1. The initial intention to register for this course was to create a visual arts project. I was never really sure what the theme would be until the third week of the session when we were asked to choose an idea that we were interested in exploring visually. I decided to select a theme related to advising. I remember looking at the Brooklyn College website to find that the advisement center posted “go get advised” and thought this was going to be my project for this course so I could make my image more appealing than what currently reflects on the website.

2. I appreciate that the course was more hands-on with applying theory to our visual artwork because often we need to express what we are feeling, thinking and see through art. Personally, I wasn’t sure if I would be ‘free’ to create my . Especially since this project involved changing a website that was designed without me even knowing it.

The expectations were not political. Ken Tobin suggested that those of us in the learning sciences strand that still needed to take courses, consider taking this course as an option. This resulted in being the best option for me.  I have been thinking of researching a different way using visual arts and wasn’t sure if this type of research for an urban education program would be accepted. This course confirms that all kinds of research can be considered. I want my project to evoke feelings of connection to those in the college community and those interested in joining the college community.

3. My unfinished sketch is closer to completion. I created one 11×17 picture to begin my journey of putting together a display for Fall 2018’s Urban Education gallery event. The theme virtual advisement seems catchy to me I didn’t want to include center because center sounds permanent as if it cannot be changed as space.

4. I did develop a relationship with the material that is in my office. I am careful to include new furniture in my area. Every piece of furniture has meaning around the theme virtual advisement. As an advising administrator for over ten years, I see so many students that avoid meeting with an advisor until they want to register for courses. Or they had an issue with a faculty member because for one reason or another they feel as if they are a burden because they are seeking for advice or the fear of being labeled as being needy or lost. At times, faculty feels as if they are not sure what to do in a situation with another faculty member, what their positionality is in their department and need help with a student encounter. I feel compelled to create a visual art piece that would encourage anyone to escape to the virtual space or thought.

5. Why did I choose the materials? I am interested in putting together a virtual model for any audience to see and imagine. How did the materials you used mediate your thinking? Perception means a lot to me. I remember the first day I showed my colleagues in this course the picture of a student entering in an empty advisement center with caution. I wouldn’t want students to think that seeking to advise in space is scary, but rather an inviting place where students can: feel safe, drawn to a caring and mindful place where students can discuss their concern; faculty can inquire about situations; discuss policy and practice of CUNY and campus-wide initiatives. I am drawn even more to pay attention to detail of each that walks in the office or center feeling different and encouraged to participate in campus-wide activities as a result of interactions in the virtual advisement center/place.

The relationship over time with the materials changed, at first I was going to draw an advisement virtual center using my partner’s structural engineering magazines, but I couldn’t find one that would capture what I was thinking. Then several colleagues in the course suggested that I use what I have in my office since I made an advisement meditation “sanctuary” where students can meditate on the pictures and reflect on their purpose of being in college. My partner said, “keep it simple and use what you have, the ideas will come!”

6. I found it necessary to add some text to my imagery because the photos didn’t do enough to tell a story.
7. My thinking around arts-based exploration has changed that I am considering using a multimodal dissertation that involves imagery along with a mixed method approach to describe the importance of retention at all levels, aesthetics being essential too. Environment matters and being self-aware as Gestalt describes is important.
8. My scholarship has changed about creating images. It is a trial and redo process. There are no errors. Some of the best mishaps turn out to be the best projects because they are in the moment of an idea yet to be shared with the audience that you will share it with.
9. Nothing unexpected happened with my project. I found my original video that started this journey to make a better space for advising (see dropbox).
10. The objectives changed slightly. I wanted to present my arts-based research project to my office, but now I just want to show how advisement can be an intriguing experience.
11. The strengths of my process: each day I think carefully what I would like to keep in my own office so that students are welcome even when I am not physically in the office. No pictures of racial biases are present in my space at work. Neutral photos are displayed so that students can bring their concerns or issues to my workspace without a piece of artwork evoking judgment. I hope to remind them to think of their projected positionality as they persist in college and careers within the society.
12. I didn’t like that my project took so long for me to decide what I wanted to put together for the virtual advisement. I have the ideas in my head, but the materials are hard to acquire. I know that by August my more finished product will hopefully inspire others to consider arts-based research.
13. I anticipate using arts-based methods for future scholarly activities and especially for my remaining courses here at the Urban Education program.
14. My experience was awesome. I was able to explore other modalities that I would never think of in a doctoral program. The professor was great. Gene added more context to arts-based research course. I appreciate Wendy Lutrell’s visit she help shaped my landscape and purpose to the virtual advisement center. I too experience much of what was discussed in her chapter reading “Pregnant Bodies, Fertile Minds”. Perhaps I will interview a few students for my presentation, it will add richness and context to the purpose behind the virtual advisement center. Victoria Wrestlers work was also inspiring. This course has motivated me to consider arts-based research for my research interest with retention.
15. I would recommend this course to any student that wants to add some more meaningful images to their dissertation in a doctoral program. This course was very encouraging, I know it was important to write on the website but for me attending every class was more important. I think that there is something about visually seeing art together like the experience we had at the American Museum of Natural History. I need to look at in person visual art and discuss what I am thinking with others around me.

KEROUAC SELF-DISCOVERY

[Slide 1]

I initially thought this project would be a fancy frill that I could add to my thesis — pretty pictures that would serve as decorations for the beginnings of chapters or something. My plan was to base my collages on the chapters I had already written, have the pieces correlate somehow to the topic or theme of them.  It was a safe, and selfish, objective. I’ll just pretend to have this profound artistic process, I thought to myself.  I balked at the notion of “arts-based research” for I already knew everything there was to know about my subject — Jack Kerouac.

[Slide 2]

I discovered, though, that what required study was the connection between the researcher and the researched.  I was asked early on in the process, “Why Jack Kerouac?” I believe my answer was, “Oh, well, I was really obsessed with him in high school and I guess I still am.”  Too easy.

An insect would be drawn to any light, they don’t have the capacity to choose. Any light will do.  But as humans we’re attracted to specific people, drawn to specific lights. Why Kerouac’s light?, I asked myself.  Why am I a moth to his light? Why I have bumped against the glass of his kitchen window for the last ten years? Why does it seem like every particle inside me is drawn to his story, his persona, his tragic legacy?  The answer to these questions, in part, are forthcoming. I will retrace my journey for you.  I’ll let you know what I’ve found out. You let me know what you see.

[Slide 3]

The first time I saw Kerouac and heard his voice, I was fifteen.  Earlier that year, over the summer, I found a copy of “On The Road” in a bookstore.  I liked the cover, the title rang a bell, and I read anything I could get my hands on.  Instantly, the way he wrote — long sentences, lily-padding from thought to thought — spoke to something inside me.  I read “On The Road” and then spent weeks carrying the book around with me. It took me months, until that winter, before I thought to search the internet for him.  

I found a video of a man playing piano and Kerouac talking about “On The Road”. I was a flower being inhaled. Every one of my petals rustled in his wind as his voice articulated those long stumbling lines of verse.  I was gone then, completely. An empty wishing well, rushing with both hands.

[Slide 4]

Rediscovering that clip this last weekend after over ten years felt… satisfying.  It created, not a livewire feeling like the first time, but a warm towel feeling, a comfy chair feeling, a long hug feeling.  I listened and watched with pencil in hand, writing down what I heard. Here, listen for yourself. What do you hear? [play video]  

[Slide 5]

Two identical listenings provided two unique artistic results.  In the first, I filled the page then went back to fill in the gaps.  In the second, as you saw in the video, I doubled back two separate times into the middle of the page.  Though this method of arts-based research isn’t my own, it has proven fruitful. Watching the recording over I ask myself, Why did I pause those times while I was writing? What was I listening for? Why did I write down what I did?  When Kerouac said the words “the father we never found” it was as if he was talking about the two of us.  

Fathers are important to those of us who never have found theirs.  I mean this figuratively in our case (look, now Jack and I are a “we”, an “our”, an “us”).  This piece represents the time in my life when I let Kerouac be my father.

[Slide 6]

That’s me. In the car. With the man, myth, and legend Jack Kerouac.  We’re on the road, cruising. I daydreamed this scenario constantly. On my sixteen birthday I took a group of my friends up a mountain and as we reached the top and looked over the land, I read them passages from “On The Road”, “Dharma Bums”, and Kerouac’s published journals.  One of my friends asked me, “Why Jack Kerouac?” Later in my tiny green pocket notebook (just like Jack’s) I copied down what I’d said. I believe that it is extremely unfortunate that I will never meet anyone like [Jack Kerouac] in my life. The world is not capable of bearing such children from her womb anymore. I will satisfy her by molding myself in his image… I wish I could write and read until I was fully satisfied.

As the molding took place, my mother didn’t understand — just like Kerouac’s mother didn’t understand him.  He and I were restless, ready to pick up. And our mothers hadn’t strayed farther than the town they were born.

[Slide 7]

He unlocked something in me.  He made me look to the sky and want to roar.  I would sit in bed for hours reading his journals and then responding in my own.  A conversation across the decades. The fact that Kerouac had died in 1969 did not deter me in the least. He was as real and as present as I was. He was my king and I kissed his ring.  He unlocked me and released my caged doves to the sky.

