Hi all:

It is time to take stock of what you’ve done in this course by mapping out what you’ve done throughout the semester. To that end, please answer the following questions in a post sometime over the next two weeks. I know there are a lot of questions, but I think considering them and replying to them will be a useful way for you to assess what you’ve accomplished.

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?
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.
3. Write down what you were thinking and feeling with each image listed above. You might also document your feeling/thoughts between images.
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?
5. Did you find it necessary to add text or sound to your imagery? If so, why?
6. Reflect upon how your thinking about arts-based exploration changed as you were creating/curating images.
7. Has your thinking/feeling about scholarship changed as you were creating/curating images? How?
8. Did anything unexpected happen as you were working on your project?
9. Were your objectives at the end of the semester the same as those at the beginning of the semester? Explain.
10. What do you think the strengths of your process and products were?
11. What, if any, are the dissatisfactions with what you’ve done?
12. Do you plan to continue using arts-based methods as part of your scholarly activities?
13. How would you characterize/assess your experience taking this course?
14. Anything you would like to add?

I really enjoyed reading through your posts about Maya since I did not meet her. I found her work quite interesting, especially thinking about the connection between literacy and art as pedagogy of inquiry. I’m thinking about the social movements in Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua, the southern United States, and so many other places across the world. As I mentioned earlier, Paulo Freire is one of the educators I’m influenced by; he too asked similar questions to Maya. How can the limitations that arise from oppression be confronted and transcended by pedagogy? The community research team Freire worked with that included community members and university professors confronted this dis-identification with reading by starting with images that affirmed the importance of the daily lives of people. I understood Maya to be doing this by recognizing that conscious or not, we all start with a dynamic relationship to a piece of paper. It’s loaded. In a culture where people facing oppression in school might be taught that the piece of paper is separate from them, not them, I see Maya trying to bring the piece of paper into an intimate relationship with the student-writer-human. It’s the rupture caused by oppression I see her seeking to transcend. It would be interesting to ask that as an organizing question looking at literacy campaigns- how did transcendence happen? And what kind of relationship between paper, pencils, people, land, community, etc was supported to grow? Gene, didn’t you do work with the Sandinistas? I’d love to hear about your experiences and the pedagogy you learned there and how that might relate to this discussion.

In terms of my project, a major question on my mind this week is how I’ll connect different elements i’m working with. I have my rubbings, audio recordings of our class and memos I did on my own, I have drawings I worked on of maps of my walks, and I also have pieces of fabric I want to write questions of reflections from my walk on and place beneath those drawings. I think it’s interesting to think about the space between these different elements and how I want to use that space because I’ve mostly been focusing on the elements themselves.

As I peruse through the images, there are personal connections in several pieces. The backdrop of the moving train is the housing projects that I was raised in. I remember riding these same trains and dozing off into the recesses of my mind and thinking about school, home life, and what new experience would happen when I arrived home. After leaving 50th street in Manhattan for school, a cloud of sadness would appear as the train emerged from Utica ave going into Sutter Avenue on the three train. The other images that resonated with me were the black men killed by police officers. Her emotions came through as she drew these images. I felt a sense of hopelessness coupled with a message of caution to the audience.
As I continue on my journey in this course. I am learning the importance of drawing from emotion and not intellect. I’ve started refining my artistry, but more importantly enjoy the imperfect of vulnerability.

Staff members have started to look at the images that I have downloaded from the internet and my artwork. I’ve noticed that staff members are emotionally drawn to images of Black males being hung, burned, and lynched more than any other pictures. One staff member shared that they couldn’t see past the image of Emit Till’s face. Another staff member started crying and spoke of feeling rage at the maltreatment of her people. When I mentioned that there were images of Kings and Queens, the teacher stated that she hadn’t paid any attention to them. We then talked about the subconscious conditioning of our vision. This same teacher shared that she had a conversation a colleague who stated that Obama’s presidency was evidence of a post-racial America. The teacher I interviewed shared that having these conversations with colleagues are time-consuming, emotional and many times fruitless.

