BFA Thesis Show

On Friday, December 9th, both MFAs and BFAs had their thesis show displaying their work during the past year. One Photo BFA, Dan Lucash whom I worked with this past semester, displayed 9 of his best works. His thesis was Exertion; portraits of Athletes after they've just completed a game. I was his photo assistant through out the semester. One of my favorite portraits we did together was at Long Beach, LI during a surf competition in September. We were lucky enough to have the beautiful Rosie Hodge pose for us. She is a professional surfer, model for ROXY and QuickSilver. When he broke his hand, I helped frame and organize his show with installing and de-installing. Five of the portraits include SUNY New Paltz athletes, which will later be a permanent collection of SUNY New Paltz- held in the Wellness Center.

Mandalas 'Round the World

Yesterday, Dec. 9th, my partner Sam Leopoldo and I did a mock 45 minute lesson in our Theory and Practice class. We organized a bulletin board outside our class to give a brief overview of what we'd be teaching.

Our objective for the lesson was to practice the Elements and Principles of Design as well as giving a brief lecture on the cultural history related with mandalas. Above is my teacher example I used to illustrate what the final product should look like. It was a fun activity to practice the elements and principles of design. However, if I could modify how we executed the lesson, I would have involved the idea of culture a little more. Perhaps instead of sticking to basic geometric shapes we should have asked the class to be more inventive with their designs and link them back to their own heritage.

Fieldwork III Presentations

Earlier today, our Theory and Practice class had the opportunity to learn from each others lessons they did in field work III. Each pair presented a 5 minute summary of the lessons they prepared at their placements. One lesson that I took note of was Billy Kushner's. He did a technology based lesson in Adobe Photoshop utilizing type faces. In this lesson, he asked students to type out their full names, then create a figure or face out of those letters. The students were able to explore various type faces in a creative way while also introducing the students to the software. This looked like a fun, easy way to engage the students in technology.