Fall 2011 Or Bust

In past semesters, I have required students to make and maintain a blog for their final projects. This semester, blogging took a backseat to activism as the students were asked to take to the streets instead of their computers. 

But here we are, a class of 21, whittled down to quite less than that, and we are all a semester stronger and smarter. 

Students, put your names and contact info in the comments below here to stay in touch with one another. Remember this journey; it was important. 

"I'm not who you think I am; I'm who I think you think I am." - Goethe

Quite a Semester

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

Spring 2011 has come and gone and with it another group of Freshman Seminar for Success students. We learned a lot this semester - we analyzed propaganda of past and present, strategized for the future, confronted ourselves as our own worst enemies - but mostly we learned about each other.

Thank you all for a great seminar and semester. I will continue to blog in this space  about issues related to academics, art, the powers that be and the world at large. Stay tuned!

The Sweet Spot

Probably the toughest person to convince that she is, truly, an artist, was Natalie. Natalie is a lot more than an artist, though. She is someone who can handle work and school and life and still bring her A game every single day. Natalie is just short a handful of hours for her California hair styling/cosmetology license and she took the time and energy to find out the parameters of the license requirements and make a reasonable action plan for juggling both work and school over the next few semesters.

Artistically, Natalie has a passion for color and the stories that colors tell. She appreciates clean lines and finds beauty in symmetry and simplicity, with splashes of decadence and outrageousness. Check out her blog and final project here.

Bringing a tear to my eye

Camille Santander's blog post evaluating her experience in my class this semester literally made me cry. This has been the best semester yet and I can't wait to see all the amazing things that each and every one of the students from this class go on to do. 

Camille is a student who watches carefully and reserves her judgements until she has enough information. She took quickly to topics like critical thinking and communication skills. She penned out a SMART goal and bam, had completed it within weeks. Camille embodies tenacity and brings a smile to the face of others. Camille doesn't quite fit the cookie cutter molds already available at the Academy of Art - her dream is to be a Public Relations guru in the Fashion Industry, so she's got her work cut out for her as far as getting the most out of her education here. A smattering of classes from Merchandising, Journalism, and Styling, this girl will definitely reach some great heights. Check out her blog and final project here. 

Cook Delicious Food, Do Great Design

Kaicheng goes by the moniker Kitchen. I LOL'd when I read the caption underneath his business card here.

Kai is the experienced street artist among us. He would rather be out painting walls than listening to a lecture, but the thing is, he actually is listening. He never missed a beat on the topics at hand and never wavered in his identity as an artist. He is also the first and only student to ever interrupt me interrupting him and tell me to "Be quiet. I'm not finished." I won't ever forget that.

East Meets West

Vallen is the happy skeptic of our little LA 151 family. She is talented and driven, but at the same time observant and reflective. She upholds personal responsibility but values honesty and accountability. Vallen is both a marriage of differences and a contradiction of ideas. She is, literally, the East Meeting the West. I highly recommend you read her blog(s) and get to know the girl who competes with the big boys.

Above and Beyond

A quick shout out to the students who got their business card prototypes onto paper and into my hand. Thank you for the tactile example of excellent student work!

All the world's a stage

Tevin's big smile and even bigger heart welcomed all to our LA 151 class this semester. She instantly connected with her classmates and helped everyone corral into a dedicated learning team. Tevin is an artist and a filmmaker. She is also an actress. Simply put, Tevin shines.

Yet Tevin has taught us an important academic lesson this semester. Early tenacity and inspiration are not enough by themselves - we must push through and last long enough to complete the final leg of this race that we call life (and school). Per Tevin, her bad academic habits can be defined as a strong start, a petering out, and a weak finish. She caught herself losing momentum as this semester dragged on and on. This summer, though, she has an important audition with a performance arts college in New York. This is a girl who will be a star - but will she be able to keep up the hard work and waning motivation to get things done, even when she doesn't want to? I think it's a safe bet to say that no matter what the future holds for Tevin, she will achieve great things. Here's her blog.

A little bit of everything

Na na na na, hey hey hey... GOODBYE.

I secretly sing that song in my head everytime I say Nae's name. Nae, of course, is our very own Annette Orduno, a connoisseur of art and design, an Advertising major, and a future cutting-edge curator of that which is and will be art de rigueur. Nae has brought a cool and introspective head to the class and helped push the other student's past their own academic blocks, unblocking her own creative aspirations in the meantime. This young woman wants it all - expertise, composition, technique, inspiration, collaboration. She has some really rad project ideas and all the potential in the world to get them done. Check out her blog here and especially her business card design. It's simply awesome. 

Who's that girl?