[Slide 8]

When I first started this project, I made this. NY NY.  Collage has always been my artistic medium and I’ve collected clippings from everywhere over the years. I intended for this to decorate the chapter of my thesis about Kerouac’s time in New York City. [play video] [as video plays]

Should she run?  Immediately I noticed how taking away that square orange sunset would reveal too much. So much so that I put a piece of tape on it while I arranged so I didn’t have to think about it.  I tried so hard to take myself out of it, make it objective, make it “research”. But I could not erase my own feelings about this City. Could not tamp down my own dissatisfaction. In fact, I realized as I continued arranging, I had to draw on it because we felt the same way. We felt pins and needles. Saw the enlarged dullness of it all.  Feel like mere pawns in this city’s game. We were not the kings or queens we thought we’d be. We were restless, we needed to go, drive off into the sunset in our green convertible.

[Slide 9]

[read the poem] It was at this point that I started thinking about the connection between us.  Did I feel these things because he did first? I asked myself. Am I manufacturing experiences to feel the novelty of connectedness?  Or is this a strange coincidence? And why I haven’t I ever thought about this before?

[Slide 10]

My second piece, a few weeks later.  Again I recorded. But this time, in an impulse to get “back to business”, I tried to connect the art back to “text evidence”.  I found a passage from Kerouac’s less well-known book “Maggie Cassidy” to voice over the video. At the time it felt really really wrong, but I couldn’t pinpoint why.  Now it feels nostalgic, even though it was just a few weeks ago. [play video]

[Slide 11]

For now I realize that, despite how hard I tried, despite the fact that this was meant to be a simple timeline of the first decade of Kerouac’s life, this was still about us.  It was becoming harder to deny that I was the I in Him. I was the tissue on his wind’s whim. Again, for the second time in my life, I had lost myself in him. I wore him like bones.

[Slide 12]

Finding that video of Kerouac at the piano this weekend took me down a rabbit hole.  Not much video footage exists of him, but I watched everything I could find. Even the ones in French with English subtitles.  This one in particular spoke to me because, in it, the interviewer asks Kerouac about his childhood. You can see him slightly furrow his brow when the topic comes up. Or maybe it’s something only I can see because I do the same thing when anyone asks me about my father.  Look, see if you can see it. [play video]

[Slide 13]

I watched that video three times, transcribing what stuck with me each time.  From that I tried to write a poem. A villanelle, actually. A very complex form, with strict rules. Too square for Kerouac, but you can see how square he was when he lived in Lowell, Massachusetts.  [read poem] I tried with this one, like maybe the repetition would represent how many times I watched the video. Haikus would have been better.

[Slide 14]

As we come to end of my journey, I would be remiss to not show you what was created that doesn’t belong.  This black and white silhouette of a town at sunset was going to be the base of my third collage. As I pasted the paper into my sketchbook, a poem just rolled out of me.  It wasn’t about Kerouac, not at all. It was about me and one of the earliest memories I have. [read poem]

This is a good place to end because it represents how this journey was really a path from Jack Kerouac to me.  In some places we walked together but, on the other side, I’m on my own. I know more about myself and my connection to my subject.  And, though this work, I’ve discovered what my thesis needs to be. Now I just need to find an advisor.

(The powerpoint presentation is linked below.)

Kerouac Presentation (2)

Professor Gene Fellner
Arts-based Research
Shawn Brown
5/15/2018
What did you set out to do in this class?
I had no predefined goals for the course. I’ve always had a love for art, but uncertain of how it would translate into research. The class presented an opportunity for me to consider different ways that I could uncover information from participants. I took this course to wrestle with internal challenges I face as a Black man. When I was young art was an alternative manner of dealing with daily pressures. As I have gotten older, I’ve moved away from this form of self-therapy. As the class progressed, the goal was to find my voice as an artist. I began to understand the science and artistry of research. It is virtually impossible to truly understand a population that has been silenced through written or spoken word. It’s imperative that visual arts be a part of the process we use to understand marginalized groups. Art provides a cloak of safety for the artist. Slaves used cryptics quilts, spiritual hymns with multiple meanings, self-deprecating humor, and express themselves without feeling the weight of reproduction from their masters. The artistry of survival bled into Black men becoming phenomenal artists. I set out to be an audience member, yet was compelled to be an artist.

What were your initial objectives and expectations?
My objective stemmed from wanted my artistry to play a role in my future research. Barack’s image as a screen saver became a place of internal inquiry. It was something about his smile that caught my attention. His hidden sadness covered in political correctness caught my eye. There are images of positive Black males that I would reference as a source of encouragement. They provide images of possibility and hope. I often think about Malcolm, Martin, Marcus Garvey, Fela Kuti, Shaka Zulu. The plethora of negative photos forced me to revisit the few positive images time and again. Most sitcoms, television series, and movies have a scarcity of images that displays Black men as protagonists. Subconsciously these images start to develop biases within any person. I began internalizing these images which led to assimilation, socialization, and many other issues for me as a young man. Demons that I content with presently. This stream of propaganda must be broken. I then considered the number of images that are floating throughout the internet depicting Black men as savages, super predators, deadbeat dads, thugs, and the like. On the same google search were images of African kings, civil rights leaders, and my man Barry. The coolest image was Obama smoking a joint, bell bottoms, and a fedora. That image embodied the complexity of the Black male experience. I saw that there were clear-cut extremes in regards to the photos that are across different time periods. The majority of images were negative except for the few pre-colonial African images. Combining the images became my passion. I wanted to produce images in hip-hop, graffiti way. I started to remix old with new and placing tags all around. My form of hieroglyphics. I wanted viewers to reconsider the polarization of Black men in media. I want people to wrestle with the image and address their inner turmoil.
The demonization of Black men resides in the hearts of all races. This project is designed to challenge us as a nation to rethink our underlying biases. I knew that I would have to be vulnerable and discuss emotional topics that I face regularly. Art is therapeutic. This project helped me reconcile some issues I have been facing. I expect viewers to be angry and uncomfortable. No human can look at what America has done to Black people in general, have a soul, a spirit, and walk away at peace. Many people choose denial as a way to self-medicate. Some are angry and feel justified in returning such hate towards their oppressors. This mindset is hypocritical and is not representative of what my ancestor’s sacrifice.
Were they personal?
The project was very personal. The current climate around racial issues compels me to add to the conversation. Besides current topics, the historical portrayal of Black males has always disturbed me. This program has validated some of my deepest fears about system racism. The images I started to research continued the same narrative. I had to deal with seeing these images every day. The pain increased as the research grew. Little pieces of strange fruit dangling from southern oaks. Segregated schools for Blacks filled to the brim. Soulless humans standing under fathers, brothers, and sons charred by the sun. With gauged eyes, a castrated Emmit Till lay decomposing as his mother weeps. Simultaneously Pharaohs, Kings, Mansa Musa, watching across the same table. Malcolm and Martin lay adjacent. The depth and breadth of a Black man’s history before me to navigate, comprehend, and re-produce for the world. James Baldwin’s bulging eyes wink at Trayvon. I begrudgingly opened doors to my heart. I grew less sensitive to such issues knowing that my elders had paid the ultimate price. The spiritual obligation to this project overtook my insecurity and fear.
Dinner time conversations with my children became mandatory. I have to was the response when they asked about the project. I saw pieces of my children’s innocence fade with each image.
Were they political?
There are political undertones throughout the artwork. I address mass incarceration, colonialism, slavery, civil rights, gun laws, etc. I want this work start critical conversations about the way Black men are portrayed. If this can lead to educational reform or political changes, that would be excellent. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about politics while doing this project.
Did you want to elicit and evoke and understand or make sense of and/or persuade?
I want the audience to be emotionally engaged. The brutalization of Black men has become so commonplace that people, including myself, no longer internalize emotions when it happens. If every evening a Black man is being killed for one reason or the other, empathy becomes almost impossible. If every television show the Black man is a thug, gangsters, a former drug dealer turned good guy, we forget about other aspects of Black men. Americans mock Kim Jon-un’s propaganda campaign. America does the same thing without being transparent. The desensitization of emotion towards Black bodies is disturbing. I want the audience to face the dehumanization we have created. Disgust, pity, rage, and anger are the dominant sentiments we have towards Black males.
I fight with internal challenges that I face daily. I want men like me to see the king in them, yet not forget the pain that was suffered by our ancestors. Trayvon should be just as crucial as Cornel West. During slavery tribesmen of the same tongue were placed in different barracks to help divide and conquer.
They did not have the time or space to communicate with one another, leaving them more vulnerable. The same happened when the west coast of Africa was left bare. Other Africans would travel further east to capture brethren. The common language was a decoy which worked sufficiently. The combining of these images reunites the past with the present. Brethren of different generations, hues, and dialects, are now joined. The King, the civil rights leader, the Author, slave, renaissance man, and poet are one. By joining these men, a symbol of unity forms through art.
What did you want your project to serve and do?
The art will be a constant reminder of the complexity of the Black male experience. The acknowledgment of the Black male experience must be seen holistically. As a Black man, I struggle with linear, compartmentalized views of Black men. It’s difficult to look at my brothers as well as myself in a favorable light. The art will be conversational catalysts to confront dominant portrayals of Black men. The images are temporary, and may eventually be forgotten. Through conditioning, most people will return to their original beliefs about Black men. I hope that for a short moment, things could be different.
What was the first arts-based artifact you produced/collected/elicited whether it was a sketch or something more “finished.”
The first thing I did was take a picture of myself. I wanted to re-reproduce an image of myself and what I was thinking. I took a picture of my self at home and saved it to my cell phone. I then looked at the image to analyze what I was feeling. I purchased acrylic paint and started painting at work. I painted while being interrupted by staff and students. I played Nina Simon and Gil Scott Heron.
Their music speaks to me though it was created in the 1960s. I am incredibly insecure about my art but felt obligated to commit fully to the project. I was trying to find out what would be my practice, ritual, and rhythm as an artist. Techniques and theory consumed/paralyzed my process. The more I drew, the more I’d forgotten or become less interested in the process, and more interested in expressing myself. I drew the face; then I let my mind roam free. I kept asking myself, “what is my message?” The final piece was far from my original vision. I wanted what I experience daily to be encaptured in one piece. I continued to add different layers as the paint dried. After the painting was complete, I felt like it was too perfect. It felt too normal and typical. I wrote different titles I carry in graffiti. I wrote around the image. This felt unauthentic, superficial. My titles do not live outside of my being. Then I wrote the names on my face and all over the paper. I made sure that it would be cryptic and hard to understand. I felt aggressive about not compromising my images to make sure that the onlooker was comfortable because I live in a world in which I regularly have to make someone else feel comfortable. Fine art is no longer a category I respect. Art is freedom. The final product is a piece that I did not want to be labeled or defined in one genre. As I have many complexities, so will the art that I produce.
What did you produce/collect/elicit next?
Next, I examined several reference photos throughout the internet. I looked at four distinct time periods (Pre-colonial Africa, Slavery, civil rights and current times). There were few photos of Pre-colonial Africa. There was a significant number of slavery images. The disproportion reinforced my thoughts about America’s propaganda. It reinstates a narrative of weakness and inferiority the creation of race. The next period was civil rights. During this era, their Black bodies were mutilated in droves. Images of revolutionaries were also captured during this time. Pride and rage were in my mind while looking at these images. I enjoyed researching this time because it in many symbolizes the best times for Black male leadership in their community. Sadly this time was purposefully interrupted by the government that went about destabilizing the community through murdering their leadership.
Current times was a conflict as well. I saw powerful images of Cornell West, Ta-Nehisi Coates, yet also seeing pictures of countless black men that were murdered by police officer throughout the nation. I realize that all of these images needed to be close to one another to articulate what is presently happening to Black men.
After collecting all of these images, it was clear that I needed to balance the presentation. We cannot have the first memories of Black men as slaves. I remember growing up thinking slavery was the first origins of my being. I realize that I needed to show the ugliness and the beauty of being Blacks before we were taken from our homeland.
Make a list of all these pieces and place each in the order in which it was produced and collected.

