No walk today, but a lot of interaction with my students...

[MiniChris]

it was a good teaching day. The student whose work I posted here a few weeks ago, has designed a rather 'different' theme statement for the prom decorations...he's still being a bit tight-lipped about the final imagery and how it will be assembles together, but he graciously allowed me to take some pictures of one section today. From this, I went on and did some other playing.

In the same room, earlier, I shot an image of my students filming a Doritos commercial based on the movie, "Taken" starring Liam Neilson. Kids, though sometimes functionally illiterate can at the same time be incredibly inventive and creative...it's what keeps me teaching. C&C always welcome.



I call this one Dangling Participles...



This one, "Ode to the Paper Hanger" (one who hangs wallpaper, or one who passes bad checks)



And the last image..is "Immersed in Her Studies"

[purplehaze]

A provocative post, Chris, and provocative images for someone like me who has deal with the consequences of declining literacy every day. I will be interested to know what statement your student is actually making. I personally find the sight of pages of books ripped from their context, reduced to nothing but form, disturbing. It is as if these scratchings on paper are to your (visually literate) students what Egyptian hieroglyphs are to me. Insofar as your student and you have disquieted me, challenged me, made me squirm, good on you both.

[MiniChris]

Have to tell you, I had exactly the same thought upon first seeing this use of book pages (book-burning came to the forefront of thought), but once assured the books had been found in a dumpster on the way to a local landfill, I saw this as opportunity and a far more creative use of recylable material. For the most part, the pages are from old legal briefs/torts/laws from the 1980's; they'd served their purpose, and beyond being fodder to start next winter's fires, had no other purpose. To provide a clever and creative backdrop, gives them further reason for existance..and who knows, someone might actually read a page or two.

Knowing Nathan, while there will be a reasoning which will make sense, it will only be given so "others" can make sense of it and can converse intelligently on its merits, or lack of..the real meaning probably will never be known to anyone but him. Whatever that real interpretation comes to be, I found the image to be startingly beautiful, backlit in that window and if I make art from it, while our reasons may differ, our intent is the same. I think, knowing him, this is his literal translation of "visual literacy."

[jiro]

Nice work on the book pages, Chris. The idea reminds me of what the Tibetan Buddhist do by hanging some of their prayers outside. The interplay of light and shadows is really interesting and artistic for me. I was just playing in my mind... how subtle it would look like if there is only a small streak of light hitting about 2 - 3 pages in a shot. Now, that's really something! Just my wild imagination, I guess.

[MiniChris]

"how subtle it would look like if there is only a small streak of light hitting about 2 - 3 pages in a shot."

I thought of that as well, but I'd have to cover a lot of light to do so..still, hmmmmmm, perhaps. It wasn't until you mentioned the Tibetian Monks that I remembered where I'd seen this type of imagery...and now, I think I know from whence this lad found his inspiration. Tahnks, Jiro

[purplehaze]

I found the image to be startingly beautiful, backlit in that window

I agree that it's beautiful and I think it was partly that golden light giving the pages an aged look that put me on the "printed word as an artefact of a bygone era" train of thinking. I just wasn't able to articulate it at 2 am (the purple haze thing, you know ). The visual connection with Buddhist prayer flags is intriguing as well; another example of how art means different things to different people. In any case, I think your Nathan is very talented and I particularly enjoy seeing his work through your eyes. I hope you will be able to share the whole installation with us.