How it started: Part Four

Part Four: we start at the beginning of Spring semester 2011.

The travel course to Guatemala started meeting in a classroom setting like a normal class in the Spring of 2011. We were scheduled to leave for Guatemala in March and we were going to be there for 12 days, so we had two months to prepare for the trip and get to know each other.

Our first few classes focused on looking at the history of the native Maya people and their culture, significant parts of which still exist today. We also got to know each other during this time and made choices about who would room with whom, and what we wanted to do as a group while we were in Guatemala. I took on a TA role for the class, since I had taken the Maya courses with Prof. Turner in the past and I knew how to do the clerical work.

I was also extremely honored when Prof. Turner, whose daughter was working in Antigua at the time, asked me about taking part as a practicing artist in a fund raiser for Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO's) in Antigua, including the one her daughter worked for, CasaSito Association. the fund raiser would pair up practicing artists with middle school aged young artists from Antigua and both would create a painting in 90 minutes which would be auctioned off at the end of the 90 mins to the highest bidder, the proceeds going to the NGO's. We were already going to be working with CasaSito on the mural in Santiago Zamora, and our whole group was excited to be asked to participate in the fund raiser.

At the same time that I was preparing to go to Guatemala, I was continuing to work on my Maya portfolio in my new portfolio class. I also started this blog, so all my earlier posts are from this point on. In my portfolio course I wanted to continue to work on expanding my media choices and the large scale portraits I had started the semester before.

In February 2011 my godson Jonathan was born and the angle of my portfolio took shape. I created his portrait and started working with a wide range of colors, something I had been extremely hesitant to do by that time.

Other than Jonathan's piece, and the continued growth of The Boston Codex, I waited to start a new project until after I had gone to Guatemala in March. I had gotten some very good critiques after the fall semester about my Maya Portfolio and there was a question that I couldn't answer; am I respecting the Maya culture through my art, or am I just stealing pieces of it?

One of my Professors had been uncomfortable with my work because he questioned whether or not I had the right to use the imagery and culture the way I was, and his questions really challenged me to look at my work and question what I was doing. I wanted to use the trip to Guatemala to try to find an answer to this dilemma; I felt that I was respecting the culture, but would the Maya people feel the same way? Did I have the right to do what I was doing?

This trip was exactly what I needed for where I had found myself; I was at a point in my art historical studies where I was anxious to look at the art and archaeology in person, I needed to meet the Maya people as an artist who uses their imagery and symbolism as the foundation of my art practice, and I wanted to stretch the limits of my education practice by working with art students from a completely different culture.

Part Five will start with leaving for Guatemala March 2011!

How it started: Part Three

The third part starts in the fall of 2010.

After taking two classes with Professor Turner studying Mesoamerica, I wanted to continue my studies with her in the fall. I also really wanted to work on my thesis for her spring class because the concepts I was working with were absolutely fascinating to me and combined all my areas of study. So I took a directed study with Prof. Turner to work on my thesis and I also worked as an assistant for her doing clerical work.

When Prof. Turner and I met at the beginning of the semester to talk about the directed study and the position as an assistant she told me about a study abroad class she was putting together for the spring. The class would be going to Antigua, Guatemala, and would be working with a small school in Santiago Zamora to paint a mural on the side of their new school. The group would also be visiting the archaeological sites of Tikal and Yaxha in the Peten, and would spend two days at Lake Atitlan, including a home stay with a native family.

As Prof. Turner continued to describe the trip, I was nearly in tears I was so excited. I told her I wanted to go, sign me up, I'll do whatever it takes.

During the fall semester I worked on my Maya portfolio in my portfolio class, building on the Boston Codex and tentatively starting to explore new media. I also worked on my thesis, changing its structure and making it more cohesive and scholarly. The most important thing I did that semester was applying to and preparing for the course to Guatemala in the spring.

I remember the night I found out I got a position in the class; I started jumping up and down in my studio at the school and promptly started running around telling everyone I met that I was going to Guatemala!

I had also gotten one of the five available scholarships for the trip, so on top of being accepted to the trip, I could actually afford to go as well, as price was an issue that had come up throughout the semester. It seemed that all my puzzle pieces were coming together perfectly!

Part four is coming up next!

Host Family

Today we learned who our host families are going to be!

I will be rooming with another girl from the program named Gloria, and we will be living with a retired couple, named Cesar and Rosa, near Casa Herrera in Antigua. The e-mail says they are very nice and patient and love to talk and share with students.

I have done two home stays in the past; one in Paris my Junior year of High School, and for one night in Guatemala when I went earlier this year. So far I have not had any issues with home stays and I have found them very enjoyable, though both my previous experiences have been vastly different and for a much shorter period of time. In Paris, my best friend and I stayed with a single older woman who had half of her apartment blocked off from us so that we could only go to the bedroom she had set up for us (which was very nice), a bathroom, and the kitchen. We were fine with the setup particularly because we were not there very much and even when we were the host herself wasn't there. We only ended up having two dinners with her the whole trip and they were quite a lot of fun. Our hostess would have a fresh breakfast and a note every morning for us, and she loved to talk to us to practice her English.

When I stayed with a host family in Guatemala it was for only one night and I was there with my classmate Erica. We had a wonderful experience with this large host family; an older couple, their two older daughters and their husbands, their two younger children, girl and boy, and their two grandchildren. We had dinner together and tried communicating in Spanish, English, and Mayan. We looked at photos of previous guests, helped cook and clean, and we took a lot of pictures of the family and ourselves in tradition Maya dress. The family also had a book in which they had all their guests write a note to them to go back to and read. Though we stayed for only one night, we felt like part of the family.

The two experiences are very different and both very wonderful in their own ways. I am excited to have a new experience with a long term home stay, that maybe takes the best parts of my two previous experiences and builds on it.