What was the relationship between you and your materials?

I am a doodler by nature. I started off with sketching drawings in my planner, notebook, etc. I then purchased an iPad with an apple pencil that I could use to draw and keep my images in one central location. I became obsessed with drawing. I would keep all of my materials in a bag far away from the children. I know that they would also become obsessed with the materials as well. One of the pieces I gave to my professor, in fear that I wouldn’t take care of it. The truth is that I wasn’t confident in what I had produced and rathered someone else holds on to it. As the course continued, I started to hold on to the pieces realizing that it was less about the technique and more about the message.
Why did you choose the materials you chose?
I chose watercolors, markers, and acrylics to try new things. I was used to graffiti and basic pen sketches. Using these materials represented a certain level of commitment that I had avoided in the past. I wanted to commit to this project and not find a way to be comfortable. I knew that the images would not be as good as I would want them to be, but I wanted to be uncomfortable and challenge myself a little bit. I chose images that I remember seeing when searching throughout the internet. They were taken during different eras that I was interested in researching.

How did the materials you used mediate your thinking?
My google search for “black men” project a specific image. I internalized and personalized many of these images. The differentiation of the pictures made it difficult to consider that they all had the same lineage. How could Barack, Sambo, and Imhotep, all be from the same place? I wanted to express that diversity and symmetry of this demographic.

Did the relationship between you and your materials change over the course of the semester?
Over the course of the semester, I had become more comfortable with my artistic voice. My fears stem from insecurity in the products. The importance of the message trumped my technical shortcomings. I started to think about how I could add to this body of work in a unique way that changes the narrative of black men in America. I have always have been frustrated with the polarized manner in which Black men are portrayed. It is possible for me to be a striving professional and have a history of being gang affiliated. I can be a great father and wear a hoodie. Ther universalization of Black men became a source of inquiry for me. I started to consider how I could bring different worlds together through my art.
Did you find it necessary to add text or sound to your imagery? Why?
I eventually added text as an additional form of art. Some pieces, I believe, need text to help articulate the message. My concern for the audience’s comprehension led to writing on some of the pieces. I also view tagging, graffiti writing as art itself. It is like hieroglyphics, a secret way of writing few understand. I want audiences to see, misunderstand, and argue about the writing. I have always been interested in the font, size and style of spelling within graffiti. The old trains of New York that were riddled with tags and confusing lettering still draw my attention. I also want to include music, sound, and dance in future projects.
Reflect on how your thinking about arts-based exploration changed as you were creating/curating images.
I felt a certain shame about wanting to infuse art into my research and practice. Since childhood, art has been therapeutic. I lost the desire to use creativity in school as I was regularly punished for sketches that paralleled homework. Like the unpredictable nature of water, my art poured from the classroom to the street. As a professional, I still doodle to stay focused when in long boring meetings. Art became something that I tolerated and stopped celebrating as a gift. Through this course, I have realized that art is a necessity for many people to express their thoughts and ideas.
Marginalized people have used art out of necessity. Other mediums have become saturated and polarized to articulate the beliefs of the dominant class. African culture is rooted in dance, singing, visual arts, drumming, stepping, etc. The arts are our secret way of challenging status and holding society accountable. I now think of creative artistic qualitative methods that can be used to conduct research. I think of decoding language from music, students creating art instead of interviews, teachers writing poetry instead of traditional professional development. This course helped direct my specific style of research. Conversations have become more robust because of the art that I have discussed with staff.
Has your thinking/feeling about scholarship changed as you were creating/curating images? How?
I now value visual arts as an equal methodology of research. Before this course, I did not. When first entering the program I took a quantitative research course. The professor would continuously state the importance of creating a mixed method approach when writing a dissertation. I subconsciously thought that quantitative research is the most essential, credible form of research. It is pretty hard to challenge numbers regarding data.
I then took a course on qualitative research. It was impressed upon the students that we consider new, innovative, creative ways of obtaining information. Though, highly inferential, a qualitative analysis was something that I looked forward to when writing my dissertation. I am excited about hearing the stories of Black males within education and trying to share ways to encourage this population of students and professionals to strive for better academic outcomes. My mind did not consider the power of art at this time. I had mentioned it, my professor was excited, and told me to go for it.
Subconsciously, I believed she wasn’t serious. Coming to this course was further validation of the things that she had mentioned about qualitative methods. The biggest thing that I learned is the importance of finding and honing my specific, unique voice within research. It doesn’t have to look or sound like anyone else’s. My view and method of conducting research need no particular validation from an outside entity. I merely needed to learn how to organize my thoughts and articulate my opinions in a manner that was clear/concise.

Did anything unexpected happen as you were working on your project?
Unexpectedly I began to become more confident and transparent about the importance of completing my assignments and infusing the arts into my research. I expected to be moved by the assigned readings and art projects. I hoped to reignite some of my passion for the arts, but not to this extent. Emotionally dealing with images was a lot to handle. I didn’t think that looking at these images over and over would start to affect my mood. I literally cannot engage with the materials too much, because it distracts me, makes work and other facets of life challenging afterward. I was surprised at the different response from different people that saw the work. Students were more open to the possibility of a post-racial nation. They focused on how much the world has changed and how they feel comfortable interacting with White teachers and new members of the community.
The reactions to the work from different staff members and students were impressive. Older Black staff members that saw the images were angry, frustrated, and emotional. They focused the majority of their attention on slavery, oppression, and the pain they saw happening with Black men. They didn’t focus on the pre-colonial pictures.
I was also shocked when one White staff member just walked out. Now the reason for his frustration or un-comfortability is subjective. I haven’t spoken to him about why he left. If I did, I doubt that he would be honest. I wouldn’t. As his supervisor, he may believe that I would retaliate or be angry with his response. I think that he has become tired of my conversations about race, prejudice, sexism, etc. That is the overall sentiment that most people feel when looking at the historical treatment of Black men. I even think that way.
It gets you tired or desensitized after seeing it over and over again. It is a pain that we have to wrestle with before having transparent conversations about how we can move forward.
Were your objectives at the end of the semester the same as those at the beginning of the semester? Explain.
My objectives changed over the semester. Initially, I wanted to gather images that resonated with me as a Black man living in America. Not specifically negative or positive, but pictures that caught my attention for one reason or the other. It all started with my screen saver. I initially saw it on one of my mentor’s screens. I never asked her about it, but I felt guilty that she was a White woman, celebrating Barack, and I had nothing. I then started to search for images that spoke to me. The picture of his painful smile caught my attention. I did not see joy, happiness, or accomplishment. I only saw pain, burden, and pressure to perform at the highest rate at all times. I could relate. Of course not to his magnitude, but a similar existence.
Afterward, I saw older images or slaves, right civil leaders, and African kings I thought to my self that there are similarities in all of these images that aren’t being communicated. There is a familiar demeanor that all of these men have that I want to capture. I thought about slaves that were separated by language and tribe. I then considered ways to reunite the past with the present. The royalty of African Kings, Civil Rights leaders, slaves, and modern-day heroes. Black solidarity and unity have always been challenging for Black men. We have been conditioned to see each other in isolate, narrow ways that only further segregate us from one another. The artwork that I created was a way of rejoining us as a community.

