Yay! New classroom!

Week 1, Day 2

We began the second day of class by moving into a new classroom.  Art 220 will now be held in FA 308.  I've had a couple other classes in this room before, and I like it a lot more than FA 320, our original room.  Our new classroom is definitely more spacious.  Oh, and it actually has chairs!  No more sitting on uncomfortable stools!  Well, not really.  I'll explain later...

Professor Moss talked about the difference between a thought and an idea.  He also explained to us how concept development involves process:  in order to develop a concept, we must go through a process that involves generating ideas and coming up with solutions.  Everyone in class seemed rather tired and sleepy (I know I was), until Professor Moss told us to get up from our seats and sit in first name alphabetical order, with the A's sitting in the front of the class and the Z's sitting in the back.  This surely woke everybody up, as we all frantically got up from our seats and scrambled to find out where the heck we were supposed to sit.  The people whose names began with the beginning part of the alphabet had an easy time doing this, as they quickly sat down in the front of the room.  Those whose names began with the later part of the alphabet seemed to have some trouble figuring out where to sit; I was one of those people.  There was some confusion as to how the aisles should be alphabetically organized:  horizontally or "S-shaped."  I was the last person to sit down, and since there were no more chairs left in the room, I had to sit on an uncomfortable stool next to the edge of a table for the remainder of class.  Lucky me.  All in all, I thought we, as a class, completed this exercise rather quickly.  I was wrong; Professor Moss informed us that we were the slowest of all his Art 220 classes to do this.  We were then asked if we knew the reason for this exercise.  I thought it was a way for us to get to know each other's names.  Several of my classmates were thinking the same thing too, that this activity was an "icebreaker" to get us to talk to each other.  Some of my other classmates suggested that Professor Moss made us do this exercise because he wanted to see the process that we would have to figure out in order to solve this problem.  Nobody seemed to have the answer that Professor Moss was looking for; he finally revealed that the reason for this exercise was perception.  He wanted us to realize how our perception of the class would change if we sat in a different part of the room.  Well, I had a good perception of the class when I sat in a chair with a table, but everything turned negative once I sat on that uncomfortable, unfortunate stool...just kidding!

After the seating activity, Professor Moss went around the class asking everyone to formulate a "What if...?" question.  I had several questions in mind, but I was the last person that he got to, and some of my classmates had already said what I wanted to say.  As we neared the end of class, Professor Moss showed us a collection of images and asked us to say what came to mind for each image.  Each image was drastically different in tone and subject, and Professor Moss explained to us how the visual evidence found in each image would help us develop our perception for that particular image.

First Day of Spring Quarter!

Week 1, Day 1

Today was the first day of spring quarter!  My first class of the day was Art 220:  Concept Development; this class goes from 8:00 am to 10:30 am on Mondays and Wednesdays, and is taught by Professor Jimmy Moss.  I haven't had an 8 am class in 2 years!  I actually had to go to sleep early (at 2 am, yes I consider that early) so that I would be able to wake up for class.  I have to get used to going to sleep early and waking up early so that I would be able to focus in class and keep a clear mind.  I am so not a morning person.  I usually feel semi conscious most of the time.  I really need to change my habit of going to sleep late, at least for this quarter.

During class, Professor Moss discussed what we'll learn this quarter.  We touched on the subjects of critical thinking and experimental learning.  Professor Moss then announced that he had something to give to everyone...a Mandarin orange!  One of my classmates walked around the room with a bag of oranges, asking each person to get an orange.  When she got to me, I reached into the bag and grabbed what seemed to me was a "pretty" orange.  But when I took out the orange, it was nowhere near pretty:  the orange was irregularly shaped with a large, greenish gray blemish on the bottom, and the texture was rather rough and porous, which reminded me of someone with really bad skin.  Professor Moss told us that we had exactly 2 minutes to describe our orange to whoever we were partnered up with.  My partner was Sandy, and I described my orange to her first.  I thought that this was going to be an easy task, but this was certainly not the case!  I ran out of things to say after a minute went by.  Describing an orange was a lot harder than it looked!  When the 2 minutes were up, we were asked to swap oranges with our partners and repeat the same 2 minute description process.  Sandy gave me her orange, which had even more blemishes than my original.  Then the person next to me asked to swap oranges, and I ended up with a near-perfect orange.  My new orange has a nice, round shape, smooth skin, and barely any blemishes.  I like my fruit to look aesthetically pleasing, so you could imagine how happy I was to end up with a nice-looking orange. :)  Anyway, Professor Moss told us that we were to do 5 renderings of the orange on 7" x 7" paper every week for 10 weeks, and turn in 50 renderings at the end of the quarter.  Each rendering has to be done using a different tool or technique each time.  Professor Moss told us that this is a perception exercise, and we should be aware of how our oranges would change in appearance over the course of the quarter.

I named my orange Juju!  Juju is wearing a bow because she's a girl :)

We were also told to create and maintain a blog for this class throughout the rest of the quarter.  I've never kept a blog before, so this is a brand new experience for me.  I have decided to call my blog "Lorraine's Lair."  Why Lorraine's Lair?  Well, I've always been a fan of alliteration and I wanted something that would be easy to remember.  Also, a lair is defined as a hiding place, and I consider my blog as a place where I can "hide" behind my computer and express my thoughts and feelings...