Artistic License
Um, I don't really know where I'm going with this draft, but I came up with the title before I had anything to write, so I thought I would see where it takes me. I'm cheating a little. I posted the topic just before noon, and I'm writing this draft shortly afterward because I need to miss the beginning of Write Night. When I do arrive, I'll publish the draft I wrote around noon, maybe extending it a bit if I have time, but I'd rather save that time to read and respond to the writing of others.
As I announced in the writing prompt, the Spring into Art opening reception is tonight, and I need to be there to support Wes, Meghann, Mike, and other friends who have work in the show. Plus, it's fun. But I have Write Night tonight too, so I plan to split my time between the two events, art opening 6-7, Write Night 7-8.
Back to artistic license (did I spell that word right?) nature has certainly been taken artistic license. The rivers should be getting into trouble for not staying within the lines; they are boiling over the lines and even off the pages, flooding bridges and houses and whole communities. That's the kind of artistic license I don't like.
But mostly, I'm a fan of artistic license, and I want to grant it to most people. Yes, there's a time to learn what a sentence is, but shouldn't students also know the power of intentional fragments? I say yes, but students also need to know when they're being judged by people who may not agree, such as any high-stakes testing situation. The stakes are too high to take risks with their writing.
Um, okay, I have nowhere else to go with that topic, so I'll move beyond the title and just think about art. I am woefully uneducated about art. Perhaps I have some of the major movements, but not many, and I can't recognize the works of varied artists. That's bad, I know. But I know what I like when I see it. I know what I don't like. I'm not sure, though, why I like what I like. I like pieces that evoke emotion in me. I can appreciate artistry even when I don't like it. Ugh, this is way too generic. Maybe this isn't a good topic. It's too big, too abstract.
Let me go more specific. When Wes and I were dating in college, he wasn't making the highest grades in the world. He enjoyed art, so we decided to take an introductory art class together to help him raise his grade point average. I lasted about one month before I dropped the class, but he loved it. I felt completely out of my depth and knew the class would do no favors to my GPA. He took two or three more, but then had to get serious about taking the classes he needed to graduate. He talked briefly about switching his major but wanted to graduate more than he wanted to take art classes, so he finished his undergraduate degree in management with just one regretful look back.
I enjoyed some of the projects before I dropped the class, but I never developed a sense of what worked and what didn't. I couldn't evaluate my own efforts. I knew if I tried hard, but I didn't know if what I created worked or not. In my composition and literature classes, I always had a good sense of what grades I would receive on papers and tests. The results rarely surprised me although the papers I wrote sometimes did. Those were the fun papers, the ones that took me somewhere I didn't expect to go, the ones that rewarded me with new discoveries. I never got to that point with art classes, but Wes did. He started there.
I think I started there with acting. I've always loved to act. I rarely do it now--or do it for more than a few minutes to tease someone--but I loved it. My first official performance as a kid was in a play in second grade. But we often acted out parts as children. When the big family (Mom's family--the one with sixteen children) would get together at the beach, we would sometimes act like the crew of Gilligan's Island, except that there were so many of us that we would two Gilligans, two Mary Anns, etc. Usually, there were multiple Gingers. Then we created scenarios, loosely based on the show, and see what happened. Sometimes we played the Brady Bunch and just included other characters like Alice's cousin.
In high school I participated in One-Act Play for two years. One year I was a country bumpkin with a crush on a character named Hiram, whom I chased around the stage like a love-crazed hick. The next year I played a three-year-old brat named Punkin. That was fun--pitching temper tantrums, assaulting my siblings and not getting punished for it. I keep trying to relive those days, but no one else plays along.
Oh well, I'm not sure how I got here from where I started, but I'll just claim artistic license (and hope I'm spelling it right).
As I announced in the writing prompt, the Spring into Art opening reception is tonight, and I need to be there to support Wes, Meghann, Mike, and other friends who have work in the show. Plus, it's fun. But I have Write Night tonight too, so I plan to split my time between the two events, art opening 6-7, Write Night 7-8.
Back to artistic license (did I spell that word right?) nature has certainly been taken artistic license. The rivers should be getting into trouble for not staying within the lines; they are boiling over the lines and even off the pages, flooding bridges and houses and whole communities. That's the kind of artistic license I don't like.
But mostly, I'm a fan of artistic license, and I want to grant it to most people. Yes, there's a time to learn what a sentence is, but shouldn't students also know the power of intentional fragments? I say yes, but students also need to know when they're being judged by people who may not agree, such as any high-stakes testing situation. The stakes are too high to take risks with their writing.
Um, okay, I have nowhere else to go with that topic, so I'll move beyond the title and just think about art. I am woefully uneducated about art. Perhaps I have some of the major movements, but not many, and I can't recognize the works of varied artists. That's bad, I know. But I know what I like when I see it. I know what I don't like. I'm not sure, though, why I like what I like. I like pieces that evoke emotion in me. I can appreciate artistry even when I don't like it. Ugh, this is way too generic. Maybe this isn't a good topic. It's too big, too abstract.
Let me go more specific. When Wes and I were dating in college, he wasn't making the highest grades in the world. He enjoyed art, so we decided to take an introductory art class together to help him raise his grade point average. I lasted about one month before I dropped the class, but he loved it. I felt completely out of my depth and knew the class would do no favors to my GPA. He took two or three more, but then had to get serious about taking the classes he needed to graduate. He talked briefly about switching his major but wanted to graduate more than he wanted to take art classes, so he finished his undergraduate degree in management with just one regretful look back.
I enjoyed some of the projects before I dropped the class, but I never developed a sense of what worked and what didn't. I couldn't evaluate my own efforts. I knew if I tried hard, but I didn't know if what I created worked or not. In my composition and literature classes, I always had a good sense of what grades I would receive on papers and tests. The results rarely surprised me although the papers I wrote sometimes did. Those were the fun papers, the ones that took me somewhere I didn't expect to go, the ones that rewarded me with new discoveries. I never got to that point with art classes, but Wes did. He started there.
I think I started there with acting. I've always loved to act. I rarely do it now--or do it for more than a few minutes to tease someone--but I loved it. My first official performance as a kid was in a play in second grade. But we often acted out parts as children. When the big family (Mom's family--the one with sixteen children) would get together at the beach, we would sometimes act like the crew of Gilligan's Island, except that there were so many of us that we would two Gilligans, two Mary Anns, etc. Usually, there were multiple Gingers. Then we created scenarios, loosely based on the show, and see what happened. Sometimes we played the Brady Bunch and just included other characters like Alice's cousin.
In high school I participated in One-Act Play for two years. One year I was a country bumpkin with a crush on a character named Hiram, whom I chased around the stage like a love-crazed hick. The next year I played a three-year-old brat named Punkin. That was fun--pitching temper tantrums, assaulting my siblings and not getting punished for it. I keep trying to relive those days, but no one else plays along.
Oh well, I'm not sure how I got here from where I started, but I'll just claim artistic license (and hope I'm spelling it right).
posted by Donna Sewell at
11:57 AM
1 Comments:
Certainly, I am with you as far as knowing what I like or don't like. Taking classes telling me what I was looking at did not change my opinion or give me that "appreciation" that I was supposed to gain from the class. I, too, like to act. Indeed, I look at my classes as performance art (when I have the energy). It takes a lot of energy . . . Speaking of which I have run out of.
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Unknown, at 9:12 AM
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