What do you think the strengths of your process and products were?
I had to find a process that works best for me. I am a former graffiti artist, DJ, and hip-hop enthusiast. For me to produce art, I need to listen to music that inspires me. It was difficult to get to this place because of what I have been taught about proper expression. I would have to continually tell myself that drawing is excellent and healthy and what I am supposed to be doing. I had to rediscover my heart’s desire to create. Self-criticism was a daily fight for me while drawing. I was ashamed of the first drawing. Not because of the message, but more so because of the technical aspects that I didn’t execute. My shading, color blending, and other skills that I haven’t practiced in some time weren’t done well. The message was clear and had a decent effect on the audience. Through this course, I have learned to value the message more than process or even product.
What, if any, are the dissatisfactions with what you’ve done?
I am usually insecure and unsatisfied with my art. Out of fear of criticism, I rarely complete drawings. I am learning not to be so self-consumed. The people being depicted should be the focus. The fruit of the project is geared towards action and more in-depth dialog amongst races. To withhold my perspective on this topic is selfish. Matrys of the struggle gave me an avenue to speak freely. It would be irresponsible not to do so with intentionality.
Do you plan to continue using arts-based methods as part of your scholarly activities?
I cant see myself going forward in my research without doing so. I think it is a method of analysis that needs to be explored more within minority communities. Not only visual arts but also music, sound, dance, etc.
How would you characterize/assess your experience taking this course?
It was freeing. I felt excited about producing art that would change the world. I have been sharing my art on social media. The response has been tremendous. I feel ashamed that I haven’t done more in the past. I have a lot of catching up to do. I have also started using art in professional development to reach out to students that I have had trouble with in the past. It has been a great experience, and I would recommend this course to anyone that is interested in researching minorities. It is imperative that we try to find every possible alternative to conduct research that holistically articulates the struggles, challenges, joys, and pains of the human experience.
Anything you would like to add?
Thank you for encouraging us to express ourselves and find our voices through art. You helped me to understand the necessity and obligation of using this medium to express the thoughts feelings, hopes, and pains of Black males. I think this course should be considered a research methods course. I believe that art is truly underrated and could change the lives of many people throughout the research community.

As I was lying in bed Monday night, thinking about my project, worried that I have not written anything in a while and yet still procrastinating (to others like myself who are procrastinators, I encourage you to watch this TED talk on procrastination: https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_master_procrastinator), I was thinking about Gene’s questions for us to answer and how to respond to them in a way that is both fun and clear. (My procrastination is paired with being busy grading papers, but I am sure each of us has a very busy schedule.) I have recently talked to my students about writing in such a way that is fun for them, otherwise writing becomes tedious and procrastination grows. But when we are interested in writing, it helps us to start and continue working. So, I will try to answer all of the questions that Gene asked, but I want to do it my own way. So, I will tell you a story.

When I was a little girl, I spent most of my summers in a little summer house on the bank of Klyazma river in a small provincial town, 250 kilometers east of Moscow in Soviet Union. On the second floor of a simple wooden house (which was like a cabin) was a huge rug made out of old fur coats. It was like a patched-up blanket, Russian style. There were pieces of rabbit fur and sheep wool, with patches of old foxtail hats. I remember laying on that warm carpet, the hairs tickling my skin. As I ran my fingers through the different textures, my mind wondered about everything and nothing at the same time. What were these animals like when they were alive? What kind of clothing had these pieces been made into before they ended up as a rug? I could feel my mother’s careful stitches putting these old pieces together into a single rug as I traced them with my hands. I imagined snow falling on fur hats and coats, sticking to the hairs, and could almost see my mother’s face with a foxtail hat wrapping her head, snowflakes dancing around, music from Doctor Zhivago playing in my head.

This memory emerged in my mind possibly because I have been involved in this project, which has a lot to do with memories, growing up, coming of age, letting go, moving away. This project also involved some stitching on my part (which my mother would undoubtedly criticize). My mother’s masterful stitching was already there, on my son’s baby blanket. I always found my mother to be very creative, as she continuously works on making things with her hands. To her these projects are often things she cannot help but do, otherwise she feels restless. I imagine, an artist might feel this way, if they cannot paint, or draw, or create art in any form. Or a photographer might feel this way, if we take away his camera. I always longed to find something like that for myself. I wanted to create something, something that both needs to come out of me and take a tangible form (like an emotion portrayed in a painting) and also be a natural and easy process, like my mother stitching a fur blanket. Not something she has to do for a class, but something she wants to do naturally. Ideally, it would be something that speaks to other people as well, something that evokes an emotional reaction or just simply makes another person happy. This class seemed like a place where it could happen, but I chose it intuitively, not deliberately.

Once I give it some thought, however, being in this class is a natural progression of things, as I have come back to arts (even if in a very subtle form) time and time again. Whatever was on my mind, whatever I was grappling at the moment, is what surfaced as a project, which in my case was my dealing with my children growing up. After my son left for college in September of 2017, it suddenly became urgent and clear that I was not ready for it to happen and felt left behind, suddenly feeling much older and lonelier. Fortunately for me, I have other members of the family with me, my husband and my daughter, but it became clear that time is going by fast and life is escaping from us sooner than we imagine.

The images of my children walking away from me became the theme, and as I have found each of them, I started to notice that there is a pattern. I felt a range of emotions with each of the images. At first feeling sad, melancholy, lost. I went to Russian classical literature and classical Russian characters like Kirsanov and Bazarov in Fathers and Sons by Turgenev, where they discuss (above other things) the generational gap and Chekhov’s Three Sisters where each character contemplates their life and what has it summed up to be. I also looked at Vygotsky’s concept of perezhivanie, a process in which you relive an experience. According to Nelson Mok (2017) perezhivanie is what ostensibly unifies emotion and cognition, and the individual with their environment. As I looked at the images of my children a bridge between the past and the present was created, as I travelled back in time, by reliving an experience in which this moment was captured in a photograph, and returned to the present, experiencing new emotions connected to the historical and material conditions of today.

Next came the idea of talking to them about their memories of those images. Most of the pictures were not associated with any particular memories for them (where most of the time they were not even aware of me taking the picture), unless it was a graduation day picture, which they both remembered vividly. However, I realized that they now created a new memory of discussing these pictures with each other and also in connection to the rest of the images I selected. When I asked why they think I selected these images and not others, my daughter said, “Because we are both on the picture,” and my son said, “because we are turned away from you, walking.” They giggled with each other as they tried to remember what they were feeling like in each moment, making fun of each other and it brought me a lot of joy to watch them. Suddenly my project transformed from being a sad and melancholy exploration to a transformation and creation of new happy memories.

My mother’s blanket, sewn for my son, found its way out of the closet in the next step, as Dora talked about texture in our class and as I wondered how I can introduce texture to my project. I was thinking of a background for the images, something to place them on, but also something that connects to what I have been thinking about. And suddenly I remembered about my son’s blanket, which was sitting in the back of his closet for years. As I brought it to class to share my thinking my progress I was asked if I worry about damaging it and I thought “No,” it has come back to life; it has been sitting in the closet for too long and now it has another chance to serve a purpose.

After that Lauren suggested an idea of printing the images on fabric, so that the textures (of the blanket and the photos) can talk to each other. This step delighted me, as I now realized that I will get to sew the images onto the blanket and my mother’s and my work will become one. At this point in the project, I was genuinely excited about it. I shared my progress with friends and my children, who were still trying to understand what it is that I am working on. In addition to the excitement, I was worried about the end result and if the project will speak to others. However, it was doing something to me that was helping me deal with the pain of my children growing up, so I decided if nothing else, this was a huge win already.

I contemplated adding text to the project as a way to give voice to my children, but also as a way to engage the audience (by asking questions), as well as a way to express my own thinking. As I worked on an audio track of my children talking about the images, I wrote down the things they said about them and placed them next to the image using different font types (one for my son and another for my daughter). I also wrote a little introduction to explain what this piece was and how it came to be. I gave it a title: Being a Parent is More or Less a Long Process of Letting Go. The audio track will accompany the piece, so that others can hear my children speak as well.

