Holly Myers
Arts Scholar
Semester 1
N/A
Semester 2
Well, for ArtsFest I was expecting to be able to walk through the exhibit and see and speak to my peers, hearing their opinions on my own work and giving mine on theirs. Unfortunately, the circumstances sort of ruined that, but the online exhibition was well done and I was excited to see everyone’s work, even without the personal interaction. Through my own workshop, I was able to give my opinion and feedback on other people’s work and hear what they thought of my work, even if it wasn’t in person. Another element of ArtsFest that I was looking forward to was being able to see the sophomore projects, so that I could get a better idea of what my own project could look like. Although I was less motivated to go through each website and look at each project, the ArtsFest assignment helped me with that, as I chose which projects and workshops to write about.
I’m glad that I chose the workshop that I did, as I had fun with the activities and projects that we participated in throughout the semester. The final project for the photography workshop was very personal to me, and was made up of self-portraits, so I found that to be my most significant contribution to both the workshop and the ArtsFest exhibition. While my other photography projects helped me to advance my skills and understanding of photography, the final project combined that understanding and skill into a very personal display of my identity that I was excited to share with others.
Before taking the photography workshop, I had started to become interested in photography, getting a DSLR camera so that I could take better photos, but I didn’t really have any subjects or reasons to use my camera. With the range of assignments and subjects and skills that
were focused on in the workshop, I was able to become more comfortable and confident about my photography skills, and will definitely be taking more photos with my camera in the future. As far as my other artistic skills, mainly with graphite, the first semester was my time to experiment with that. That project was especially important to me because I got to choose my subject, compared to the specific instructions given in so many art classes. Along with the new graphite shading techniques I experimented with, I feel like my ability to choose and execute a composition was bettered. So much so, that I have already begun to think of ideas for my sophomore project, and I’m quite excited for it. Oddly enough, the art-related courses required for Arts Scholars helped me to have a greater appreciation of art history, ARTH201 being the first arts course I chose. I wish the course had been a little easier (the exams were based on remembering a ton of artwork and artists and dates) but I learned about so many different styles that I was able to compare against my own style and even add to my own style.
With so many different kinds of artists and so many different majors in the program, I have been able to see how passionate others are about their art or their favorite art. Being a visual artist, I am most used to viewing visual art and hanging out with other visual artists in classes, so I tend to be more biased towards visual art. As mentioned previously, I feel that the Arts Scholars supplementary courses have helped to broaden my understanding of art history and movements, but the Scholars class itself has helped as well. With the different visitors and topics, I was exposed to far more types of art than I’ve traditionally seen or been taught about. It’s helped me to appreciate more types of art as well, both personally and more broadly, as art applies to society and others.
The best thing about Arts Scholars is the way it lets you live with others who are also interested in the arts. I’ve been able to make many friends this way, and share my art with them, and seen their art as well. The assignments, such as the pentathlon, helped me to explore the art opportunities on campus, even leading me to join the Arts Advisory Board, which introduced me to even more people in the Arts community. Although I don’t plan to become an officer on the Board (double majoring requires a lot of classes) I still plan to help organize its events and attend them in the future, hopefully, the circumstances won’t prevent that.
Semester 3
In my opinion, as a person you can’t undo your learned history and biases and beliefs, but you can learn how to grow beyond them. Especially with our current education system, much of my own reeducation has been from my own efforts rather than based on previous teachings in school. Being an artist I tend to view and consume a lot of art on social media, which has actually contributed to my reeducation because several of the artists I follow are very active in the promotion of current issues as well as more general issues. For example, a black artist I follow creates a lot of narratives that include black characters which is helpful to my understanding of how black characters should be written as opposed to popular media like, say, Harry Potter which was written with pretty minimal diversity. So although this is the media I enjoyed while growing up, I am now able to recognize its faults while appreciating the story’s influence on my childhood. Luckily I didn’t grow up in a family with aggressively biased beliefs, is anything my biases stem from lack of education and exposure to media that prioritized characters and narratives that were mainly white.Â
From my own experience, my default method for creative processes is to vaguely follow the scientific process but for art instead of science. So a concept or idea, how I plan to execute that idea including methods and presentation, then laying out the steps. For the Capstone I followed the steps set out on the Capstone Studies, which were very similar to the scientific process but with the addition of more steps in the idea development section and the presentation concepts. Feedback, both negative and positive can encourage deeper evaluation of one’s ideas and creations, the faults, the areas of strength, and what appeals to others. Personally, I use negative, or constructive, feedback to address weaker areas of ideas and change them according to the feedback so that it is better understood or read or viewed by an outside person, even though I might understand the idea as an insider. Speaking of inside and outside views, feedback can be especially helpful to me, as the creator because I might have biases because it is my idea or I might have read over it too much and missed something that will stand out to an outside viewer. During the critiques of my Capstone ideas, feedback from my peers and Heather narrowed my initial reasoning and ideas into a better, more detailed concept rather than the broader idea that I had initially been planning to go with. I was so focused on the first idea that I came up with that it helped to have outside opinions to help me narrow that idea into a better concept.