Walking into our Tuesday morning Seminar for Success, you will find your attention diverted immediately to the front of the classroom. Sitting just to the left of the teacher is a beautiful young woman, reapplying pink lipstick to her perfect, cupid's bow lips. Who's that girl?

Alisha McCall is a Fashion Merchandising major with a stubborn streak and an unwavering eye for detail. She is a stellar student and while her biggest challenge may be asking for an accepting help from others, she has worked hard at improving herself this semester. Check out her blog and final project here. 

The Great Motivator

When group project time rolled around this semester, there was one student who wouldn't stand for anything less than excellence in his group. Promising to get our perpetual latecomer, Adam, to class on time that day, Karl Muller made it is his personal mission to ensure that his group's project was the best that it could be. And it certainly was.

Karl not only worked his motivational magic on Adam, but on the entire class. He constantly and consistently pushed the students in our class to work harder, be better, and recognize challenges in order to confront them. Karl shared so much of himself, I am sure we will always remember him as the great motivator of LA 151. Here is Karl's blog and final project. I recommend that all of you keep an eye on Karl's photojournalism from here on out. This accomplished US Army veteran is going to be part of some great things.

Wanderlust

Andi is the global perspective in our class. He was born in Malaysia, but raised all over the world. Before coming to San Francisco, he lived in Brussels. Andi studies Industrial Design but has a love affair with Architecture. Andi's contributions to our class this semester have been insightful, grounded, and very poignant. I very much look forward to seeing the work of this future World Designer. Check out his blog and final project here.

Fuzzy Little Baby Waby Aminals

I recently took a trip to Napa's Enchanted Hills Camp for a program committee meeting. It was beautiful there and the meeting was innovative and productive, but the best part was making friends with this little itty bitty baby goat.

I am a sucker for animals, which is why I was so engrossed in reading Mackenzie's latest blog post, "Animal Love." Mackenzie is a fashion student with a hear of gold. Check out her final project and passion for green and animal-friendly design here. 

Business Card

As you may recall, one of the requirements of this blogging project is to feature a protocol of a business card - the ultimate currency of professional identity.

After showing the class my own past brainstorming ideas for a card design, I promised I would make my own protocol this time around as well. Here is my best effort after about 2 hours of trying to figure out how to get a picture underneath text using Microsoft Word. What do you think?

I hope (and expect) that the students' business card protocols will turn out a lot better. I look forward to seeing everyone's creativity and professionalism! 

The Birth of a Blogger

You may remember Aryanna from her inspiration board, but I'd like to take a minute to highlight her blog this week. Aryanna is an up-and-coming Fashion Journalism student. She has her eye on current trends, future memes, and the world of fashion way-pavers (although I think I just made that word up). You can check out her blog, and final project, here. I really look forward to seeing what comes next from this bright student.

Good News from Inside Higher Ed

Apparently, these art degrees for which we so relentlessly slave away are quite a bit worthwhile in the current job market.

Be sure to forward this article to your family, friends, and other naysayers in your life.

The Story of Us

Today we discussed what makes up a community. There are several dimensions of community (technology, economy, political, institutional, aesthetic, and conceptual) and we talked for several minutes about the different characteristics of the communities to which we belong. As Academy of Art students, our community is identified by the following dimensions:

Technology - iPhones, Macs, Adobe, etc. A conglomeration of hardware and software takes us to a whole new level of understanding and efficient communication.

Economy - financial aid, indebtedness, tuition, room and board, cost of living, transportation, etc. etc. This is one hot topic for all of us - money comes and goes and as a student, it can often seem that money goes far more than it comes.

Politics - clubs, leadership, selection of certain students for the honor of participating in shows. There is an impetus to get involved, to get attention. This is all political. The personal is political (more on this next week).

Institutional - this is where roles and propriety come into play. We must go to our student service advisors for course registration, our directors for direction, ARC for resources. We must play the game to win it, including maintaining a satisfactory GPA and academic progress. This is the red tape of AAU!

Aesthetic - perhaps the most interesting thing that came out of today's discussion is the aesthetic aspect of the AAU student community. The fashion department is notorious for its students' impeccable dressing. Further, every other departments' students dress well today. The Academy, in general, has very well-dressed students. There is a serious level of professionalism here, and it shows.

Conceptual - we believe in art as communication. We believe that art is important and we believe that art makes the world a better place. That is why we are here - to become the world's next important artists.

Quantity Breeds Quality

This morning I asked everyone to stand up. As recently reported, sitting all day is the leading cause of many diseases that plague modern society (bowel cancer? Bowel cancer!). While standing, I then asked everyone if they thought they were an artist.

"Are you an artist?"

"Um, maybe."

"I guess."

"Not yet."