What happens next is yet to be seen. I want to write over the summer a more theoretical piece, which will trace my thinking. All of the visitors we had, all of the things we read, and, most importantly, all of the things we have discussed in class have shaped each of our projects. Writing this reflection could have served this purpose, of course, but it will take time to do a much more thorough analysis and the time is running out for me to finish writing this.

My thinking about arts-based exploration changed more as the semester progressed primarily from the work we have been introduced to by scholars/artist who visited our classroom. And as I trace it over the summer, I am hoping to end up with a written chapter that urges each of us to use research, including visual arts research, to understand ourselves, to help ourselves deal with pain and to heal, to gain new meaning, and to transform things.

What was unexpected was how my emotions changed over the course of the project, but this was also an unexpected reward. Another healing element is time itself. Together, working on this project and time passing, I look at growing up, letting go, and coming of age with a lot less sadness than I did at the start, not that sadness is bad. I think once my mother’s work became present in the project, I realized that I too once grew up and moved on (in my case far away from my family), and yet, we are still very close.

Strengths and weakness are difficult to understand and admit to. Weaknesses for me were inconsistency with writing, following the thread of the process. It will be harder to write it down with time (that is why I will work on it this summer, so that I can try and trace my work while I am still working on it). Strengths was probably how much thinking about the project I did. I thought of it in the context of making the project, but also throughout the day, as I lived my life, as I cooked food for my family, as I talked to my parents, as I fell asleep at night. Reflecting on it, trying to find connections, constantly questioning myself helped me on the journey to find peace.

I wish in the next work I create something from scratch similar to what my mother does as she sews and knits things. I was also intrigued by the idea of layering picture or using negatives of the images. I am also thinking of creating a children book with my daughter on emotions, which will also be using arts-based methods as part of my scholarly activities.

Last August, on the day my son was taking a bus to college, I came home from work, helped him pack the last few items, and then asked him what he would like for his last dinner at home before he leaves. I walked to the neighborhood grocery store to pick up a few items for the meal and as I picked up carrots from the vegetable stand, I started weeping, standing right there in the middle of the grocery store. I was so focused on my son over the past year preparing for this moment to come, making sure that everything was done right for him to leave for college, concentrating on him, that I completely ignored how I felt about it. And as I picked the carrots for the meal that he likes, I realized that it will be a long time before I cook it again, since he was not planning to come back until Thanksgiving. I was so overwhelmed by the emotions in that moment, wiping my tears away, slightly embarrassed to be crying uncontrollably in public, that I forgot half of the ingredients in the store and only realized it half way between the store and home. I thought to myself that I will ask him to run to the store and get it and started weeping again, because he has been so good with helping me with such grocery runs over the last few years that I realized again just how much I am going to miss him. When I came home, he saw me completely disheveled with red eyes, runny nose, tears streaming down my face. He thought something must have happened. When he asked me, “What’s wrong?” I answered, “My son is leaving.” He thought I completely lost my mind and looked at me as if I was crazy. “Have you just realized that?” he said. I did not know what to say. I think I am still realizing that.

As I type this now, his first year of college came to its end and he is back in his room and over the year I cooked that favorite meal for him many times as he visited a lot. Working on this project, watching my children walking away from me in the pictures, stitching their images printed on fabric on the blanket made by my mother, placed all of the emotions into a different perspective. I once walked away from my mother and I am now thousands of miles away from her. Yet, her presence in my life, in my thinking, and in my academic work is very strong. So, she is always with me. My memories have transformed and so did my emotions in the healing process of art making.

It has been the most joyous, interesting, thought provoking, and engaging experience taking this course. And I want to say thank you to everyone in class, all our amazing scholars-visitors, and, of course, Gene.

Mok, N. (2017). On the concept of perezhivanie: A quest for a critical review. In Perezhivanie, Emotions and Subjectivity (pp. 19-45). Springer, Singapore.

1. What did you set out to do in this class? What were your initial objectives and expectations? Were they personal? Were they political? Did you want to elicit and/or evoke and/or understand or make sense of and/or persuade? What did you want your project to serve and do?

My thesis research is on popular education; I was drawn to popular education because it makes the link between democratic learning and democratic economic and political systems. In my work, I facilitate educational programs based in popular education at a non-profit that works on community organizing campaigns. However, rarely have I had the opportunity to explore my own personal experiences and that felt like an important thing for me to experience firsthand as an educator.

When my mother died, the need to connect with people and share life experiences became a much more pressing need for me. I had gone through something so intense, and the world seemed to move around me as if death was an inconvenient or unfortunate topic of conversation. Things looked so different to me after the experiences I had of being a caretaker for my mom and witnessing her grapple with what was happening and showing us the things most important to her.

In beginning the project, I wanted to better understand how people express the kind of connection that grows out of loss and separation. I was interested in this because I felt communication- expressing and receiving- with others was so central to making sense of my lived experiences. I felt very viscerally how processing experiences into wisdom is a collective endeavor. I was also interested to do this because I wanted to be part of creating the cultural dialogue around the meaning of death and the value of life I so craved. I thought I could create this dialogue in my project with artists who sought to express connection through loss and struggle.

As I developed my project more, it became less about dialogue with artists whose images I was finding and more about the dialogue that was happening in our class and our blog. I came to realize that presenting my project and witnessing the projects of others was a form of the dialogue I was seeking. This encouraged me, and I stopped conceiving of my project as compiling the work of other artists and starting trying out what I could produce myself. I wanted to put my experience out there, just lay it bare, and have others grapple with it, as I grapple with it myself. It felt valuable because of the universality of what I went through with my mom, the cultural silence around death, and the immense light it sheds on the purpose of life.

2. What was the first arts-based artifact you produced/collected/elicited whether it was a sketch or something more “finished.” What did you produce/collect/elicit next? Make a list of all these pieces and place each in the order in which it was produced and collected.

Rubbings of the floors in my mother’s apartment

Sketches of the outline of Manhattan

Pictures during the process of moving out

Torn fabric with fragments of conversations written on it

Sketches of images from one of my mother’s books

Sketching of my hand

Sketching of a photo of my mom

Sketching of a photo of us together

3.Write down what you were thinking and feeling with each image listed above. You might also document your feeling/thoughts between images.

-Rubbings of the floors in my mother’s apartment—There was a sense of calm I experienced while doing these. There was something about the act of having the apartment rubbed into the paper that felt like the right thing to be doing in that moment. It allowed me to see the floors anew, which seemed to me to mimic the ways in which I would return to memories over and over, seeking new meanings. It also allowed me to feel I had a tool to show people on some level what I was loosing—these floors over which our feet walked through so many moments, through a full lifetime.

-Sketches of the outline of Manhattan—This was an interesting thing to do because I realized that I had never focused so closely on the shape of Manhattan. I traced maps from before European colonizers arrived up through this year. Yet, through all of those massive changes the way the island curved just so stayed just the same.

-Pictures during the process of moving out—This was an idea that grew out of the group reflection we had on the maps I drew during our working session. Gene asked me how our relationship to place would be different if we marked what was sacred. How would it be different if the life that had been lived in my home was somehow conveyed. I wanted to experiment with creating that marking of the life lived there before we left. Then, I also thought to take photos during some of the moments that represented the contradictions and irony of being a caretaker in capitalism. How when you love someone in a society that values things over people, that love means you may have to do something you would never want to do, like signing an affidavit for the landlord saying we were leaving voluntarily so we wouldn’t be taken to court. But then the next moment, we were writing notes to the people we grew up with in the building. The humane and sacred existed side by side with the business of daily life in capitalism.

-Torn fabric with fragments of conversations written on it—This was a wonderful thing for me to do because I revisited audios of conversations I took through out the process, and I got to reflect on my words and the words of friends anew. The fabric was something we had used during the Jewish tradition of embodying the rupture of death through tearing fabric. Cheryl Strayed wrote how the “obliterated place” is equal parts destruction and creation. I wanted to show this through writing on those torn pieces of fabric the conversations I shared as friends, family and I tried to understand what had happened and how we went on from here.

-Sketches of images from one of my mother’s books—This was something I wanted to do to show the ways in which the experience of packing up someone’s things is so many, many things we might often think of as contradictory. It would be one of those things where in the saddest of moments you would find something that made you think of how very silly that person was.

-Sketching of my hand—This was a more difficult photo to sketch because it was challenging for me to see the lines and the creases of my hands and the fingerprints, which was why I was sketching my hand in the first place. It’s hard to sketch a good hand!

-Sketching of a photo of my mom and sketching of a photo of us together—These were the sketches I was most hesitant to do but turned out to be the most meaningful for me to sketch. It was one of the most beautiful experiences I had of bringing the feeling of care which was so strong during my mom’s illness back into my body through the care my hand put into the sketch.

4. What was the relationship between you and your materials? Why did you choose the materials you chose? How did the materials you used mediate your thinking? Did the relationship between you and your materials change over the course of the semester?

