Biography of an Artist

Biography of an Artist

In this assignment, you will select an artist based on your own aesthetic and historical interest, and conduct research, in order to create a 2-3 page biography.  In your biography, you must answer the following questions:

1. Artist’s full name.

1. Date of birth (and date of death, if applicable).

1. Place of birth.  

1. Early life, including family life and education.

1. Professional life, including training, mentors, methods, and techniques.

1. Most significant works (pick 2-3) — give a brief critique of these, and indicate their historical, contextual, and aesthetic importance.

1. Personal life, including lifestyle, habits, quirks, and personality.  Discuss significant friendships and relationships.  

1. Later life, if applicable, and death - describe the circumstances of their death, and the location.  

Format:

Your biography should be submitted in research-paper format.  A research paper includes:

1. A title, byline, and date.
2. An Introduction. 
3. Paragraphs divided by subject, with subject headings and citations.
4. A conclusion.
5. A bibliography or works cited page.

Method:

1. Begin by selecting an artist.  You may do this in consultation with Michelle and Matt.  The book ‘Art’ categorizes art and artists by timeline and by category, so this is a good place to start.

1. Find at least 3 reliable sources.  Ideally, one of your sources will be in print, or, in some cases, alive!  A reliable source is fact-based and cites other reliable sources.  

1. Take notes in point-form.  Write down your source for your notes.  

1. Organize your notes into subject areas under headings.

1. Collect open-source images that show the work of your artist.

1. Write your biography.  Use your own words.  Include citations.

1. Edit your biography for punctuation, spelling, and word choice.  

1. Write your works cited page, in alphabetical order.

Due: November 15, 2016

Thinking About Health: Ontario Healthy Communities Coalition

Ontario Healthy Communities Coalition

Definition of Health: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” 

• The World Health Organization, 1948

Healthy Community Characteristics

1. A common sense of community, including its history and values that are strengthened by a network of leaders.

2. People and community groups who feel empowered and have a sense of control.

3. An absence of divided turf, conflict and polarization.

4. Structures where people from diverse groups can come together to work out decisions about the community.

5. Leadership that functions both from the top down and the bottom up.

6. Effective channels for networking, communication and cooperation among those who live and lead there.

Definition of Health: “The extent to which an individual or group is able to realize aspirations and satisfy needs and to change or cope with the environment.”

• The World Health Organization, 1984

http://www.ohcc-ccso.ca/en/webfm_send/618 

Questions:

1. Why do you think that, in 1948, the WHO defined health as ‘not merely the absence of disease’?        /4

1. Think of the communities that you are involved in.  To what extent are these communities healthy?  Refer to the 6 characteristics of healthy communities in your response.        /8

1. To what extent do your communities contribute to your personal sense of well-being?  Explain, using examples.        /4

1. Why do you think that, in 1984, the WHO changed its definition of health?  How does the second definition build on or alter the first, 1948 definition?       /6

1. Select a work of art from the WAHC exhibit “Draw the Line!  Graphic Histories of Work, Struggle, and Activism.”  What connections can you make between this work of art, and the evolution of healthy communities?  Be specific and use examples.        /8

Total: /30

Where the Concrete Desert Blooms - Class Novel Study

Where the Concrete Desert Blooms

by Tings Chak

Part 1: Hong Kong to Thornhill

1. A simile is when we use ‘like’ or ‘as’ to compare two things.  What simile does Tings use to describe storytelling?   /2

1. Make up three of your own similes.   /2

1. What does Tings mean when she refers to ‘the grass through the concrete’?   /2

1. Tings is from Hong Kong.  Describe the political situation in Hong Kong in 1989.   /5

1. Make a connection between Tings’ description of the settlement of Thornhill and what we learned about land allotment in the graphic novel ‘Louis Riel’.    /3