I feel like as far as content, ARTH260, or Art and Activism, is the most similar to what I’ve learned and experienced with Arts Scholars. In ARTH260 we discuss art movements and the impacts they have and the effectiveness of the activism within or related to that movement. We’ve had guest speakers like we do in Arts Scholars, one being Dr. Susanna Temkin, a curator who discussed the chicano muralist movement. We also had a team project that connected us with our classmates and encouraged us to use art to promote an activist movement much like the Capstone encourages us to promote an idea that will impact our viewers just as activism does. The discussion of art having an impact on people and the greater world is also an element shared by the two courses. I actually encountered a lot more art activism through this course than I am usually exposed to, which I found helpful especially because the content of the course went from events 100 years ago to current events. Something current, though not super prevalent, that I learned about in ARTH260 was the AIDS blanket which I wrote about in one of my weekly papers. The blanket serves as a visual representation of a large number of American lives lost to the AIDS epidemic, with personalized squares for each person. My engagement with the Arts program both exposed me to the course itself and also provided me with knowledge from guest artists regarding how different people use art to express ideas and movements. This project stood out to me specifically because of the comparison I made between the number of AIDS deaths to the number of COVID deaths, both in the hundred thousands and mired in public misperceptions and resistance.
The GroupMe and Zoom meetings were really the only opportunity to interact with my classmates this semester, but some of the friends that I kept from last semester were also available outside of those settings. Friends are great motivators for me, and it’s always fun to have someone you know in other classes or, alternately, someone in a similar class to vent to about homework and such. I was actually eager to participate in discussions this semester, even though I feel more hesitant to contribute in my other, larger classes. I’d hope that I’ve contributed to the positive environment that I see in Scholars, by being as active as I can during class and also trying to be supportive during critiques with classmates. I’ve also tried to be active on GroupMe since I can’t interact with the others in the class in the dorms or other outside of class environments like a normal semester. I would have definitely enjoyed the in-person interaction of said in-person environment of a normal semester but even the field trips of this semester were still enjoyable because of the positive environment and smaller, more intimate class size.
With my basic white nuclear family upbringing it’s always helpful for me to see different perspectives and concepts because my environment and education are inherently biased towards the white perspective. Guest artists especially help challenge my personal perspectives because they often create their art based in their culture or experience, which is going to be different from my own experiences and allow me to expand my views and beliefs. For example, the guest artists from HITO provided examples of their own experiences while also encouraging us to explore our own experiences, using any art medium that appeals to you, not limited to visual media as you would expect for a newspaper type of publishing.
Semester 4
​While the Pentathlon assignment was a little different for my first two semesters, I can really see my growth in both the length of the writing and the depth of the analysis within the paragraphs. My very first Pentathlon of Lia Halloran's gallery works was essentially a summary of what I saw and a few sentences about how I wanted to have my own style too. Very simple and to the point. Compare that to my Pentathlon where I watched a rendition of the Swan Lake ballet, and the difference is obvious. I first discussed my connection to the event, then analyzed the history of the ballet, connected that to my experiences and knowledge, and finishing with a connection to my own art and how I could use the information I gained in my own works. So not only did my writing improve, my thought process became more complex and I became more involved in the event or art I was viewing. This improvement can help me to improve in other areas besides artistic pursuits as well, with the improvements to my writing and analysis serving me in courses where writing is required or where I need to intelligently analyze a paper or piece of information.