At first I thought I would work more with paint on canvass. But using the glassine paper ended up giving me so many more options and became a very valuable material to me. The glassine paper itself started to represent to me the experiences I was having of the power and limitations of communication and memory. The way in which I could trace something, and you would sort of see what its full form had been but not quite. This evoked for me the imperfect-ness of conveying lived experience through words. The sketches on glassine- which both evoked what I had traced with surprising clarity at points and also were unable to fully convey what had been traced- also evoked for me the difficulties I had in even connecting to my own memories and the life I lived with my mother, which sometimes returned to me very strongly and other times felt completely inaccessible. The paper also brought me into much closer relationship with the story I was telling. In helping me focus on these important artifacts- floors, photos, handwritten notes- I would be transported back to moments that I was hoping to convey and investigate with people. I was being transported to the experiences out of which I was theorizing. I felt I was being given an important tool for expression that would translate into more meaningful communication with others.

5. Did you find it necessary to add text or sound to your imagery? If so, why?

I did add text to my imagery because it felt like to evoke the moments I was trying to convey there were certain words I wanted to share. I also did an audio recording of walking through the apartment, which I haven’t figured out yet exactly how I’ll incorporate. The audio of that sound felt important to me because the way a place sounds is one of those things you can’t bring with you and also so much a part of the feel of a place, even when we aren’t aware of it.

6. Reflect upon how your thinking about arts-based exploration changed as you were creating/curating images.

I think during this course I gained a lot more confidence in using images to convey and theorize around my experiences. There were moments when I would finish my sketches and look at them again and see reflected back to me what it was I wanted to communicate. What a wonderful feeling! And something arose from seeing what had lived in me as a memory looking back at me. Curating allowed me to understand how I could externalize what lived inside of me through the narration that the images created in a particular sequence and as a totality. I spent a lot of time thinking about which order made sense based on how I thought people might feel from one image to the next.

7. Has your thinking/feeling about scholarship changed as you were creating/curating images? How?

The work I did in the course opened up for me experientially a whole new way to communicate meaning. I’m working on my literature review for my thesis right now, and I used images in my lit review as a base from which to explore and understand popular education. I don’t think I would have had the confidence to do that if I hadn’t taken this course. Arts based research feels like one of the strongest practices to theorize from lived experiences that I’ve encountered.

8. Did anything unexpected happen as you were working on your project?

Many, many unexpected things happened while I was working on my project! The rubbings were unexpected. At first I thought I was going to do something abstract with paint and string. But it didn’t feel quite right. There was a way where I wanted to return to the concrete-ness of my experience to investigate. I also moved through many different questions throughout the course of my project. One of my hopes for this summer is that I’ll have time to return to our videos and writings more fully to incorporate the process and how my questions evolved throughout my project.

9. Were your objectives at the end of the semester the same as those at the beginning of the semester? Explain.

My objectives at the end of the course were tied to but distinct from my objectives at the beginning of the course. In the beginning of the course I had a general question- how do people convey the experience of connection in loss. At the end of the course, I had a series of questions tied to particular experiences I was conveying in my rubbings, such as how does identity shift through grief, what is the relationship between place, people and memory, and what is the importance and limitations of communication. These questions arose organically through the process I went through of interacting with my lived experiences through creating images.

10. What do you think the strengths of your process and products were?

I think the strengths of my process and products were the depth of feeling I brought to my project and how much I cared about what I was doing. I put a lot of intention in what I did, and I was really moved by our classes and seriously integrated our dialogue into my work.

11. What, if any, are the dissatisfactions with what you’ve done?

My project was difficult for me to work on at times. I had to have time to create an environment in which the work felt productive and healing to engage in. I had more ideas than I was able to do, and I had to accept that I would present my work as in process and work against my own perfectionism.

12. Do you plan to continue using arts-based methods as part of your scholarly activities?

I will definitely be using an arts-based methodology as part of my literature review, and as part of the pedagogy in the educational program I lead at my work. My thesis is about this program, and so the ways in which we use images and art to investigate themes and generate knowledge will be part of my analysis as well.

13. How would you characterize/assess your experience taking this course?

This was a beautiful course. I have developed such a fondness for each one of you. I think it is a testament to the impact of arts based research that I really feel engaged in what each of you do, in how your projects develop and what they ultimately become in your work. I loved the combination of guest artists, sharing projects as a class and having our blog. Even though our posts were sometimes inconsistent, I read what people posted every week, and I feel like I learned just as much and at times more from that and seeing how people’s processes were evolving as I did from the texts we read.

14. Anything you would like to add?

I really look forward to continuing to develop our projects over the summer and to see how they evolve into the context of the exhibition. The learning keeps going.

What did I set out to do in this class?

I knew that I was challenging myself by taking this class because I do not consider myself an artist. However, I do have artistic sensibilities and appreciate the opportunity to expand my views on identity as a person who embodies the oppressed and oppressor and seeks to understand the effects of this embodiment in the perpetuation of internalized racism.

What were your initial objectives and expectations? Were they personal? Were they political?

As stated above, my idea was to explore the concept of identity from the perspective of someone who experiences the turmoil of my inconsonant identities. My expectations were that through arts-based research, I would be able to have a deeper understanding of my identity as a Latin American. I’m apprehensive about attributing a monolithic identity to all Latin Americans. However, the colonizing gaze and internalization of racism (bell hooks, 1992) are some of the experiences that Latin Americans have in common.

I cannot separate the personal from the political in this project. I do not believe that art has to be only political or educative. Likewise, I believe that “[i]n the arts, symbols adumbrate; they do not denote” (Baron & Eisner, 2012). Thus, by nature I see arts-based research as having this ability to be transformed by the experiences of the viewer/participant and to be polysemic.

Did you want to elicit and/or evoke and/or understand or make sense of and/or persuade? What did you want your project to serve and do?

I did not have any altruistic or preachy aspirations with this project. They were purely personal. I wanted to understand the reason why I have always perceived Kahlo’s Two Fridas as the embodied struggle of two conflicting identities and what this embodiment meant to me. I do not know if my project will serve a purpose or do anything to engender dialogue in the topics presented, but like anyone who has endeavored to create something meaningful, I hope to evoke some visceral feelings in the viewers/participants.

What was the first arts-based artifact you produced/collected/elicited, whether it was a sketch or something more “finished.”

The first arts-based artifact that I collected was an image of the Two Fridas. Its symbolism has always moved me and brings about emotions that I can only explain visually.

What did you produce/collect/elicit next?

While pondering the origin of the self-hatred of the oppressed, I decided to look for images of the caste system imposed in Latin America by Europeans. The image attached below is the first one I saw. It betrayed years of oppression and the development of self-hatred fueled by the desire to survive and be accepted. In the words of Freire “[t]heir ideal is to be men; but for them, to be men is to be oppressors” (2015, p.45).

Make a list of all these pieces and place each in the order in which it was produced and collected. Write down what you were thinking and feeling with each image listed above. You might also document your feeling/thoughts between images. What was the relationship between you and your materials? Why did you choose the materials you chose? How did the materials you used mediate your thinking?

The next arts-based artifact that I collected was a picture of a boy, Samuel Lange Zambrano, an actor in the Venezuelan film Pelo Malo written and directed by Marina Rondón. In this picture, we see a boy dreamily contemplating one side of his head with straight hair while the other side we can see his naturally tightly curly hair. This image conveys for me negation of an important part of who I am. Many times, I heard my mom complaining about my hair while combing it. At those times I wished for silky straight hair. It also reminds me about how a whole industry has developed around self-hatred.

While looking on the Internet for hair straitening products sold in Colombia, I found a skin whitening cream sold in Bogotá, Colombia’s capital. It promised to whiten even your intimate zone. My reaction to this image brought to my mind bell hooks’ words that “[t]he deeply ideological nature of imagery determines not only how other people think about us but how we think about ourselves” (1992).

I also found several hierarchical caste systems developed in the 17^thcentury by Spaniards and Portuguese and imposed on Latin Americans for legal, social and political purposes. However, the most comprehensive is the one cataloging 18^thcentury Mexican painter Miguel Cabrera’s casta paintings. There were 16 paintings categorizing the caste system but 2 of them remain lost. Here are a few images of these paintings. Most of the paintings depict their subjects dressed in the European style and with European features. In these paintings, the castas deemed the lowest were dressed in ragged indigenous garb and portrayed as violent and lazy.

Did the relationship between you and your materials change over the course of the semester?

I found myself looking at these images as more than representations of Latin Americans’ inner turmoil and the perpetuation of our self-hatred. I could see how capitalism was and is behind these imposed casta systems in which some benefited from the degradation of others.

I also find myself feeling more satisfaction when I created artifacts that were more tactile, while finding the process of photoshop utterly plastic and far removed from me. It was like giving birth to a stranger. I just cannot relate to the finished product.

Did you find it necessary to add text or sound to your imagery? If so, why?

As the project progressed I felt the need to add some very racist adages to my images in order to elicit some reaction from the viewers/participants.

Reflect upon how your thinking about arts-based exploration changed as you were creating/curating images.

As I curated my images, I could see how they became “a heuristic through which we deepen and make more complex our understanding of some aspects of the world” (Baron & Eisner, 2012). Through art, I was exploring and understanding my identities as a Latina.