1. According to Tings, what makes Thornhill unique, and what makes it generic?   /3

1. What does Tings mean when she says, “so in a way, you already know where I come from”?   /3

1. What makes a place generic?  Draw a place you know that is generic.  Is there anything that makes it unique?   /4

Part 2: First Impressions of Hamilton

1. What was Hamilton called, and who lived here, before colonization?  /2

1. Draw an image of what you imagine Hamilton looked like before colonization.  /4

1. Where does Hamilton’s modern name come from?  /2

1. Explain some of Hamilton’s nicknames.  /4

1. If you were to give Hamilton a nickname, what would it be?  /2

1. Tings makes an awkward first impression.  Describe a time when this has happened to you?  /3

1. Why was downtown Hamilton stigmatized?  Does this stigma still exist today?  Explain.   /4

1. Why does Ancaster give Tings a sense of placelessness?  Have you ever had this feeling?  Explain.  /4

1. A metaphor is when you compare two things without using the word ‘like’ or ‘and’.  Explain the Donut metaphor.  /3

1. Come up with three metaphors of your own.  /3

1. A reference is when you refer to a work of art or literature within your own work.  What reference does Tings make to Yeats?  /3

1. Draw an image based on the Yeats poem.  /6

1. Do you agree with Tings’ first impression of Hamilton?  Explain.  /3

1. Describe the aspects of the city that Tings refers to as a ‘revelation’.  /6

1. How does one ‘become a tourist’ in their own town?  /3

1. Tings asks two questions: “What happens when residual stories linger around a place?” and “What happens when old voices meet new ones?”  Answer one of these questions.  /4

1. What does Tings mean when she says “from abandonment comes opportunity”?  How can you relate personally to this statement?  /4

Part 3: University and Social Activism

1. Tings expected university to be a place of activism and social change, based on images of the student movement from the 1960s.  Find out more about this movement, and describe it.  /6

1. Have you ever been disappointed by the reality of something, compared to the idea that you had in your head?  Describe.  /4

1. Who is Bryan, and what does he mean when he says that “today we’re up against the larger masses, and those who are involved are involved in a deeper way.”?   /4

1. Who is Randy, and what does he mean when he says “The settlers’ legacy has left us with a fear of the forests.”  /4

1. What kind of imagery comes to mind when you think about “compromised nature”?  Draw an image.  /4

1. What does Tings mean when she says that “the natural and alternative spaces around us can become lived spaces”?  /2

1. What does Tings want to know about Binkley’s Pond?  /2

1. The image of Binkley’s Pond had a powerful effect on Tings.  When has an image affected you emotionally?  Explain.  /3

1. What does Tings mean when she says “our physical landscapes, no matter how permanent they seem, can indeed be changed, towards or even back to something we would like to see, something we would like to preserve.”  /3

Part 4: How to Love a Place

1. Explain Tings’ simile about love and the city.  What does she mean?  /2

1. Write three of your own similes about love.  /6

1. Tings says, “What you love, you will invariably respect, care for, and protect.”  Give an example of this in your own life.  /3

1. Answer Tings’ question, “Are we entitled to a place, just as we inherit our family histories?”  Sketch your answer.  /4

1. Tings uses the Japanese term “mono no aware” to express the sadness of a landscape that has been irreversibly altered.  When have you experienced the sadness of ephemera, of things that did not or will not last?  /4

1. Tings says, “No matter how much we change a landscape, it’s always there, and sometimes when you look hard enough, you can still see it.”  Look out at a part of the city’s landscape, and re-imagine it.  What would you do if this space was yours to re-create?  Sketch this.  /4

1. What do you think would happen if developers had to negotiate with the people who live in a community, before they tore down homes and built parking lots and condominiums?  What would your community look like?  Sketch or write your response.  /3

1. Respond to Steve’s experience.  What have you found, haphazardly, that fills you with delight?  Sketch it.  /3

1. Tings says that her story is about “being present.”  What does this entail?  /2

1. Tings describes a ‘contagious sentiment’ among her peers to live downtown.  When have you experienced a ‘contagious sentiment’?  Describe this.  /3

Part 5: To Live Creatively

1. Tings describes an ‘overwhelming desire to live creatively, make art, eat good food, and build community’.  What are your overwhelming desires?  /4

1. Go to Whitehern and look at the gardens.  Sketch what you see.  /6

1. Tings says ‘I drew, only to know…”  Wander the city without an agenda, as Tings did, and let your eyes float and settle.  Draw what you see.  /6
2. Mack says, “There’s a lot of character in decrepitude.  People like that stuff, for whatever reason.”  What is the reason, do you think?

