Category: Art of Steve Prince Spring 2019

By: Amina Diakite and Melisha Gatlin

Melisha:

I think stepping into the the Kinetic Gallery, it is safe to say we were both unsure of what would come from this activity. When Steve Prince said we would all be contributing to this piece, I thought to myself “I cannot draw, I will mess up the canvas”. My experience with drawing is  extremely limited, and by limited I mean stick figures. The best I could do is trace some lines, so I doubted that I would be able to contribute anything more than some lines . On top of that, I did not think I had an artistic eye. I remember revisiting the Urban Garden after people had contributed and being amazed at what people were able to come up with and their creativity. This just made me more nervous to add to the piece myself because I did not know if I would be able to draw, let alone think of something, that would fit in with what was already there. By the end I added something very small, specifically three raindrops under the clouds that had already been drawn. At first it was just something I joked about, but then Steve Prince had came over and said he really liked what I added. This one comment boosted my confidence perhaps because it was coming from someone I considered a professional artist. Therefore, I added  another drawing to Urban Garden. This time it was something a little bigger which was a form of a black hole with the word freedom getting sucked in. How I came up with this image I have no idea, however, it was at this moment that I realized that the goal of this piece was to draw something we felt about our society, both positive and negative; at least this is what I perceived the goal to be. Urban Garden’s turnout was the opposite of what I initially thought it would be which was either blank because people would not want to participate, or messy because people would not take it seriously. This piece of art became a way for our school to create and tell a story together about our views on society. Continue reading “A Conversation on Urban Garden”

If you’ve read any of my blog posts by now, you might have already noticed my deep admiration for my Mexican heritage, my family, and my love for art. Growing up, I was surrounded by my rich, diverse culture, and have always identified myself as a visual artist. My Mama and sisters have always supported my art and continuously encourage me to continue practicing and creating, despite my decision to not follow any particular art career. As I reflect back on what I’ve learned in this course, I can see my transformation, primarily through my THINKing process as an artist. That is of course, learning how to SLOW DOWN not only in the way I think and approach art, but also in the way that I create and write about it. Just as Beth suggested early on in my writing, slowing down is part of the process. Drafting, walking away, returning, revising, setting it aside, and returning once again, are all things I had to learn and am still working on.

Continue reading “What This Class has Taught Me as An Artist and Writer”

In early April, Dr. Catherine Adams led our class discussion with a dialogue grounded in the current local news at the time, most notably the blackface incident, the many ensuing letters published by the Lamron, and several other less discussed bias-related incidents that occurred all around campus at the time. She spoke of what we choose to see versus what we choose not to see versus what we are in a position to see. The most important takeaway I gathered from this conversation as well as the conversations that stemmed from a message from another professor that Dr. McCoy passed on to us after the fire at Notre Dame is that now, more than ever, we need to be especially conscientious of the language we use and how it may be perceived. Continue reading “The Significance of Language”

By Lindsey Kriaris, Abby Ritz, and Helen Warfle

Many of us grew up watching Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, which is commonly referred to as one of the most wholesome shows to ever exist. And it certainly is, but in more ways than just the kindness exhibited by Fred Rogers himself— the show, which began airing in 1968, was one of the first to include a black actor in a positive role and one of the first with an African American in “a recurring role on a children’s television series.” François Clemmons played Officer Clemmons, the policeman who did rounds in Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. In real life, Clemmons was a black, gay man who, due to the prevailing homophobic attitudes of the time, remained closeted, but was embraced by Mr. Rogers both in the show and in real life, to the point where Clemmons viewed him as a father figure. The two of them remained friends until Rogers’ death in 2003.

Continue reading “Won’t You Be My Neighbor? : Representation of People of Color In Media”

In my last post, I left off briefly discussing the European powers that developed the transatlantic slave trade— a presumably three-point cycle between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. Dr. Catherine Adams, professor of history department and co-coordinator of the black studies department led a discussion in our class about the black experience during Western colonization. We looked at poetry and books to further dive into the relationship between how people talk about slavery.

This semester I am also taking a course specialized in the geography of sub-Saharan Africa taught by Dr. Rogalsky of the geography department. In this class we read the book, Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone by Martin Dugard. This book— as the titles alludes to— tells the stories of the two explorers: Dr. David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley during their explorations of Africa to ultimately fine the true source of the Nile river in the late 1800s (which, if you were interested, is still a highly debated topic).

