Last week, Dr. Beth McCoy asked our class to share our first impressions of the course in small groups. I said that initially, I was just astounded that Steve Prince was coming to Geneseo at all, because I didn’t think that an up-and-comer artist would have the time to come to our school or the interest in teaching us. I suppose I wondered what our school, one that doesn’t even specialize in art, had to offer someone as talented as Steve Prince. I was very pleasantly surprised when I met Steve! I didn’t expect him to be so down-to-earth. He was so passionate about his art and involving all of us students in the process. I was really nervous about contributing to the Urban Garden, but the way Steve talked about the project to all of the students, he made us feel like no contribution to the project would be a “mistake” (in his words, “there is no such thing”), and his general attitude gave me and my peers the confidence to join in on the project! Continue reading “ThinkING Aloud”
Crossing Boundaries
When Dr. McCoy first announced she would be teaching “The Art of Steve Prince” back in the fall of 2018, I was immediately intrigued. I was not only struck by the powerful image that graced the flyer advertising the course but also by the impressive, and long, list of supporting faculty that would partake in it. I was perhaps most surprised to find Dr. Nicodemi’s name on the flyer since she is a professor of mathematics.
I asked myself why I felt so shocked to find her name there and thought back to my high school biology class, where my teacher taught us about the right brain vs. left brain theory. Since then, I have seen countless computer cases, posters, etc. that bear designs depicting the divisions between right brained and left brained individuals.
According to Healthline, the right-brain vs. left-brain theory maintains that one half of an individual’s brain is dominant over the other. Individuals who are said to be left-brained are alleged to be analytical, methodical, and particularly skilled in mathematics. On the other hand, individuals who are right-brained are said to be creative, artistic and to have a proclivity for art and music.
A Deeper Look into Art
Mary Rutigliano discussed how her mind changed when Steve Prince came to talk about his work. With this statement, I couldn’t agree more. At first when looking at artwork, I never used to dig deep into the meaning behind the piece. My response would either be “I really like this work” or “This is not my cup of tea.” There was not many times, if any, that I expanded on what the piece was actually meant to do. Continue reading “A Deeper Look into Art”
Cycling Back to New Beginnings
The first time I came across the work of Steve Prince was completely by accident. At the time, I was writing for the Lamron and I was assigned to cover the final event of the community art project he did for Cultural Harmony Week (the article linked is one that I technically wrote, but it does not reflect my style of writing as it was heavily edited to meet journalistic conventions). I found him to be a fascinating interview, but one that I immediately put out of mind as soon as I was done writing. Completely by chance, I signed up for my first class with Professor McCoy shortly thereafter and found myself face-to-face with his artwork once again in the context of New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina. In fact, the very first blog post I ever wrote was on his work Katrina’s Veil: Stand at the Gretna Bridge. Looking back at this post is wonderfully nostalgic for me – it both reminds me how far I’ve come in terms of writing since then, but it also calls back to a more innocent version of myself. I specifically remember that Professor McCoy used the word naive in the feedback for this post, and a full year later, I now (kind of) realize what she meant by that. Thus, it makes me extremely happy that 20 blog posts and two semesters later, I get to come back to the art of Steve Prince with a new perspective and new tools at my disposal. Continue reading “Cycling Back to New Beginnings”
Salt of the Earth
I took my Spring 2018 semester off for mental health reasons after an overwhelming Fall semester. During these months I felt very disconnected from my environment, from other people, and from myself. Taking a break from school was terrifying, because it forced me to do something I never experienced before – I was no longer a full time student. Instead of going to classes, I attended therapy sessions twice a week. Instead of focusing on my academics, I focused on fostering my personal growth. I find both of these objectives to be difficult in different ways. Whereas I had previously agonized over the Big Question (i.e. the meaning of life, my Earthly purpose, etc.), I listed off the things that added meaning to my life and incorporated them as much as possible into my regular routine. I decided that expressing myself and creating are pretty high on the list. Art has allowed me to explore myself, as well as the inner workings of other people.