Part 6: The Scale of Things

1. Tings finds an old bike, that becomes dear to her.  What have you found or inherited, that has become dear to you?  Sketch it.  /3

1. Ray goes into a state of shock when he first begins working at Stelco.  Have you ever experienced shock?  Describe your experience.  /3

1. Why do you think a sense of futility pervades the steel mills?  What is the relationship between scale, and nihilism?  /6

1. Tings responds emotionally to the ‘stripping’ of the marble off of city hall.  Describe a time when an object has evoked these kinds of emotions in you.  Sketch the object.  /6

1. Tings says, “Hamilton is a city with few symbols, and what was happening to City Hall seemed indicative of the way Hamilton fails to embrace and preserve what it has.”  Respond to Tings’ statement.  What symbols does Hamilton have?  Sketch these.  Can you embrace these symbols?  /6

1. About Hamilton, Graham says, “Being the proud poor that it is, Hamilton will always give you the shirt off it’s back.”  How can you relate to this statement?  /4

1. Tings says, “reclaiming an old building might be the most political thing you can do here.”  If you can’t afford an old building, what else can you do to save Hamilton’s bones?  /3

1. Tings asks, “Is it elitist to want to celebrate the qualities we have?”  Respond to this question.  /3

Part 7: Take Up Space

1. One of Bernadette’s holy moments occurred when she and her daughter “looked up at the same instant to see a shooting star split in two.”  Describe one of your holy moments.  What did it mean?  /4

1. Bernadette returns to Kentucky, only to find Hamilton inside an old trunk as she was closing up her family home.  What uncanny coincidence have you experienced?  What do you make of it?  /4

1. Bernadette spends the new year “paying attention to the earth.”  How do you pay attention?  Sketch this.  /3

1. Tings says that the city “seems beholden to the modernist logic of replacing the human scale, the street level store front, and the pedestrian language of the city with automobile arteries, skyscrapers, and mega complexes.”  What is the problem with the modernist logic?    /4

1. What did downtown look like before 1971?  Find an image, and respond to it.  How do you feel?  Do you prefer the city now, or before?  Explain your response.  /6

1. Bernadette describes Hamilton as having two identities.  One is “male, with a donut and a cup of coffee in his hand,” and one is “an artist - a tough artist.”  a) Which parts of the city reflect the first identity, and which parts of the city reflect the second?  b) Is this duality appealing, or do we need a new, united sense of self?  /6

1. Tings describes what Gary and Barbara did to the Pearl Company, saying “The Pearl Company symbolizes the possibility of community building that takes place when a single space is liberated and its value realized.”  How do we liberate space?  Sketch this process.  /4

1. Tings meets a woman who says “the richness of our lives could be better measured by songs and poems than by our average household incomes.”  If you measured your riches in art, music, and literature, what would that look like? Sketch this.  /6
2. Tings quotes Plato, the Greek philosopher, saying, “There is no greater good in a state than that the citizens be known to each other.”  Sketch of the map of the city using only images or symbols of the people you know.  /6

1. Tings learns about the importance of “claiming a place as your own, starting with your home.”  Describe or sketch the part of your home that you have claimed as yours, using detail.  /6

1. Tings discusses the importance of throwing away our inhibitions and founding a community.  Why do we need community?  Why do we need to let go of our inhibitions?  Explain.  /4

1. Tings says that a lot of activism is “claiming and creatively re-imagining a place.”  Describe a way that you have done this.

