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When describing the creative process (on teams or individually) Roger von Oech defines the artist role as taking the
raw material of exploration and creating something new, to pose what if? questions.
Art can ask us to think about the world as it is, why it is, or as it could/should be. Materials for creation are not only
the physical medium, but includes things like close observation, research, or what is stewing in your mind after an
experience.
For this phase of our class art project, your raw materials are your observations in the Portland Art Museum
(PAM), the characters in A Mercy, and influences you find in our course studies; your creation will be creative art
piece that takes inspiration from your experience at the art museum to express the dynamics of power and status of
the one character in A Mercy that you wrote about in Part 2. This portion of the assignment you can do individually,
or in groups of up to three peers in our class.
You (or your group) are to create a creative response based on one of the characters in the novel, showing your
interpretation of the characters status in short, a representation of the characters power (and/or lack of power) in
relation to their community. Write a brief artists statement that explains your idea and how your art piece
represents it.
Your work can be in any medium (painting, sculpture, photography, computer art, video, poetry, music, dance,
puppetry, theater, and any combination of these); the only limitation is that it must be in a format that we can view in
class during our art salon on March 12.
Ideas to explore: You can recreate an image you studied in the art museum, or choose to riff on a specific iconic
symbol you identified and analyzed in your observation journal, but in either case, you are to create a version that is
appropriate to the character you chose.
Your accompanying written artists statement should be a 1-page, single-spaced formal piece that:
a)
Titles your art piece
b)
Identifies the original PAM piece (or if working in a group, the art pieces) that influenced your art work:
what specifically inspired your work (identify the title, artist, and date of the art piece), or that you are responding
to?
c)
Explain what the image(s), symbolism, and other important aspects in your visual piece are saying about
your chosen character from A Mercy: his/her experience of status, domination, subordination.
Note on creating the artwork: you do not need to recreate the PAM piece, or even create your art piece in the same
medium. Think of the artwork as inspiration. So if youre responding to an oil painting, you dont need to make an
oil painting yourselfyou can do a photograph, or a sculpture, or a song, or an interpretive dance. One request for
visual mediums--you can incorporate a found image, but please no collages.
Think of your creation being along the lines of the way street art transforms our relationship to an original image
(perhaps the kind of commentary that Banksy and others utilize in Exit Through the Gift Shop, or as Berger notes on
p. 25, how reproduction transforms the experience of an image).
Note on assessment: I will not be assessing your creativity or artistic talent. I will assess your written artist
statement essay based on the criteria above, and the effort evident in your art piece. (That is, if it looks like you
slapped it together right before class without much thought, it will be noticed and reflected in the final grade).
Make your artists statement a strong example of your writing (be specific in explaining your ideas, quote to support
your ideas, use clear written conventions, double spaced in MLA format, etc.).