The “Art Evangelist”
Coming into this class, I don’t believe anyone expected what the first week brought forth. Sure we knew we’d discuss and meet the artist behind this large community art project, but we never expected to be asked to bring our personal beliefs and talents to the first day in the Kinetic gallery. Continue reading “The “Art Evangelist””
Drawing Points
I initially encountered Steve Prince’s work in ENGL 432, last spring, where I remember feeling somewhat frustrated with the way that we were looking at and interpreting Prince’s work. In that setting, it seemed that Prince’s heavy use of signs and symbols was leading us towards an interpretive strategy where each symbol in a work was a puzzle piece whose meanings we had to guess correctly in order to correctly decipher the meaning of the complete piece. At the beginning of this course, I felt I was watching that strategy be carried over into this class, which was frustrating as an English major, coming out of a disciplinary context where we’re trained to disregard what an artist says their work “means” and use textual evidence and cultural/historical context to put together analyses. This situation was made more difficult by the fact that Prince, as Beth noted on Monday, can tell you what he meant with every visual element on the page, so I felt that steering towards an interpretive method that relies on our own observations was going to be one of this class’s challenges.
I also anticipated that obtaining the methods with which and the context in which to be able to come to new interpretations would be this class’s main pleasures, and I feel that the discussion we had yesterday about using the Kongo cosmogram as visual guide to analyze “Urban Mix Tape 2” was a clear indicator of how rewarding that process might turn out to be. In that vein, I want to share some thoughts about “Urban Mix Tape 2,” and how I think Thompson’s description of the Kongo cruciform can help us understand the piece. Before class, I was looking at the concentric circles expanding from the turntable on which Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock” is being spin as a gear connecting with and turning the circles on the piece’s left end. The group conversation about the piece was really helpful in helping me bridge the work itself to the other readings we’ve done, and I see that besides incidental parallels, like the alchemical sign for the sun in the top right corner being analogous to the disks at the points of the yowa that represent “moments of the sun,” the representation of ancestral and supernatural figures as moving towards a central point (the hole in the record) is clearly parallel to Thompson’s description of Kongo-Cuban priests mediating between the living and the dead by “singing-and-drawing” a sacred point, which here is the record being scratched. Regardless of whether or not this was part of Prince’s intention, I think these interpretations are certainly valid (and for me, speak to Weheliye’s mix) and I look forward to producing more analyses like them in group settings.
What’s Next?
I have always been infatuated by the world of art.
My love for art developed when I was younger, always thinking in my head and analyzing what was before me.
However my appreciation for art came later much later. The fall semester of my junior year I found myself in an entry level art class. This class taught me how to feel art; how to look at it. I didn’t just love the way it looked; I understood it. I was taught how to feel it, to know what the artist was trying to portray. Perhaps my favorite part of art is how the artist proclaims awareness for social issues.
The Personal Growth I Have Been Looking For
I look at the blank screen in front of me and frown. I feel my ears grow hotter and hotter as I stare at the blank word document. On the bottom right screen, the digital clock read: 8:30pm. It was originally 5:00pm and before that, it was 11:00am but it managed to get this late.
Continue reading “The Personal Growth I Have Been Looking For”
What We Talk About When We Art
“My job is to notice…and to notice that you can notice.”–Dionne Brand
To be quite frank, I felt an immediate sense of excitement when I learned that Geneseo would be offering INTD288, a course exploring Steve Prince’s art. Maybe the exhilaration I felt about taking this course was that it was [FINALLY] something that called out to me. Seeing the catalog and description for this course instantly struck me. Glimpsing at Prince’s work attached to the informational flyer about the course left me feeling completely and utterly enthralled. Perhaps this great sense of enticement was rooted in the mere fact that Prince’s work is very vocal; it’s demands to be seen, listened, and heard. I wanted to know more about the artist behind the piece. With its bold, expressive linear figures and its sense of movement throughout the work, it is pretty much impossible (if not very hard) to not be compelled in learning more about the person behind the work. Almost instinctively, I knew I had to be a part of this experience and even more so, I knew that this was an opportunity to be involved in something I believed to be important and in something that actually interested me–ART. It was refreshing to say the least.
The first week I experienced for this course was incredible! From listening to some snazzy tunes and having lively conversations with one another, to getting down and dirty with some charcoal blocks, what was there not to love?Getting to learn about Prince and carrying out a conversation with him was practically brain food. It nourished my mind, not only by allowing me to self reflect, but by allowing me to learn the way in which art can be used as a tool in learning how to reconnect with one another. The experience gained from contributing to the Urban Garden truly placed this into perspective. During one of my conversations with Prince, he told me that what he values the most about his work is the process in which it takes to create something. Creating something out of nothing is an extraordinary feeling and it is this process that opens up a space for conversation between one another. Having worked along side with Prince and everyone else who contributed to the Urban Garden project, I can easily say I agree.
(the piece I created for the Urban Garden)