1. Tings says, “activism is, can, and should be a form of playful, public art.”  Imagine your own brand of public art activism.  What does this look like?  Sketch or describe.  /6

1. Tings asks, “how do we take up space?”  Respond personally to this question.  How do you, or how should you, take up space?  /4

1. Tings describes the waterfront trail as a place where “community health begins.”  a) Go and walk the trail, and then explain what Tings means. b) What else contributes to community health?  /6

1. Bryan points out that the waterfront trail is an example of development that results in community pride.  a) Should all civic development result in civic pride?  Explain.  b) What parts of the city are you proud of?  Sketch or describe.  /6

1. Tings likes to block traffic.  Why is traffic blocking good for civic pride and community?  /4

1. What is the difference between how you treat people who are known to you, and how you treat strangers?  Sketch or respond.  /4

Final Project:

At the end of her book, Tings instructs us to “dream up a new city,” but she also reminds us to look back before moving forward.  She says, “the grass through the concrete, in a town once called orchard city, this is where the concrete desert blooms.”  

Using imagery from Hamilton today, and from its pre-industrial past, dream up a new city, and draw it.  Print your image, using at least 2 colours.  

Evaluation:

Imagery reflects Hamilton’s past, present, and future.

Imagery reflects the student’s own original thoughts and ideas.

The student uses the principles and elements of design to create a visually appealing image.

The student follows the steps of the print-making process in order to create clean, professional-looking prints.

Drypoint Etchings with Matt McInnes

Week 8 of NuSteel, we got to try our hand at some drypoint etchings.  Students based their images on a book they had read for English, resulting in a range of themes explored in these works.  

Students worked hard at filing their plexiglass plates, sketching and then reversing an image, and etching it into the plexiglass using a variety of etching tools.

Hard at work etching the plexiglass.

After the plates were etched, students brought them into Centre3's professional print studio, and inked and pressed their plates.  

Students inking their plates.

The results were impressive... and I will post them for your viewing pleasure very soon!

Field Trip: Smokestack Studio at 270 Sherman

We were very fortunate to get a chance to visit Smokestack Studio this past Tuesday, where artists Laine and Jonathan Groenweg create prints using both traditional and modern techniques.

Students got to participate in the creation of a mezzotint print with Laine, using a traditional printing press that Laine brought over from Italy.

Laine inking a copper plate.

Amber at the wheel.

After learning about traditional and modern print making practices, and about life as an artist-entrepreneur, we were led on a tour of 270 Sherman - previously the Imperial Cotton Factory - and took in the myriad spaces the building has to offer.  

Walking through 270 Sherman, the former Imperial Cotton Factory

The view from atop 270 Sherman: railways, industry, and the escarpment.

270 Sherman is still under renovation, so we got a glimpse of many of the old features of the Imperial Cotton Factory, including the manual-operation elevators, and the rail lines running through the property.  We also saw some of the new artist studios being built, and were fortunate to catch the TH&B crew hard at work on their next project.

It was a perfect day for a field trip, and we all enjoyed a glimpse of the many exciting developments happening in our city.  

The intrepid travellers journey home.

Wanted Posters mounted at Supercrawl 2014

Student participants of the NuSteel program completed their first prints just in time to make an appearance at Supercrawl.

These posters represent students' first forage into the world of print-making.  Over the course of the semester, students will learn how to create one and two-colour prints, posters, t-shirts, and a variety of saleable merchandise.

Students at the NuSteel program have a unique opportunity to experience the life of an artist-entrepreneur as they work to create and sell handmade art products at Hamilton's monthly art crawls on James St. North.

The program, a partnership between Centre3 for Print and Media Arts, and the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, is aimed at engaging students in Alter-Ed who enjoy art-based learning.  Students undertake several secondary school subjects over the course of the semester, including English, History, Civics and Careers, and Art.  All major student projects are art-based.  The program, in its infancy last year, proved to be quite successful, and we are now off to a wonderful start in year two.

