Category: Art of Steve Prince Spring 2019

During one of our class periods back in March (I know, it’s a throwback) led by Teaching Assistants Sabrina, Anderson, and Katie, my peers and I participated in the Sculptor/Clay exercise. As Katie led our reflection period towards the end of class, as memory serves me, she mentioned something about the importance of facial expressions in the exercise. Katie said that when she and Sabrina attended a conference over the summer, they participated in the Scuptor/Clay exercise with a small group of about twelve people, and Katie noticed that one of the “sculptors” in particular paid special attention to the facial expressions he had his “clay” wear. I found this especially interesting and I began to think about some of the other mediums in which the presence or the absence of facial expression is significant, such as Willow Tree® figurines, American Sign Language, the Baby Dolls, and, of course, Steve Prince’s art.

Continue reading “The Both/And of Expression Through Face and Body Language”

We express ourselves in many physical ways, just a few to mention are art, dance, writing and the theater. I have never been a dancer. When I was younger, my father would always tell me that I had no rhythm and couldn’t dance (he wasn’t being mean, he was simply stating the obvious). I am an artist but definitely not a dancer.

Before Mark Broomfield’s class, Doctor McCoy had told us to wear comfortable clothes that we could move around in. This caught my attention very quickly. I was hoping we weren’t going to have to do push-ups and jumping jacks. When the weekend ended and I walked into class that Monday afternoon, I was caught off guard with the idea we were going to dance. I had always loved to dance but only in private or at parties where no one would pay much attention to my horrible dancing.

Continue reading “Dancing Queen”

Recently Dr. McCoy took some time to address the class regarding the potential harm our words can have, even unintentionally, and wrote the following quote by Susan Lori Parks on the board: “Words are spells in our mouths.” This made me think  in several different directions, but my mind first went to something I’ve been thinkING about for the majority of the semester. In fact, I was originally going to use the following anecdote in my first blog post, but I hadn’t really fully developed my thoughts as the situation had just occurred at the time of my first post. To quote myself from that first blog post, “Disenfranchised peoples are, to this day, at war with one another to be the most downtrodden.” I definitely still believe this to be the case, and I have still not come to any real conclusion as to why this is besides chalking it up to human error. That is, human beings, in my experience, have an innate tendency to compare one another and often assume that they have it worse than anyone else.

Continue reading “Competition Among Underrepresented Groups”

Coming into this class, I honestly didn’t know what to expect, and I think that ended up being beneficial to my experience with this course. I have always been a planner—I like to know all of the details of something I’m going to do to decide whether or not it is worth my time. But while this is how I have determined my decisions in the past, recently I have taken the liberty to be a bit more impulsive. When I was deciding what classes to take this semester I attempted to make the “perfect” schedule, but classes of course filled up fast as I was only registering as a sophomore. Initially, I was not going to take The Art of Steve Prince, even though I was interested in it. I did not know it could count towards my English major, and when I learned that it did I impulsively dropped another class so that it could fit into my schedule. Later, during drop/add week I impulsively added another class that I had not even considered taking until I saw that it had one open seat. It was a women and gender studies course, something I had wanted to take but didn’t think I would since I am not majoring or minoring in it. But I had room in my schedule, and I wanted to take it. I know for many students this way of choosing classes is normal, but for someone like me who has always planned everything out whenever given the chance, it was both liberating and intimidating.

Continue reading “Expectations and Retrying Old Things”

Through the semester, many class discussions centered around ideas about the hardships minorities face in today’s society, as well as throughout history. But when faced with these issues, how does one react? How does our school provide the tools to encounter hate crimes and oppression? Continue reading “D.I.C.E.”

I was recently reminded of a book I read in senior year of high school, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I enjoyed the book, and I love Oscar Wilde, but the arguments Wilde made in the preface to the book were ones I couldn’t agree with. Wilde talks about how art is useless and should not have anything to do with the artist. Here are a few quotes that stood out to me:

“To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim”

“No artist desires to prove anything.”

“All art is quite useless.”

Continue reading “Art is Useless”