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​Previously, I never really sought to convey a message with my art, only drawing something because it looked nice or because I had to follow a prompt for an assignment. So it was really helpful to my artistic development and my view of art as a whole to meet different artists and hear about their experiences and the messages they sought to convey based on those experiences. One experience that stands out to me was the concert by Leyla McCalla that I attended, where I was able to experience both her art and the experiences behind it. She poured much of her identity and heritage into her art, and I sought to emulate that with my capstone, drawing on my experiences and heritage. Additionally, the required courses for Arts Scholars encouraged me to take various art courses including art history and art theory, which allowed me to look at the deeper concepts and themes of art, and what it means, to myself and others. As mentioned previously, I had sort of been conditioned to view art as an assignment after years in school where art courses assigned projects and other classes didn't want me drawing in the margins of essays and worksheets. Also, the art theory course encouraged us to visit museums much like the pentathlon events of Scholars, leading to me gaining a more critical view of the art I view and consume, actively analyzing books I read or other art forms I see in my normal life. The combination of my increased exposure to art and artists has allowed me to grow as an artist, and lets me enjoy my art as something more than an assignment.
​Considering how little of my self I had previously incorporated into art projects, I think I gained a lot from this program and the supporting courses in that regard. I was able to broaden my perspective and knowledge of artists and art history in the two art history courses I took, learning about different styles and artists I had not previously known about, or only been briefly exposed to. And the program gave me access to artists and peers and experiences that encouraged me to consider my place in my art and the art world. The project me and my group of peers completed freshman year showed me how to work on something that drew from a theme but was also my own work. That project also allowed me to work alongside others while also maintaining my individual work. And the workshop in the semester afterwards allowed me to explore a different medium, and encouraged me to plan my capstone around exploring a medium that was familiar to me in order to expand my knowledge of it as well as my skill. The colloquiums gave me experience in the planning and management side of creating my capstone, as well as a support system of peers and faculty to lean on or ask for advice in times of difficulty as I worked on my capstone. My final concept also originated from the artists I was introduced to, the idea that I could draw on my self and my experiences for inspiration, deciding to draw on my interest in fairy tales and fantasy to create an art piece but also to critique the fairy tales that I had merely viewed as a form of escapism when I first read them. And my end product, while not what I had originally planned, was still something I was proud of because of the support I received in the capstone course, and the idea that it was okay to "kill my darlings" and that my peers were also experiencing difficulties, it wasn't just me.
​With both my first semester project and my capstone I was able to explore and deepen my knowledge of pencil and graphite as a medium. Pencil is my go-to medium, and many of my high school projects reflected that reliance, but I wanted to expand my skills on something that was more for me than for an assignment, so that was part of what inspired me to create my capstone. The visits from various artists also gave me a look at other mediums and artistic realms, compared to my rather single-minded focus on 2D art in high school and earlier. While I won't be becoming a dancer any time soon, the exposure allowed me to become more open to different forms of expression. The workshops of my spring semesters also allowed me an opportunity to explore different mediums, with my freshman workshop offering me a chance to expand my photography skills and my sophomore workshop letting me explore digital media. The latter also allowed me to explore themes and storytelling through art because of the focus on Greek mythology and creating art based on the myths we read about.
​The experience that stands out to me most was the group "gallery" I and my peers produced in the fall of our freshman year, working together and separately to cover a chosen topic. While most of the work was independent, there was still collaboration in the form of planning and discussion and deciding on how to curate our pieces. Each member of our group decided which unique medium and subject to focus on in their respective pieces, but the cohesive theme united them, as did the final curation. This was also a good way for me to gain collaborative skills because it didn't force collaboration like in many other group projects, instead allowing individuals to work individually to create something that would come together as a single thing at the end of the project. And the overall theme united those individual ideas and views, from my own portrait piece to a piece by a peer focusing on lettering.
​Although I intend to pursue a career in animal science and not art, I would like to continue producing art. For myself and others and maybe even for profit, though I would need to gather an audience before I felt confident enough to accept commissions or sell other art. If I do end up producing art for a profit, I can use what I've learned in Arts Scholars about the creative process and managing a project of larger scope like my Capstone. Events in which I was able to learn from practicing artists benefit my knowledge of how to market myself as an artist as well as offering me different perspectives on the purpose of one's art, and the topics an artist can address.