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LISA WALCOTTDecember Guest Artist
CHUCK ANDERSONNovember Guest Artist
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OurThreeThirty is an open exploration of the monotony and magic that happens mid-afternoon. Take a photo everyday at 3:30pm and post it here. -
Category Archives: Education
The visuals are lack luster; the content is not.
My brain is so full right now. This morning I got together with a local leader to chat about creative education in Holland. Her passion for the success of her students was contagious and throughout the meeting I couldn’t help but feel excited for the season ahead. For too long budget cuts have forced creative education to the margins. It’s so encouraging to see leaders in our community see the potential role third parties can play in the upcoming years and entertain mutually beneficial happenings. Even now thinking about it, my mind is reeling.
This week I also got a chance to sit down with a designer at JCI that worked on the re3. Man, walking into that place was like a creative kid’s candy shop. When I was little I used to design cars all the time…I used to dream of doing it as a profession so seeing the work these people did day in and day out made me a bit nostalgic. Our conversation turned towards motivation and what inspired him to pursue a life in product design. It turns out the biggest factors for his success was a mentor who showed him what a career in design could look like.
It made me curious, if skill based mentoring (you know, like good ‘ol fashioned apprenticeship) were an option for more youth how would the world be different? Would it prevent young grads from accumulating massive amounts of college debt to explore what the world has to offer? Would it better prepare them for the future? How would it change our community? Our economy? Our culture? So many questions and so many unknowns, but I’m convinced of one thing: the tighter our local professional and educational communities are woven the less chance a student has to fall through the cracks.
The above video is of Levi Maestro (Maestro Knows) visiting a school in Las Vegas. He’s a 20 year old filmmaker out of LA that’s part of a new breed of entrepreneurs who have found a way to turn their passions into profit (shouldn’t that be everyone’s goal???). So cool. Even cooler is the fact that he’s willing to share his successes and failures with a group of of students looking to make their mark on the world. Are you?
We’re scheming some amazing things for the upcoming seasons, a new school of sorts. Drawing, design, photography, printmaking, film, writing, business, anthropology, sociology, life and lessons learned. It’s going to be a raw. It’s going to be experimental, and regardless of whether it fails or not, it will be a beautiful step in the right direction. We’re moving forward and we want you to come with us.
More plans will be made public soon. The curious can contact me for more.
I found this today and it’s blowing my mind!!! Trade School is a barter based educational community in New York and it’s amazing! I’m convinced something like this could thrive in Grand Rapids (sadly, I don’t think Holland has the population to sustain it). Here’s my over simplified explanation of how it works:
1. Community members sign up to teach a class in something their passionate about. Topics have included (but aren’t limited to) composting, web design, demystifying caviar, fabric making, grant writing and the Chinatown Collaborative Food Tour (meat lovers edition). Yup, eating.
2. These class leaders then post a description of their class and a list of things they’re in need of.
3. Other members sign up to take the class they check which goods or services they’re able to provide or submit something new.
This spurred some good conversation today during our book altering workshop. It was interesting to hear what students would teach and expect in return for their knowledge. I’m happy to announce that if you have copious amounts of Red Bull and the ability to cook we’ll have a plethora of classes soon available to you. :)
Via GOOD.
Our recent visit to Seedlings reminded me of Joseph Cornell and his use of found materials and things otherwise thought of as junk. While not exactly the same as the altered books we are working on, the use of collage, memories, and found materials is inspiring.
Joseph Cornell was born in 1903 and lived until 1972. Most of his work was created in the 1940′s and 1950′s. To me at least, his work still looks contemporary today.
Via Wikipedia:
Cornell could create poetry from the commonplace. Unlike Schwitters, however, he was fascinated not by refuse, garbage, and the discarded, but by fragments of once beautiful and precious objects he found on his frequent trips to the bookshops and thrift stores of New York. His boxes relied on the Surrealist technique of irrational juxtaposition, and on the evocation of nostalgia, for their appeal.
In addition to creating boxes and flat collages and making short art films, Cornell also kept a filing system of over 160 visual-documentary “dossiers” on themes that interested him; the dossiers served as repositories from which Cornell drew material and inspiration for boxes like his “penny arcade” portrait of Lauren Bacall. He had no formal training in art, although he was extremely well read and was conversant with the New York art scene from the 1940s through to the 1960s.
