Week 11
- Maria Pairitz
- Mar 29, 2018
- 3 min read
Had an exciting two days at Fishers this week! Last night I went and observed Fishers' winter guard rehearsal and met some of the staff and had a chance to talk with the director a bit longer since we only briefly met a few weeks ago. The environment was so positive and uplifting, the kids and staff alike, I was amazed. At the end of rehearsal I complemented the director for being able to help create that kind of space for her students. Then we talked a bit and now I am officially working with the color guard durign their summer band camps! I am so excited and it is going to be a great opportunity to connect with students outside of the art department classes and hallway.
Today was the day before Spring Break starts for HSE, so classes were pretty laid back. Students worked on completing their self-evaluation sheets for the clay project. A few were able to turn them in today, so I'm looking forward to reading their reflections and self-evaluations. The projects have turned out great and the students are really attached to them which doesn't always happen with high school kids. Often they want to throw away their projects but everyone was begging to take theirs home even though we were asking to keep some to display in the case in the hallway. I'm glad they liked the project so much!
During lunch, Mr. Rawlin's expressed his concerns about one student's project in his Point and Shoot photography class. They are working on photo manipulations, so adding their own face to a famous painting or portrait. One student is inserting himself into Kehinde Wiley's portrait of Obama, but is white. The kicker is that the student is changing his skin color black to match Obama's hands. So we had a big debate during lunch about whether or not this was appropriate or to just let it slide since it's not a project, but an exercise. I expressed that I felt it was inappropriate because it's basically digital blackface. Mr. Rawlins then offered what if the student kept his own skin color and then edited Obama's hands to be white. I expressed that that was misappropriation of Kehinde's work because his whole meaning behind is work is putting black men and women into historical paintings as they were not represented in those times, so changing Obama to be white would be almost a slap in the face to that message. Then another teacher offered that one of her students who is black inserted himself into the Mona Lisa and turned her black to match his skin. I think that is okay though because it goes along the lines of Kehinde's main focus. So instead of continuing to debate, I went and asked our friend Mark who teaches across the hall who is black how he felt about it, not assuming he speaks for everyone of this race, but just for some perspective, and he laughed and said it was a "hard pass" and that it was totally inappropriate. So Mr. Rawlins is going to talk to this kid about why he can't continue this project and has to pick a different portrait. Hopefully it's constructive and the kid understands. On a lighter note, everyone in the art department has been inserting their own faces into famous paintings and they are hilarious!
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