Here's to the start of a great semester!

Matt McInnes demonstrates the art of mounting posters with water and glue.

Halfway there...

The wall: Wanted Posters successfully mounted.

Food = Community

Here at NuSteel we've been the lucky recipients of an Ontario Ministry of Education grant to provide healthy, nutritious food for our students.  We are in close proximity to the Hamilton Farmer's Market, so Tuesdays have become our market day.

Together as a group, students discuss what they'd like to include in their purchases for the week.  They divide the budget into three categories: meat and cheese, fruit and veggies, and bread.  We walk to the market as a group and then split up into teams to purchase the items on our list.  This week, students decided on french baguette with spicy salami and aged cheddar, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, carrots, bell peppers, raspberries, and grapes.

Because we are able to shop at the Farmer's Market, students are learning about shopping locally, supporting small businesses, the importance of organic farming, and the moral responsibility of buying fair-trade, ecologically sound foods.  Students are also exposed to a variety of cultures and peoples at the market, thereby gaining a stronger sense of Hamilton's diverse population.

The most exceptional aspect of taking part in this nutrition program is the sense of community we develop as a school when we prepare and eat meals together.  Students who may otherwise have nothing in common come together to discuss the food we are eating and the foods they like to make at home.  Students linger over lunch and experience the pleasure of enjoying a proper, balanced meal with friends.

We are very happy to be the recipients of this grant, and strongly recommend that schools across Hamilton look at their lunch practices and prioritize the opportunity for students and teachers to come together and break bread.  As schools get larger and student lives become more hectic, it is perhaps one of the best things school planners can do to maintain, or increase, students' sense of community and belonging.

Market Day at the Hamilton Farmer's Market

About NuSteel

I am very lucky to be teaching Art in downtown Hamilton on James St. North, host to the monthly James St. North Art Crawl.  The community of artists and entrepreneurs on this street are known for their collaboration in promoting the arts in the wider Hamilton community.

The program that I teach, called NuSteel, is a pilot project partnership between the Hamilton board of education and a small Gallery for print and media arts called Centre3.  This partnership is the first of its kind, placing students in an artist-run gallery environment, and developing curriculum that is community focused and locally relevant to kids.  

Through our partnership with Centre3, students who come to our program become connected to a variety of community-based services and opportunities, including the Notre Dame youth housing and support centre, and Art Forums, a creative after-school space for youth to extend their art practice.  Further to these relationships, each semester students make connections with the artist-members who work and produce art at Centre3, often gaining access to future co-op and employment opportunities.

One great thing about our program is that it an alternative education program, so students from all over the city are referred to the program, and provided with bus tickets or taxis, so that even students who live further out in Wentworth can access the downtown arts community.

Another area of support for the arts that I am now learning about, from working with artists at Centre3, is the access to grants for local art initiatives.  One of the artist-members I work with was able to obtain a grant from the Laidlaw foundation so that NuSteel students and community youth could create and publish a youth-led Zine, called the Outsider Zine.  The grant from the Laidlaw foundation is one of several grants that Centre3 members have obtained in order to keep the gallery and studio space running with up-to-date equipment and resources, and to pay staff and students a fair wage for their work.

Finally, many students who come through the NuSteel program become connected with the wider arts community and thus grow their support network and network of friends.  Youth who may very likely have ‘fallen through the cracks’ of our social and education systems have instead become connected with craftsmen and women, artists, entrepreneurs, and administrators, who are more than willing to mentor students and help them to explore potential career paths.  Accessing caring adult mentors is the most significant factor that influences students to become re-engaged with education and the idea of having a career, and is also the most significant factor in the development of positive self-esteem.

In sum, I am very very fortunate to be part of a community that supports education through the arts, and I hope that this partnership becomes an exemplary format for future school-community initiatives.