Life Bottenecking

It's kind of funny that we get the assignment to look at images of Pocahontas the day after I go to Beehive Design Collective and during the time we should be thinking about classes for next semester. Since highschool I've wanted to take an Art History class, simply because I love art but have never been particularly skilled at producing it. An art history class would provide that vital link between the beauty of a painting with the social constructs of the time, which I love observing. In my intro to theater design class we just did a project on the Gothic/late medieval period. My section was on historical, economic and social context. Seeing the connections between papal power and the vertical lines in a church, or the economic revolution reflected in the the clothes of people in paintings satisfied the side of me that loves synthesizing. In short, I'm obssessed with whether art follows life or life follows art.
The one question is answered for me though; no art history I classes are offered next semester. But, as you can see in my last post, Beehive Design Collective was an example where art is reflective of the time, this time deliberately to effectively convey a social issue.

All of this was simply rambling on how all the events are sort of coming together. It's a metaphorical bottleneck!

But I already have my overarching post for the week, so this must be reigned into the Pocahontas images we saw. What's most interesting about these images is how much the painters' perspective usually effected the piece. In Sully's Pocahontas  she maintains none of her Native American heritage, but is garbed in a western dress and put into a European portrait pose. The worst part is we have no way to tell how accurate this portrait is! And now I'm wondering what a Native American "pose" would be... How could we be more true to her character? How much of these portraits, tainted with western eyes influenced the current image of Pocahontas? Is it a bad thing that they have the artists' skew? Hopefully we can talk about this in class tomorrow.

Beehive Design Collective

The Beehive Design Collective is a group of artists, activists and researchers based in Maine. Together they live and do art based in social justice. They spend a great amount of time researching an issue, finding out every facet of it from community viewpoints to the western impacts. They've zeroed on 3 major issues so far including the free trade zones, the Columbian drug war and coal mining. The image you see above is the Coal Mining one, focusing specifically on the effects on Appalachia. Just the sheer scope is astounding! If you can see the detail, the animal metaphors reflect the history and culture of Appalachia, the corporate takeover and hijacking of the land, and the grassroots movement.
I'm fascinated by their artistic process. They go through such detail in their research, interviewing so many people and finding out the truth behind the issues they asses. I love when art is used as a tool to promote learning. It morphs a beautiful medium into a useful tool to promote awareness; it takes something aesthetic and turns it into something practical. Also, getting into a community and really trying to understand their perspective, and to contrast it with your own to produce such a wonderful art. It's inspiring!

Wild Animals

I was reading through White's "A True Picture", and there was something bothering me the whole time. It was his tone. Throughout the entire narrative it was if he was describing wild animals in their natural habitat. He observed every detail as if he were watching chimpanzees. The only emotional details he included would be to scorn the native population for valuing copper, or building boats differently than normal, or for not believing in the same one and only God. As it is a report for the queen I could understand, but I don't know... something about it irked me. It's as if by observation they seek to distance themselves. I know they did come in real contact with them, but observing every detail to interactions is no way to begin a friendship.

I could not get into the rest of the readings, at all. Hopefully our discussion tomorrow will help clear up some confusion.

One Breath

Last Saturday the Viking Choir sang in the Family Weekend concert, and if I do say so myself it was fantastic!
I'll have to give a little background on my vocal experience for this to make a lot of sense. I was told I had a good voice after I auditioned for the musical spring of my Junior year. I started taking voice lessons then and even tried auditioning for music majors at some schools. At St. Olaf I wasn't accepted, probably because I hadn't had any legitimate choir experience or music theory training and couldn't tell you where middle C on a piano is. So when I auditioned for Viking I was a little worried, but luckily I made it. And I am so happy that I did.
Being in a choir is just so fantastic! Together you make a wall of marvelous sound. The community is great and supports each other; if I loose my part I listen to the basses around me, or if I'm looking to have dinner I could have it with any of the other 93 guys and I'm sure all of them would be glad to join me. Besides loving the wonderful sound on Sunday, there was one moment where the entire choir took a deep breath at the same time, and you could hear the air moving into all of our lungs. It moved me, and was marvelous.

The Puritans talked about times in nature when we see fantastic splendor of God. In that moment in choir, I saw a moment of beauty in the universe. I felt free to continue producing harmonious sound. It was awesome, in the old sense of the word.

Columbia

Groseclose's article on symbols, specifically what we read about Columbia, make them come off almost as if they're organic. Depending on their environment and who they interact with they change and over time can even evolve into completely new identities. In Columbia's case, she started as a Native American woman warrior, representing the wild perception of all the Americas from before they were explored. Her fierce nature embodied the fear of the those still in Europe. As more people came over the fear of the wild dwindled slightly, and as that fear waned Colubmia become more westernized, more slender, beautiful, and delicate. Instead of a symbol of intense ferocity she represented one of liberty. While that is still a noble ideal, she lost the edge she had before. All that remained of her intensity were the feathers, remnants of a symbol long changed.
The fact that she had Native American feathers shows the fascination that Americans had with the early inhabitants of this land. To many back then they represented a fierce spirit that many Americans harbored within themselves, and may have brought to America to unleash to fight for freedom. It's all part of a symbolic cycle we all participate in without even realizing it.

Symbiosis

It was interesting to read Anella's article after discussing the value Puritans place on landscape. While both seemed to appreciate nature, each did so in different ways. The Puritans looked at nature with awe and splendor as a representation of God within our world. They took a spectator's perspective, just appreciating it from a distance. The Pueblos, on the other hand, appreciated nature by completely wrapping themselves into it and making it a part of their way of life. Their housing was built in symbiosis with their landscape, each aspect incorporating something from the world around them, such as the river that divided one settlement in half or the orientation towards a specific set of mountains. I was particularly interested in the town plazas aspect. Traditional western plazas close themselves off to nature, becoming a part of the city and enclosing those around them. It ignored the nature around them and maybe that's what eventually put them in their spectator position. Perhaps if we took the perspective of the Pueblos, completely open to nature and used as a space for gathering, we would have a better perspective on nature right now. Maybe the concept of sustainability would have traveled down through our generations, and being concerned about environmentalism would be engraved in our habits, not forced as it is now.

Home

Isn't is crazy to think we've been here for four weeks now? For four weeks we've slept in beds that weren't our own, waited in caf lines that wrap around the salad bar in Stav, and heard the echoing chimes while sitting in Adirondack chairs on the lawn. Through clubs and dorm dance parties we're all grown together into a wonderful community. In our readings this week we talked about landscape, and Lane in particular would discuss the idea of finding place, and not being lost in space. This place houses so many wonderful people and grants us so many opportunities... to me it seems like the perfect balance. Almost anyone here, on our microcity on a hill, will smile back if you smile at them walking to Buntrock. Any of the desk workers I've met at Hoyme are always willing to have a conversation, even if it's over something like my laundry. At the same time, we are free to explore the world at large! Our college adventure began and now we can go wander into the wilderness of the natural lands or serve the Northfield community. We can study abroad, throwing ourselves into a new place, knowing we can come back here and be just as happy as we were before. We have a new base from which we are free to explore the wilds of the world. This balance is what Lane says Americans long for; I'm blessed to have found it.