I would first like to point out the fact that without the native Africans, these two explorers would have little to no success or would have died pretty quickly. Stanley especially, had three to five caravans of Africans those of who carried supplies, provide knowledge about ethnic tribes and boundaries, helped with local illness, and more. Unfortunately, Stanley was ruthless and mistreated the porters to a point where in the novel the porters at one point wanted to kill him. If one porter escaped, he would send other porters to go retrieve them. One thing that I found mind boggling was that a lot of the early European porters would rename already named locations amongst the locals. After Stanley’s exploration ended his fame for the exploration aided the creation of the transatlantic slave trade. 

In our class with Dr. Adams, we discussed the appearance of the transatlantic slave trade. In the photo, it appears to be a linear system: with goods leaving both the Americas and Europe into Africa and with materials leaving Africa as well. However, one separate line holds the arrow that labels slaves going from Africa to the Americas. The more we looked at in class, we realized that the ‘triangle’ was nothing short of nonlinear. We discussed how it can be insulting to refer to things as ‘bodies.’ You call many things bodies: as in bodies of water and other types of space. That is why it is so important to reserve the dignity of those humans.

Throughout the blogging process, I have paid considerable attention to the four horsemen that pop up again and again throughout the body of Steve Prince’s work. When discussing the horsemen in my blog posts, I almost always mentioned their shoes, which are adorned with studs and spikes, wherein the spikes vary in appearance and resemble things like barbed wire, grisly canines, and other such objects that bear traditionally negative connotations.

The presence of these shoes in a work of Prince’s often impacted my interpretation of the piece. For example, in Prince’s “Dirge,” the spiked appearance of the horsemen’s shoes encouraged me to view the horsemen as agents of destruction, as is discussed in my blog post, “Those Who Straddle the Line.”Additionally, the horsemen’s massive, spiked shoes, seen in Prince’s “Second Line I-IV,” acted as elements with which I could juxtapose the horsemen’s dainty posture and accessories. This juxtaposition would become the launchpad for my thought process and ultimate thesis in my blog post, “The Protecting Power of Destruction.”

Continue reading “Look More, Label Less”

Dance has always been a huge part of my life. Growing up I threw myself into ballet, jazz, and tap lessons. Three to four times a week I would sit at my desk at school and glue my eyes to the clock as the last hour of school progressed. I would fly like a rocket out of my seat and make my way to my dance school were I would spend hours doing the thing I loved most. My favorite type of dance was and still is ballet. The grace, poise, and strength needed is something I have always appreciated about the art. However, dance can become a competitive and very pressuring mind game, so my career of dance eventually came to a close.

When I transferred to Geneseo my sophomore year, I knew I had to get involved in the community somehow. My mind immediately went to my first love— dance. In that time I joined two dance groups/teams/troupes. By the time registering for classes came for this semester (spring ‘19), I not only wanted to take my required courses, but I also wanted to take at least one or two courses that would challenge me academically and/or would capture an interest of mine that wasn’t strictly academic. That class for me was DANC 104: Cultural Dance— Latin Cultures taught by Deborah Scodese-French of the dance department.

Continue reading “Meaning of Movement”

One of the courses I am taking this semester is entitled Precarity: The Deplorable and Invisible, taught by Dr. Elaine Cleeton and Dr. Michael Restivo (in Dr. Cleeton’s absence). A main focus of the course is how American Capitalism has been taken to such an extreme that it marginalizes many different groups of people, including Native Americans as well as the black community, to name just a few.

Continue reading “Living in Precarity”

Weeks ago, during a fit of furious note taking, I quickly jotted down the phrases “sun trail” and “light rays” in the margin of my physics notebook, accompanied by a terrible sketch of a moon (I don’t know why it wasn’t of a sun given my note) and its reflection on a lake. If you’re wondering, yes, the sketch simply oozes the feeling of boredom, but that’s how it is when you’re hitting your head against a desk trying to understand reflection, refraction, mirrors, and lenses at 8:30 in the morning. When I finally looked back at this note, I was kicking myself for not making my drunken-in-a-sleep-deprived-kind-of-way-self more clear, but I suppose looking back, reflecting (no pun intended), and putting in a little work to find my way is what this class is all about. Continue reading “Perspective and Light Rays”