Has your thinking/feeling about scholarship changed as you were creating/curating images? How? Do you plan to continue using arts-based methods as part of your scholarly activities?

I started to see the possibility of adding arts-based research as one of my methodologies in my exploration of identity, in particular in my ongoing research on math identity.

 Did anything unexpected happen as you were working on your project? What, if any, are the dissatisfactions with what you’ve done?

I had chosen photographs and Photoshop as my medium because as previously stated, I do not consider myself artistically inclined. Surprisingly, I found myself frustrated by the lack of tactile production within my artifacts. I wanted my project to be more organic. I do not perceive my artifact as inviting as I was hoping it could be. It looks too polished to elicit participation.

Were your objectives at the end of the semester the same as those at the beginning of the semester? Explain.

Throughout the whole process I had hoped my project would elicit some kind of reaction from the participants, but somehow my desire to “educate” has become a desire to explore and question. In Maya Pindyck’s words, I hope for my project not to be to “teachy” (personal communication May 5, 2018) but more participatory.

What do you think the strengths of your process and products were?

I had a clear image of what my project was going to be but this clarity of purpose has become a point of frustration for me.

How would you characterize/assess your experience taking this course? Anything you would like to add?

I have loved every step of the process. I have discovered that my fear of not being artistically inclined kept me from creating a more organic artifact and that I should have challenged myself more.

Throughout this course I have had immense admiration for my colleagues:

Regina’s poetic creativity and willingness to create art that is transient in nature; Amanda’s quest to capture childhood memories in a way that is connected to her cultural tradition; Nick’s desire to disclose structural racism through his Long Island maps; Anna’s tender añoranzas for her oldest son’s lost childhood and the expectancy of having to let go of both her children as they grow into adulthood; Lisa’s craving to create a space that is welcoming to her students, and Shawn’s incredible artistic talent.

Gene, I’m extremely grateful for this journey. It has challenged me and given me a new worldview. I hope arts-based research will help me in my growth as an academician.

The Powerpoint is too huge I will send it to Gene’s dropbox instead.

-Lisa Millsaps

(Government HOLC Map from the 1930s. Gov. deemed the red/yellow areas risky areas to loan money for housing because they contained higher concentrations of people of color. FDR-sponsored redlining and housing discrimination)

6.     Reflect upon how your thinking about arts-based exploration changed as you were creating/curating images.

One of my own faults in initially thinking about my project, and arts-based research in general, had to do with my own mindset as arts-based explorer.  The researcher who positions himself/herself as an omnipotent being, imparting knowledge and understanding on his/her subjects risks not learning anything. Similarly, the purpose of arts-based exploration is not to enter a feedback loop, re-presenting what is already known, but rather to discover. My own experience living in Freeport, Long Island led me to see firsthand how deeply segregated Nassau county really is. My initial intention was to call out these areas of segregation as racist. As I worked on the maps, I found that more interesting than my own dialogue or narrative were the reactions I was seeing from those whom I shared these maps with. I feel that area is the most fruitful avenue to travel down for further continuation of this project.

7.     Has your thinking/feeling about scholarship changed as you were creating/curating images? How?

  I think that as I was creating my maps, it became clear that the direction of scholarship can morph along the way. It would seem that in order to create a meaningful, visceral piece of art, one needs to follow these threads of passion wherever they might lead.

8.     Did anything unexpected happen as you were working on your project?

Throughout this process of painting and interpreting raw data I began to think deeply about the hyper-segregation of the county that I live in. When my family drives throughout Nassau county, on our way to parks, beaches, or playgrounds, we visit many of these towns, stopping off for coffee, gas, or lunch. I cannot but help to perseverate on the racial makeup of each town, wondering how many of the local population are aware of or even care about the lack of diversity. I initially blamed the homeowner in contributing to the cycle of segregation, but as I read a new book, The Color of Law, it became clear that the decision to segregate these towns was government sponsored. Racism and money buttress and prolong these hegemonic systems, but I began to wonder how aware these homeowners actually are.

9.     Were your objectives at the end of the semester the same as those at the beginning of the semester? Explain.

 In the beginning of the semester my goal was to create a meaningful project while exploring my own visual artistry. After reading Mannahata by Eric Sanderson, Rethinking the Power of Maps and Everything Sings by Denis Wood, and Graphs Maps Trees by Franco Moretti it became clear to me that maps have the potential to stir up emotion in a meaningful way. They don’t have to be sterile and void of feeling. As my process of map making continued, I found that my map would convey a different story depending on which numbers I chose to highlight. I think this speaks to the subjectivity of data, data manipulation, and the amount of power that the artist/researcher has. Embracing my biases and being aware of them as I was painting was important for me, but I wonder to what degree they are transparent in my completed maps. 

10.     What do you think the strengths of your process and products were?

I think the primary strength of my products are the visceral reaction they elicit from viewers. The words census data are inherently dull, but visualizing some of these town populations are much more shocking. I feel I have not yet tapped into another strength, analyzing the conversations that take place upon viewing these maps. What are the reactions of people within these areas, in the non-existent, low and high concentration of black people? What justification do they use to account for these numbers?

11.  What, if any, are the dissatisfactions with what you’ve done?

I am not happy with many of the maps I have made. I feel like they touch on my intentions, but do not go far enough, or are not effective. I was surprised at how time-intensive creating each map actually was. When I was painting, I would try a new technique, with the idea of honing it, or re-doing the map if the idea worked out. A kind of proof of concept. This was the case with the light blue White Population map. In the end, I did not re-visit each technique, and my final products are my initial attempts. I feel that I can revisit these maps in the future, and create more of them as new ideas emerge among my conversations with viewers.

I also struggled with the inclusion/exclusion of numbers and text. Is more information better? Will the viewer get an incomplete picture if my map is simply representative, not descriptive? This is partly why I created many different iterations of the maps. I know that highlighting different concentrations of ethnicities tells a different story, and I wonder if I selected certain datasets to make the maps visually engaging.

12.  Do you plan to continue using arts-based methods as part of your scholarly activities?

I found it very eye-opening to read and listen to the artists that were highlighted in this class. The idea of arts-based research methods was foreign to me and I am pleased to have read and experienced ways in which various artists approach the field. I appreciated how Victoria Restler formed her dissertation and how positively her multimodal approach has been received.

  Gene had mentioned to me that this project could be the basis for an eventual dissertation.  That was very exciting for me to hear, particularly because of how excited I was to work on this project, and how much more untapped potential exists for this exploration. I certainly feel as though my mind is open to using arts-based method in the realm of scholarly activities.

13.  How would you characterize/assess your experience taking this course?

I had a very positive experience taking this course. I had never taken an art-based class before, and I loved thinking about the arts as valid research. I enjoyed hearing my colleagues insights on my project, forcing me to think about my audience, my intentions and new ways to approach my project. I think our class did a nice job exploring and cultivating many voices in the conversation, and I deeply appreciated Gene’s insights into each of our projects. I found the thoughtful replies to our weekly posts inspired me to put much time and energy into the readings, thinking about others’ projects, and my own artistic endeavors.

Furthermore, this class sparked an emotional reaction in my own life, my own neighborhood. I cannot go anywhere in Long Island without thinking, “I know how diverse this town is, but how did it get this way? Are the inhabitants aware of the disparity? Is it intentional and would they keep it that way?” A bigger, unanswered question, is, “How are the school districts chosen? Was there intentional discrimination in their haphazard creation?” I know from my own experience that the school district lines are nonsensical, carving out areas of multiple towns. It brings to mind the current disparity in the regional gerrymandered Congressional maps. This certainly merits further investigation in future maps.

14.  Anything you would like to add?

In many of the articles and works of art we studied, the artist investigates and exposes hidden discrimination and broad forms of hegemony at work. This work encourages the viewers to ask themselves “why and how?” but also to look inward and reflect upon their contribution or silence. I feel that using arts-based research is incredibly important to utilize in today’s fractured social and political environment, because talking at one another has not resulted in much progress. Perhaps a multimodal approach will achieve a greater sense of understanding and create more allies among us. I found this class valuable and deeply appreciated how my thinking on arts-based research evolved, and broadened my initial myopic idea of what it really means to investigate and research an idea through the arts.

Hi everyone- This week I started answering some of the questions for our end of semester reflection.

1.     What did you set out to do in this class? What were your initial objectives and expectations? Were they personal? Were they political? Did you want to elicit and/or evoke and/or understand or make sense of and/or persuade? What did you want your project to serve and do? 

When I saw this class on the course schedule I was drawn to it for a few reasons. Firstly, I am researching education in a community based setting and what kind of pedagogy can spark collective insight into the relationship between structural realities and lived experiences. I’m interested in how community based educators working for social justice create a process whereby critical reflection on the things we experience each day can lead to political action and political action can lead to new lived experiences in conditions that foster a greater sense of dignity. My mother had been a driving force in my interest in popular education- first, introducing me to the highlander center (if you haven’t heard of it, look it up! It’s been a behind the scenes force in the past 100 years of social movements in the us) and as a teacher at the Bank Street School for Children (which is an elementary school that values the arts and integrates it into all the core subjects). My interest in arts based research grew out of my interest in popular education and a hope that it would give me greater insight into the philosophy and practice of making systematic and personal change and transformation interconnected.