One staff member immediately recognized the one picture of Nefertiti and spoke about her concerns about not being devalued and unheard as a woman. It was interesting that more than anything else the woman’s image out of the twenty other images caught her attention.

The conversation with the students took a different turn. I attribute this difference to the generational divide and their historical understanding of race in America. 
Students shared that they do not think that the older images are representative of where we are as a people. They connected to the image of blacks and whites working together to bring about justice and civil rights. One student said he was sad when he saw the photos and did not want to see it anymore. He also stated that blacks and whites work more together as opposed to before.

I had shared the images with a white male staff member in the school. He shared all that he had learned from pre-colonialism to present times about the Black male experience. He shared that he understood these things on an intellectual level, but could never fully understand or comprehend the magnitude of actually living through such issues.

Another staff member had come in, saw the images and immediately walked out. He seemed upset and a bit frustrated at having to look at these images and listening to the focus of the projects. I believe this is the sentiment of many staff members who are good-hearted and want to do right by people of color. The intensity of living in this work day in and day out can bring any person to a sense of unrelenting fatigue of the spirit and soul.

What I say to them is that living in this space is frustrating when done in momentarily spaces and times, imagine living in this space for one’s entire existence. 


Wrestling with ghosts of the past, unrealized dreams, empty momentary celebrations of victory, clouded by the mist of racism. Yes, I would gather that any person with the option of stepping out of such stench would opt to do so. For those of us who have been chased into the swamps, we must make due with what’s available. We must gather resources and strength from whatever we can.

As I continue in this project, my objective becomes apparent. My artwork will be used to join these image and create and provide healing and a recognition of the past, understanding of the present, and greater hope for the future.

Reading Maya Pidnyck’s article on the poetics of erasure, I felt intrigued, amused, and joyful. I think the article connects to many things we have been talking about in class overall as well as it relates to each of our projects individually. In some ways, as we contemplated in the beginning of the semester what to create, we stared onto a blank canvas, a blank page, a blank space in our minds (if there is such a thing), wondering what it is that we want to make, feeling terrified if what we want to produce has any value, worried that we are not competent enough as artists to make anything “good.” Looking at a blank page differently, as Pindyck suggests, as not “the page that is a blank surface upon which to project your ideas and plop down words, but as a dynamic text with its own volition that can manifest in relation to a reader,” is a liberating perspective (Pindyck, 2017, p. 58). The text or the blank page is no longer an inanimate thing, which reminds me of Heesoon Bai’s article (2015) in which she problematizes the modern everyday ontology of separating the animate from the inanimate, showing that such separation has not just ethical implications for our environment, but also has connections to our everyday life, where we interact with “things” both animate and inanimate. In this case, when we contemplate creating something, it puts a lot of pressure on us as the “creators,” however, if we see our projects as alive, as dynamic, as something that communicates to us (and to others) something out of its own volition, it helps us feel as collaborators, lifting away the pressure.

Pidnyck (2017) says, “No writing should not necessarily be viewed as putting thoughts “down on paper” but as a process of relation to what the page already carries, both its visible and invisible elements, like its texture, its stains, its history, and its text” ( p. 59). As I spend time working on my project, stitching the images of my children walking away from me (printed on a fabric) to an old blanket that my mother sewed for me, as I was expecting my first born son, there is so much that each of these materials carries. All I am doing is interacting with them, as I am learning to understand both visible and invisible elements, interpreting them, and appreciating them. Pidnyck (2017) writes about the process of literacy and erasure, “The only way I can describe it is like this: the words rise above the page, by say an eighth of an inch, and hover there in space, singly and unconnected, and they form a kind of field, and from this field I pick my words as if they were flowers” (p. 60). This is so beautiful and so inspirational! To look at writing and reading as such a creative process, in which instead of sitting and reading a text, I am walking through a meadow, picking flowers, is a joyful and beautiful activity. This helps me to look at our art creating process as a fun, interactive, and collaborative work, even if my collaborators are fabric, thread, stitches and a sewing needle.

Pindyck, M. (2017). Teaching Literacy as and through Erasure. English Journal, 106(5), 58.

Bai, H. (2015). Peace with the earth: Animism and contemplative ways. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 10(1), 135-147.