Generations I can't remember what number...

I am excited to have a photo going into the bi-annual show at the A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn.  I love this show because the proceeds from the sale of work helps out a select charity each exhibition year.  It is also made up completely of women artists.  At the show four years ago, my sculptural work was hanging a couple of feet from a work by Yoko Ono.  Not bad, I guess....

This is a huge deal for me because I haven't had a lot of time for my art lately.  Hubby and I have been doing political work in our town - volunteering for candidates and such.  And I have been doing a ton of reading up on education issues.  That takes up a lot.  I joined a couple online groups that enable me to know what is going on in other states.  Whoa...  I know where I would never want to teach, that's for sure.

Today I had a former student come to visit for portfolio advice.  Which leads me to a problem I have had with photo for quite some time.  The student have deep, introspective thoughts (for the most part) but have trouble translating that to the images they shoot.  I was quite disappointed with the visual results of Photo II's Analysis of Beauty project.  They were so blah.  And I told them that.  So I went in a totally different direction for the Analysis of Ugly introduction today.  I had them read something I received in my weekly educator's study guide from The Nation.  It was an article on farm workers and was published in 1981.  It covered the poisons in the pesticides and the issue of child labor.  Then we looked at images from Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives from the late 1800's and Lewis Hines' work form the early 20th century.  One girl said this was like a history class.  Hooray!!!  That's what I was getting at.  I wanted them to know the history behind these harrowing images of child labor, inner city ghettos, brutalized farm workers, etc..  I thought that if they thought about the potential ugly side of the things they find beautiful, that would be one creative step overcome.  Then we talked about how other factors can take the beauty out of things.  I ended with the fact that child labor still exists, nature is still being ruined, and left them to ponder....

They had to read a lot, they did not like it, and I am proud of the job I did.  Let's see how tomorrow goes...