When I started the semester it was a very good opportunity for me to explore my own lived experience, which often, as a facilitator I don’t have the chance to do (more working towards creating this process for other people). I was so aware of how our personal practice is connected to the work we can do with others, and I felt a big need to have an experience myself of looking at my life and thinking about how to go deeper into the themes it brought up for me and the ways in which what I have been through is connected to larger societal systems and ways of thinking. When I thought about what my starting point would be, it was obvious to me that at this point in my life that I had to do something related to my mother. I needed this both because I wanted to know how other people made sense of and got through these experiences, and I also wanted to bring my experiences into a public space because one of the things that has been so difficult for me is the cultural silence around grief and death. I wanted to ask myself and others, what is there is to learn about life from these experiences? How does life look different when we think of these experiences as central rather than as something to fear and run away from?

To be continued soon….

1.     What did you set out to do in this class? What were your initial objectives and expectations? Were they personal? Were they political? Did you want to elicit and/or evoke and/or understand or make sense of and/or persuade? What did you want your project to serve and do?

Being a musician, most of my artistic and creative energy is channeled through that medium, so I was very eager to explore my creativity through the visual medium. I was excited to read and think about ways different artists expose hidden ideas and challenge viewer/participants to rethink these situations (Maya Pindyck, Theaster Gates, Victoria Restler). Once the topic of my investigation revealed itself to me, my objective morphed into understanding the deep segregation of the county I live in. Initially, I wanted to shout out this racist census data through my multiple maps, but I calmed down and allowed myself to try to learn from these maps as I viewed the data in different ways. After some initial conversations with colleagues who grew up in Nassau County, it became apparent that this hyper-segregation was not well-known, even shocking many people. Based on those initial reactions, I felt it important to continue this project in order to realize the 2010 census data in a more digestible way.

2.     What was the first arts-based artifact you produced/collected/elicited whether it was a sketch or something more “finished.” What did you produce/collect/elicit next? Make a list of all these pieces and place each in the order in which it was produced and collected.

By first arts-based artifact I produced was a tracing of Nassau County. It was a safe step for me, because it did not require any free-hand drawing. Once I made multiple copies of the county maps, I began to fill them in based upon different parameters. “Percent of Local Population Who Are White, Town By Town”, “Percent of Population Who Are Black, Town by Town”, “Literal Number of Black People, Town By Town”. Viewing these drastic disparities on a visual map felt different than looking at my Excel spreadsheet. The original tracings inspired me to create even more maps, “Red Dots: Areas of Segregation as Evidenced by Low Population of Persons of Color. More Dots = More Segregation”, “Red Lines Border Towns With Black Population 24.1% and higher”, “White Population by Percentage: White = 70% population and higher, Grey = 30%-69% population, Black = 29% population and lower” “Shades of Red: Percent of Population Who Are Black: 0%-.9%, 1%-10%, 10%-20%, 20%-30%, 30%-40%, 40%-50%, 50%-60%, 60%-70%, 70%-80%” and “Population of Each Nassau County Town”

3.     Write down what you were thinking and feeling with each image listed above. You might also document your feelings/thoughts between images.

I will respond to each of the seven maps I created for the final project.

Number of Black People Living in Each Town

This map, which highlights towns with total black populations of 23 and lower, 22 towns in all, made me the most angry as I was creating it. I could not believe how some of these towns with populations of 21,839 (Massapequa) could have a dozen black people. How is it possible to raise an ethical and conscious child in that environment? The number of towns with 0 black people also shook me.I tried to capture some of this emotion through textured paint, dark black and red paint cordoning off the areas where the black communities lives. In between the town lines of these highlighted towns are words which highlight the responsibility of humanity and sentiments which contribute to this segregation mindset.

Red Lines Border Towns With Black Population 24.1% and Higher

In this map, I attempted a new technique for me, tracing my map stencil over a whitewashed newspaper collage of images related to the housing market, banks that contribute to segregation and redlining by not lending to people of color, and housed of Long Island, obscured because they are unattainable. This map has no visible numbers, but its stark red lines outline towns whose black population is 24.1% and higher, a remarkably small number of towns, closely positioned out of sight and out of view of the white communities.

White Population by Percentage

In this map, I tried to create a whimsical, cloudlike carefree evocation, symbolic of the (willful) ignorance by the white population of Nassau County. Literally, this map serves to inform white population by percentage. The variation of these numbers seem casual, and non-alarming at quick glance. 64%, 80%, 55.2%, 43.1%, 73%, 57.7%. The point of this map is to put one’s mind at ease, or challenge one’s assumption of what it means to be within an acceptable range of population. It is only when this map is viewed with its sister maps that the discrimination against the black population becomes apparent.

This map led me to wonder what an ideal range of  % of population across ethnicities actually is. As of 2010, New York state was 65.7% white and 15.9% black. The NYC metro area was 44.6% White to 25.1% Black.  The USA as a whole was 72% white and 13% black. We picked our town of Freeport to live in because it was one of the most diverse towns in Nassau County: 23.8% White, 31.6% Black, 42% Hispanic. Is that a good ratio? Are these communities segregated within each town? If you keep looking closer, do these separate ethnicities interact with one another?

Red Dots: Areas of Segregation as Evidenced by Low Population of Persons of Color. More Dots = More Segregation

This map was my attempt at abstract art. I again wanted to capture some of my anger at this hyper-segregation through a solid white county map with raised, white border lines. I made the background by dipping my brush in black paint and writing angry words related to discrimination, racist lending practices, and words that hypothetical people say to make themselves feel better about their mostly white villages. None of these words are visible (Victoria Restler), but I know that they are beneath the map, laying the foundation for the violence on top of it. The red dots are meant to evoke blood spatter, and are more prevalent among areas that exhibit more segregation.

White Population by Percentage: White = 70% population and higher, Grey = 30%-69% population, Black = 29% population and lower

This map is where I start to view the different shades of black population in not so black and white terms. I have three ranges of colors and the result is a more nuanced picture of the placement of segregated communities. The amount of white-painted towns is meant to stand out. I soaked this canvas in steeped tea (thanks to Gene for the idea), intended to make the white paint stand out more vividly. There is an aged effect to the painting, and that is important because of how long state-sponsored segregation has existed in our country.

Shades of Red: Percent of Population Who Are Black: 0%-.9%, 1%-10%, 10%-20%, 20%-30%, 30%-40%, 40%-50%, 50%-60%, 60%-70%, 70%-80%

This was the most recent map I created, and it is intended to be an inverse view of redlining within Nassau County. Here, the most segregated areas are painted blood red, a play on my other maps, where the oppressed group is highlighted. These areas of deep red have black populations of 0% to under 1%. A shocking statistic. The color of blood red lightens slightly as we reach the 1%-10% black population threshold, but by then, almost the entire map is engulfed in blood. The remaining remaining 11 towns on the map are lightened by a greater mixture of white paint, until we reach the town of Hempstead, painted white with an almost imperceptible shade of red. 77% black, and 7.7% white.

Population of Each Nassau County Town

This map came into being after viewing the six small maps I created. The percentages and population numbers in the tens seemed to lose meaning when divorced from the reality of that town’s total population. This map is intended to be a key that the viewer refers back to.  Understanding the names of these towns, how many people actually live in them is important. I intend on displaying this map in the center of the wall, with the six maps surrounding it in a circle, so that they may all be viewed and thought upon together at the same time.

4. What was the relationship between you and your materials? Why did you choose the materials you chose? How did the materials you used mediate your thinking? Did the relationship between you and your materials change over the course of the semester? How?

I have no experience painting and I was always charmed by acrylic paint on canvas. I was excited to buy my own brushes and experiment, but nervous to mess up the canvas. I found that I was very focused and intent on not messing up as I painted. As a result, I found my artwork to be quite deliberate and literal. I tried to branch out and paint in a more abstract manner, but I am not sure how successful I was in tapping into my more visceral emotions. I feel like I was able to experiment with texture, layering, and color mixture, but could have gone much further with abstraction.

5.     Did you find it necessary to add text or sound to your imagery? If so, why

Early on, I thought it would be powerful to emit field recordings from different areas of my map, in order to more deeply develop an image of each town on the map. I had this idea of drawing a map on a masonite board, drilling out a hole for speakers, then using a computer program, MaxMSP, to map these sounds with different contact points on the map. Alternatively, I could have recorded people viewing the maps and commenting on them. These conversations could provide a constant background-noise for the viewer via headphones or emitted through mounted speakers.

I am still debating creating small placards beneath each one of my maps, providing a title and the least amount of information necessary to engage with the maps. I wrestled with how necessary it is to include data on the maps, and which data to highlight. In the Shades of Red map, I am changing my mind as to whether or not to include the percentage of black population within each town, or if the shading is enough to tell the story. The numbers sub 10% are pretty shocking, and I think I will eventually add them, perhaps with black paint and a brush.