Global Collaboration 2.0

If These Walls Could Talk is an Art History Elective that investigates murals as means of a way of communication. During this course I learned about different techniques that are used to make a mural. This class really taught me a lot about art and how art can be a different way to communicate. For my last Action Project I was placed in a group, and we were challenged to come up with a mural that we would install in our new school space. In our mural we wanted to represent the students that are currently attending GCE. We collaged all the student faces to create new faces. The purpose was to show how GCE is considered a community to us. What I enjoyed most about this project was creating the mural, and how it came out. Overall I really enjoyed taking this class.

Name: JV 
Title: Global Collaboration.
Measurements:Media & Techniques: Stencil, Wheatpaste, Block print.

The purpose to the Action Project is to plan and install the mural my group and I came up with. The mural is really bold and unique. The color’s really stand out, the faces pop up and the flower prints are eye catching. The media and technique that we used to create our mural was block printing, which is one of the oldest types of printmaking technique. One of my group members made two block stamps. She used a linoleum sheet and carved out the pattern. This techniques was my favorite to use because it’s not as messy to work with like other techniques were. I came up with the idea to create a checkerboard pattern with the stamp on one of the walls, and it came out really nice. Stencil flowers were spray painted onto three walls. Stenciling is accomplished by cutting a design onto a thin sheet of cardboard. The stencil is used to reproduce the design multiple times. Lastly, we used wheatpaste, which is an adhesive made from flour and water to adhere the faces to the wall. The wheatpaste was also applied to the top of the images and works as a sealant. Our color scheme is inspired by Shepard Fairy’s Obey street art. There is a lot of red, black, white, and grey. We taught that the colors would bring out and enhance the black and white collaged faces. We also thought the color scheme would look good on the walls our idea is so different compared to the other groups.

The mural definitely transformed the stairway. Before we started working on the mural the stairway was so dull and ugly. The walls were a weird shade of green and was dusty and dirty. The mural is so bold and just catches your eyes instantly, it really brings the staircase to life. The roles that I claimed while making the mural was was the Director of Operations. I was responsible for managing time goals, materials and clean-up. I also worked as the Mule and was responsible for communicating and making sure my group had all the materials they needed. The Documentarian is responsible for documenting the day’s process, and lastly the Artistic Director is the person responsible for making sure the mural is being done right and will turn out perfect. My favorite rule was the Artistic Director, I like everything to be perfect especially when it comes to an art project so I would try and voice my opinion on how things should look or how we should place something. But at the same time, this role was difficult because my group members were very picky and did not want to change the design of the mural. It was hard working with my group because if I had an idea on how to improve something, my group members would always disagree.

If I could change anything about the project, I would want to change the timing. I feel like this course was really rushed and not well organized. I think we should’ve started the mural making way sooner than we did because some groups including mine couldn’t finish or couldn’t do the murals perfect like we would have wanted them to turn out. I would want to change my group, we did not work well together, we didn’t communicate well, and just overall as a group we would always clash ideas and get frustrated with each other. All members in my group envisioned the mural to come out differently and some wanted it their way or no way, and I think as a group that’s not fair. I think if my group would have communicated more we would have gotten along better.

What is reading worth, and what is worth reading?

Book Bound is a course that I was taking this elective term, which course pushed me to explore my own relationship with reading and how it affects my life, and also others globally. During this course, I learned many things, but the main one was how important literacy is and how literacy can change due to our social and academic lives and the growing world. What is reading worth, and what is worth reading? This was my question throughout the term. I think literacy should become a greater topic all over the world and more humans should be able to read and write. In Book Bound, I also learned about the literary canon and how only the greatest books are picked to be on that list. The Great Gatsby is in the canon and I read that book for this class. I think The Great Gatsby is a good book; it has a good meaning to it, but I don’t like the writing. 

There is only one Action Project for this class, and part of the reasoning for that is because as a school we are currently building and designing our new school building. In Book Bound students were supposed to design and build our dream library as a part of our Action Project. But the moving process is taking longer than expected, so that final piece of our work isn’t fully reflected here. These assignments, however, do show the thinking I’ve done about reading, the canon, and the purpose of a school library. The Action Project for this course is a digital portfolio that shows my learning and experience of the course. The Action Project includes 4 assignments that I chose as my best work, which I think was super easy. I enjoyed it a lot, but I just wish we actually got the chance to help come up with a design and build our library. Overall I enjoyed this class and can’t wait to see what the library will look like.

For this assignment, I was asked to promote literacy, especially among our youngest readers. I picked my favorite children's book, and read it aloud to bring the book to life, and also grab the audience's attention. I picked The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. This assignment relates to our course because it’s promoting literacy to a younger age group by sharing a book, which is the main purpose of this class. I picked this project to include on my blog because I enjoyed making the video and I got a good grade on it, so it's only right to publish good work. What I am most proud of about this assignment is that my little brother liked my video.



My second project is a slideshow of a book that I think should be placed in my school library/be placed in the literary canon. I had to present my slideshow to my class and they voted if my book should be placed in the canon or not. I picked the book Tree Girl by Ben Mikaelsen. This assignment relates to the course because I had to pick a book and talk about why I chose the book and also talk about the theme, characters, plot, and why the book overall is considered good enough to be in the canon. I chose to place this assignment on my blog because I think did a good job on the slideshow and the book I chose is really interesting. I think a lot of people will enjoy reading it. The slideshow was easy to make; I didn’t face any challenges but I did make some revisions on some grammatical errors that I had. What I am proud of is how my slideshow came out, and some of my peers in my class were interested in the book that I chose. 



This assignment was to create a literary magazine. We were placed into groups and had to pick a theme and make a literary magazine out based upon it. My group's topic is Thanksgiving because the holiday was coming up when we were assigned this project. This project relates to the class because we had to make a literary magazine ourselves by writing or visualizing anything we wanted about Thanksgiving. I chose to add this project to my blog because I think my group and I did a good job on the magazine. The challenges that we faced as a group were communicating with each other, figuring out how we wanted the magazine to look. The magazine went through some minor revisions. What I am most proud of is how the magazine came out, it looks really clean and simple.

 The literacy poster illustrates the importance of literacy and the pleasure of reading. I had to pick a guiding question and research about it to make a poster that will be displayed in the new library space. This assignment relates to the course because we had to ask a guiding question about literacy. I wanted to know: What is the literacy rate in Chicago? I think this is a good topic to talk about because there are people living in Chicago that are illiterate. This is a real problem because Chicago is a popular city and with all the gun violence and police shootings and the “Chiraq” nickname, I think the literacy rate should start going up so Chicago isn’t seen as a “bad city,” and so that ALL of its residents are able to read and write to have better lives. I chose to publish this project because I think it’s a really important topic. The challenges I faced with this project was the poster; I didn’t know what to draw or how to show my guiding question in my poster, so that people would really get my message. I am proud of how my poster turned out I like the color scheme and how it looks.

53% Created by JV,  2016*

Tagliatelle

This elective term I took Italian again, I really enjoyed it and I learned so much more. My Action Project for Italian, I made a video of me explaining in Italian how to make Tagliatelle which is Italian pasta made with flour and egg. I had fun making the video and I'm proud of myself that I can understand and speak a bit little of Italian.