We could talk about my grandmother as someone who lived a life of service and gave of herself regularly to the community - both as the wife of two ministers, and in her own right as she navigated space as a single person. We could talk about my grandmother as a professional in the medical field. Touched early by rheumatic fever and living ever since with its consequences, she contemplated a study of the sciences. But, influenced by family duty and gender roles, she found a career in hospital administration and made her imprint on medicine by influencing system structure and function. With her recent passing, I’ve naturally thought so much of her, and how best to describe a long life well lived. What occurred to me is that, alongside the roles of wife, mother, parishioner, volunteer, and professional, one facet touched all the others: her love for, and expression through, fashion.
And because I can still hear her voice softly stating that she was not a “proper” artist, I’ve been exploring this idea that, somehow, art belongs only to professionals or particular domains.
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Being someone who is a creative person by nature, I like to think (perhaps like many others) that creativity is something I can dip into without fail - a Mary Poppins' carpet bag of ideas and inspiration. However, there are times that I brush against the bottom of the bag.
How do you do that, though, when you're farming creativity? For me, a few practices have helped me move through these periods of creative rest.
If there's one thing I can achieve through my posts, it's that you are aware of the many more ways to #ShareYourScience beyond journal articles or conference presentations. One unique way of doing this is the sticky note challenge, where you have to communicate your research topic using only one sticky note. Let's check out some examples I've found below the cut, and then I'll show you how I took my own thesis and made it a #PostItNotePhD.
Art has provided a means to document social injustice and structural racism in ways otherwise impossible given established socioeconomic and political structures, as well as a powerful means of engaging and mobilizing its audience to take action. In our assignment for this final week of Modern Art and Ideas, we were asked to curate a set of images that explore one of the themes discussed. I chose the last theme, an exploration of art's place in society, and curated a set of five artworks, as I am drawn to art as a means of expression and mode of communication when voices of a group are marginalized and silenced.
Our early art education, and exposure to art through popular culture, has conditioned us to think of art as something particular - a painting, a sculpture.
This is art; this is not art. Last week’s homework for Modern Art and Ideas asked us to reconsider those learnings entirely, and go play in the "readymade" space.
This week's assignment in Modern Art and Ideas was equal measure fascinating and frustrating. I mean, it is an intriguing assignment for me. A key part of my dissertation work explored the impact of continued parental relationships into emerging adulthood on the formation of identity (especially as younger folk struggle to navigate through expectations of the post-boomer cookie-cutter life trajectory). And, visual art gives us so much for tools and inspiration to express the depth and breadth of our selves.
In the online course, Modern Art & Ideas, from the Museum of Modern Art, Week 2 asks us to consider place and space in the creation and interpretation of art; specifically, to:
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AuthorPersonal blog for Bryn Robinson, PhD. All opinions are my own. Archives
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