Nearly the entire class did not identify as being an artist. One student, did however, immediately identify as being an artist and the crux of his argument for doing so is that he is not intimidated by those who are "above" him in the hierarchy of his field. The rest of the class still needed more, so I picked on one student to get out their iphone and look up two definitions. 

1. Art - noun - the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aestheticprinciples, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinarysignificance.

2. Artist - –noun - a person who produces works in any of the arts  that are primarilysubject to aesthetic criteria.

Then, I asked each student about what they are producing in the world. Are their bedrooms arranged just so? Did you artfully craft your outfit this morning? Think about the design work that you aspire to and imagine that moment that you step away from it, finished, and think, Ahh. That is a work of art. 

Roger Ebert recently (finally) won the New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest. What I love most about this is that the editor of the New Yorker cartoons section called Roger out for his tenacity, citing the productivity theory. According to creativity expert, Keith Sawyer, 

cartoon contest winners usually generate lots of captions. Studies of creativity have shown that quantity breeds quality—what I call the productivity theory, because high productivity corresponds to high creativity.

While quantity does not guarantee quality, it sure does bring you a whole heck of a lot closer. Here's Roger's winning cartoon (though personally, I much liked his NSFW submission a lot better). 

The Final Project: an exercise in being meta for the sake of being meta

So we have spent the semester reflecting, and thinking, and learning, and thinking, and imagining, and reflecting, and so on. The final project this semester is to create a personal blog using Blogger that is an online representation of yourself as artist, student, and art student.

But wait... why blog?

Blogging is the first step towards self-branding. Also, blogging in real-time is the best (and only) way to be able to look back and see your progress as an ever-evolving artist. Post your thoughts, your rants, your reviews, and most of all - post your artwork!

Here is the assignment description:

Final Project: Onward and Outward

The final project will be a culmination of everything learned in this class. Taking the skills we have learned and the artistic outlets we have explored, your final project will be a public representation of yourself as a student and artist. 


Blog, Bio, and Business cards.:


Blog: Your final project will be the publishing of a blog with several entries (no less than 7) dedicated to your field of study, your interests, and other goings-on in the world around you. In order to qualify as a blog, you must link to another website within each post. It is a good idea to start by looking at other blogs relevant to your own fields (Design Sojourn, Style Rookie, etc.) and go from there.


You biography will be featured on your blog. It is not a resume, but instead a creative and short description of all that is important and great about you. This is the perfect opportunity to showcase your talents, your interests, and your sense of humor. Bios should be between 100 minimum and 200 words maximum.


Business cards: On the last day of class, you will present to the class a sample of your finished business card. This business card should include a personalized design and/or logo which will also be featured on your blog.


Last semester, one student's blog stood out among the rest. Christine Nath blogged about her work, her passions, what she liked about new and hot designs. Christine really flourished in the blogging environment and has kept up with her blog well past the semester's end. Take a look at her blog to see the level of quality that I am looking for in your projects this semester: Nath, d Christine. 

Fashion Illustration - second semester

A second-semester student (let's just call him K) created the below composition within an hour's time. The details on the dancers' dresses is dyed ostrich feather. Critique this piece:

Before diving into your critique* in the comments section, review the rules of critique we came up with in class a few weeks ago:
1. Civility, civility, civility. The golden rule is golden for a reason.
2. Start with your overall experience of the piece. What is your subjective reaction to it?
3. Praise - What do you like? What is working?
4. Polish - What isn't working for you? What is a missed opportunity? Try to avoid prescriptive advice.
5. Questions - What questions do you have for the artist? What is left unanswered by the piece itself?


*This framework for critique was adapted from James Sidel's Advanced Fiction Writing class, Fall 2010.

Inspiration Boards

One of the first projects assigned this semester was the inspiration board project. Here is the assignment description:

Create and inspiration Board - a visual collage of at least 6 things that motivate or inspire you. It can include photo cut-outs from magazines or other sources, words or phrases (but not large blocks of text), photographs that you have taken, or even artwork by yourself or others. The content of the board is entirely up to you, but it needs to consist of things that motivate and/or inspire you. Be prepared to present to the class next week.

This year's quality of Inspiration Boards was simply astounding. Take a look at the students holding their boards.

Welcome!

The mission and vision of LA 151, the Freshman Seminar for Success is simple: make of this what you will.

Success in college is just like winning a game - you've got to know the rules, devise strategy for the short and long-term, and put your head and heart into it.

This blog will showcase the work that students in this class section are doing, how their definitions of success, motivation, and goals change over the course of an intensive semester, and also pave the way for future students of this class to get a head start on tackling some of the biggest barriers to academic success.

So, welcome.