First Blog Response!!!!

First ART experiences:
I was very sad to admit that I really couldn't remember any exciting/happy/encouraging moments from my early art memories. I honestly recall always feeling pressured by timelines, and feeling poorly that my final product did not resemble that of the celebrated top students art pieces. I do not recall having the freedom of creativity as we often did projects that closely resembled Dr.E's craft criteria where there was always an expected outcome. I remember in grade 3 we were making clay ladies, and Our teach told us to put clay around a cone. I did mine in what I thought was a cool pattern where I put squiggle lines down the sides of the clay. I had no idea what the cone was for. I also left the edge of the clay rough because it looked interesting with the lines. Our class then found out that the cone would be used as a skirt for a lady. I didn't get it. We then made a head that was round and I couldn't get it to round out without becoming an oval. I then had to roll skinny strands of clay for hair. I couldn't get them to stay and each time the pieces would rip and make my head loose shape when I put them on. We put all the pieces together with the slip technique and I was so upset because it made the hair all muddy. When it dried and was fired her skirt was lopsided and it looked terrible. We were then told we were making them for our mothers day gift. I tried to paint it nice colours my moms favorite but unfortunately it was still so ugly. Lastly we had to hot glue dried flowers into her hands and because I had spent ages trying to carefully put on the paint I only had ugly blue grey flowers to choose from. I was so disappointed some kids asked if she was an octopus with the squiggly stripes which hurt my feelings, and worse I was so embarrassed to give it to my mom. I didn't I left it in my bag under my gym shorts and my mom found it and asked me why I hadn't showed her. I was so ashamed and so got upset with her for looking in my bag and then I told her I messed up the project. She still liked it but I felt bad. I have to say that one part of the lesson which I hated was that we never knew why we were doing each step. I would never have made those squiggles if I had known it would be a skirt. If I knew I would have to shove hair on the head I wouldn't have worried so much about making it round which would have saved me time to concentrate of making the hair. I felt stupid because mine didn't look like the example or what everyone else was making (this is a huge error I believe in making craft projects because everything seems like it should look the same) I was so hurt because of what people in my class said about my project. I should expect if I was a teacher to ensure that the criticism of the class was done at an appropriate time and also talking to the class about what is constructive criticism. I was so upset as well that I was not given the same chance to pick nice flowers like some of the kids who were done earlier on. I found that I often felt like I would take too long on my projects because I was always trying to fix them and then I would have to rush it. I hated art because I always felt like I was far behind and like my projects always looked awful. I can't recall any 'creative' projects or projects that required imagination.

My most fond memory in art was from grade 8. We were told to take an image of any kind and render it using different mediums. I was so lost at first and then I found a picture of 4 models on a runway. They were beautiful and they all looked so similar. I chose to render them on red velvet and I used White and ivory ribbon to depict their body positions. It was so exciting because with our project there was goal and that was to represent a picture, but from there the opportunities were endless and all ours to discover. It was scary because to begin with this project was so open and so free but I was relieved because there could be a final comparison but I could experiment and find out what mediums worked for me! I enjoyed that we got to work on the skills of composition and representation but that we could do so in a way that allowed us to work on our strengths and possibly find new ones. I loved that I could make art that I thought 'looked cool'. It was the kind of style that I had seen in other art work in galleries and it was certainly not of the same skill but it was ideas and a look that came from pieces that inspired me. I didn't get a great mark on this piece but I liked it. In this class we were given three projects and we could work on them at any time and switch between the three but all three would be due on one day. Sometimes it was scary because one project would take longer than expected but it helped because when I wanted to work on a project I could focus and get the detail in where I needed to and it also helped me to plan out my work.