How it started: Part Two

It is time to start Part Two!

Over the winter break 2009-2010 I continued to play around with the concepts and images I had discovered while working on the self-portrait for my third portfolio during the fall. I really liked the look and functionality of Maya codices, particularly because I love to work with books, both making them and altering them. I also liked the idea of playing with my self-portrait. A lot of the Maya art we had looked at during my fall class was portraits of people turned in that very distinctive Maya profile. I took both ideas and created my self portrait as a cover page for a full codex.

After this first drawing I started to do portraits for my roommates. The codex is designed to be a screen fold book (as Maya codices are) and each page is about 9ins high and 4ins wide. I chose colors that are important to Maya culture, and all of the hieroglyphs are real glyphs deciphered by scholars.

This project, this codex, became my obsession over the winter break and then into the spring. During the spring semester, 2010, I did not take a portfolio class, but continued my studies of into ancient Mesoamerica by taking a 400-level (or major course) called "When Worlds Collide" also taught by Professor Turner. The class looked at the cultures of Mesoamerica before, during, and after the Spanish Conquest. This course brought the ancient Mesoamerican world into a modern context for me, and solidified my interests in these cultures as an art historian and also, surprisingly, as an art educator. My final thesis paper for the class (which is still being worked on and perfected) is a synopsis of Mexica education through the lens of modern pedagogy.

During this time I continued to work on my Maya codex , which got the name "The Boston Codex" as a commentary on the naming process used by historians for ancient Maya Codices.

Because I did not have a "portfolio" class, I was really able to figure out on my own what I wanted the Boston Codex to be, and how I wanted it to grow. Once I had a plan, and really knew what I wanted the codex to become I was taking a summer portfolio class through MassArt and my whole Maya Portfolio blossomed. With the help and support of my summer classmates and my teacher my codex expanded, and the ideas and content started branching into pieces and even new media.

My Maya Portfolio has grown into 10 individual pieces, three large family portraits, four self-portraits (two of which are carved in wood), and three books including The Boston Codex, which is currently made up of 40 individual portraits.

The next turning point for this rambling story happened after the summer semester 2010, when we all came back to school and I got some very exciting news.

I'll get Part Three done as quickly as possible! XD

New Camera!

I got a new camera yesterday in preparation for my trip! It is a really nice digital and I have been having a blast taking silly pictures of myself testing it out!
I will upload the best ones to the blog soon! Promise! :)

Published with Blogger-droid v1.7.4

How it started: Part One

I would like to start this travel blog with the beginning of the long process I have been going through to get this trip to happen, so please pardon this long-winded explanation! (it will probably be several entries too... sorry!)

It is hard to pick a specific time in my life that led to this amazing culmination of occurrences which has me in a "right time, right place" situation; it could be at my birth, at the time we moved to Massachusetts, the time I spent in a Charter Middle School, the art teacher I had in High School, etc. I feel that the absolute perfection of my finding this program at this time in my life and with the goals and ambitions I have, it could very well have started at any of these key points in my life. A huge, life setup and preparation for this time, place, and attitude that couldn't have happened without any of these turning points (particularly the birth thing, that one is pretty key).

At this point I am going to jump to a time much closer to this point in time. I will start with September 2009, my first semester Junior year at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

That semester I took a class called "Maya Art and Archaeology" with Professor Turner in the Art History department. I was (and am) an Art History and Art Education Major (full double) and the class was fulfilling a requirement for my program.

This class introduced me (and the class) to the culture, art, and language of the ancient Maya people. The rich culture of the Maya captivated me from the start, and though I didn't know it at the time, it was going to become my obsession.

At the same time that I was taking this class I was taking a Portfolio class for my Art Ed program. The portfolio class was designed to focus the students on their individual art practice and creating a cohesive portfolio. In this class I was working on two separate portfolios; one speaking out against domestic violence through performance and the creation of a website, the other is a series in which I sewed into window screens with purple thread. One series was to explore concept, content, and a new media in which to work; the other was to explore craft, repetition, and task orientation.

The problem (which has turned into something wonderful) occurred when my portfolio teacher told me that I was failing his class because I didn't have enough work. Suffice to say, I panicked. In a last minute ditch to pull up my grade, I completed one more window screen than I had planned and did a whole new third series.

The third series was literally the first thing I could think of: I did three small pieces based off of my liberal arts courses from that semester. The first two pieces were based off of my final paper for Literary Traditions. I wrote a paper comparing and contrasting the versions of Hell in the book "Dante's Inferno" and the movie "What Dreams May Come." The two pieces I created for Portfolio where my visual interpretations of the movie and book versions of the Suicide section of Hell.

The third piece in the series is a written self-portrait created utilizing actual Mayan hieroglyphics and images from certain Maya codices. These three pieces along with the other two portfolios I managed to get a B+ in the class.

At the same time I was writing a paper for the Maya class on a particular Maya art piece in which I was analyzing symbols and what that analysis could inference. I had a blast doing the research and building a passion for the topic and where the analysis was leading.

This is where I was opened up not only to looking at the ancient Maya through the lens of Art Historical study, but also through my visual art.

Just wait! Part two is coming soon!!

Official Travel Blog

Okeedokee!!!

So I will be using this blog from this point on to not only record my thoughts and whatever I find interesting at the time, But I will also be using it as a travel journal about my study abroad in Guatemala this Fall!!

I will be traveling to Guatemala on August 27th, 2011, and will be coming back to the Boston area on December 3rd. during the time I am there I need to record what the experience is like and what I feel, see, think, etc.

I will be adding pictures to the blog as I go as well!

So be prepared my non-existent followers! Here comes the Study Abroad Experience!!!!