hands Activities tend to be the most fun. The Life Design Activities don’t tend to be as much “fun,” but I hope they will be useful in designing your career and building an ePortfolio that will help you with employers, grad schools, internships, program admissions, and so on.

3 of the activities: Plaster Casting, Graffiti Writing & Museum Visit will also have Optional Meetups. Definitely not required, but a chance to meet me and some of your classmates if you’re available and in the Long Beach/Los Angeles vicinity.

1. Plaster Casting – Optional Meetup – Thursday 31 May, 10am – Noon, Seal Beach Pier
2. vlog
3. The Secret Architecture of Long Beach State
4. Graffiti Writing – Optional Meetup – Saturday 23 June, 10am – 1pm, Venice Beach Art Walls
5. Applying Design Thinking to your life
6. Your Turn
7. Sketching
8. ePortfolio
9. Museum Visit – Optional Meetup – Wednesday 25 July, Noon, The Broad Museum, Downtown LA
10. Finger Painting
11. Environmental Portrait
12. One More

Textbook

Your Internet Device / Camera (Phone, Tablet, or Laptop) is your textbook.

Materials

See the Materials List.

Attendance

Participation online is crucial. Obviously, as a 100% online course, you don’t ever have to be in any specific place or at any specific time.

Points & Grades

Points

• Having the good sense to sign up for the class = 4 points
• 12 Activities x 27 = 324 points
• 12 Artist OTW Blogs x 20 = 240
• 12 Artist OTW Discussions x 18 points (3 discussion comments x 6 points) = 216 points
• 12 Art Talk Discussions x 18 points (3 discussion comments x 6 points) = 216 points

Course Total Possible = 1,000 points.

Grades

• 900 points = A
• 800 points = B
• 700 points = C
• 600 points = D
• 599 & below = F

Rubrics

Rubric: Activities

Each Activity starts off with a perfect 27, and points are deducted from that if necessary:

1. No Photos: -5
2. Poor Post Naming: -5
3. Too short: -5
4. Not analytic enough: -5

Rubric: Artist OTW

Each Artist Blog Post starts off with a perfect 20, and points are deducted from that if necessary:

1. No Photos: -4
2. Poor Post Naming: -4
3. Too short: -4
4. Not analytic enough: -4

Photos

Photos of what?

• Art Activities: document your process
• Artist OTW: it should be easy to find images online

Post Names

What is “good” post naming?

• Wk2 – Activity – Plaster Casting
• Wk2 – Artist – Ana Mendieta

Writing About Artists

• See the Artist Essay Template

Sometimes students ask why we discuss the Artist OTW on Slack and blog about them? Isn’t that redundant?

If this were an F2F class, we’d meet with CSULB School of Art Artists and discuss their work. Since we don’t have that opportunity your research and discussion with each other take the place of having an F2F conversation with the artist. After this, you should have the resources to write a compelling piece about the artist.

All 12 Artists Of the Week are living artists. (You don’t need to contact them directly, but you can try if you want to.)

Other Details

Incompletes

The Art Department grants “incompletes” rarely and only for the most extreme conditions.

Withdrawal Deadlines

• Drop without ‘W’ deadline 11 Jun 2018
• Withdrawal with ‘W’ deadline 10 Aug 2018

Accommodation

CSULB will make reasonable accommodations for any student who has a disability. It is the student’s responsibility to notify me in advance of the need for special accommodations.

Alternate Activities

If any activity is problematic for you, let me know and we’ll come up with an alternative activity for you.

Easy!

Pretty much, if you participate in the discussions & put up 2 posts a week with Pix, Good Titles & nice Analysis, you should totally ace this class.