Zosia Nicholson
Arts Scholar
Semester 1
After my first semester I can confidently say that the workload was a lot lighter than I anticipated. I’m sure that this is partially due to the online structure of the courses, but even considering that it was much more manageable that I had thought. The courses are definitely more complex and have a larger workload than any of my high school classes, but they were by no means impossible. One class that I took this semester was a literature and women’s studies class that actually taught me a few similar lessons to CPSA100. One of the big lessons that I took away from CPSA100 was that art is everywhere and can be anything. I feel like CPSA100 really emphasized the individuality of everything we do and CMLT275 did the same thing. Both classes offered a lot of assignments that could be tailored to what an individual wants to do. One thing that I wasn’t expecting from colloquium was the range of art forms we would be exploring in it. I expected to be surrounded by people from a lot of different artistic backgrounds, which I was, but I wasn’t expecting so many colloquium class periods to be dedicated to exploring arts that I had never done before, like the zentangles and the poetry/music class.
University life during COVID19 is definitely more underwhelming than I had hoped it would be in high school. I have been able to make some friends but I think overall the “university life” that I experienced this year was very similar to my high school life. Overall, I think my experience as a University of Maryland student during the pandemic was positive. I was initially worried about how the school would handle the pandemic considering it’s a state school with a lot of students and faculty. I was also nervous about teachers not being lenient or understanding during these hard times. I think the thing that I was most surprised about was how kind and accommodating all of my professors were this year. It definitely made me more optimistic about the professors I may have in the future.
The most impactful thing I learned in Arts Scholars came on the day we worked on slam poetry and musical accompaniment. I play the guitar so I was with the group that learned to play. If I had known that it would revolve heavily around improvisation and thinking on the spot, I probably would have opted to work with the groups who wrote poetry. I have always been shy and not very confident in my improvisational skills, so when we reached the end of our breakout room time and I hadn’t been called on to play I was feeling incredibly relieved. Imagine my horror and anxiety when I was then called on to play in front of the whole class. I worked past my fear and was able to play and when I got to my TA time breakout room people even congratulated and complimented me. That day I learned that I am my own biggest obstacle when it comes to performance and improvisation. I also learned how supportive the Arts Scholars community is and continues to be.
Image link: https://davidmatta.wordpress.com/2014/02/08/poetry-and-music/
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Semester 2
Having spent my first two semesters completely online, making connections with faculty has been especially difficult. I’ve always been a pretty socially anxious person which, on top of only learning virtually, made forming relationships with my professors extremely difficult. I was, however, able to get a few triumphant moments of connections with my professors, the biggest of which being when my final project group got our professor to be in our project video at the end of last semester. We were nervous about asking as we wanted the video to be kind of funny, but we faced our fears and sent him the script which he loved. Asking him not only made our relationship with him stronger, but made our final project stronger too. Of course, it was still very challenging only meeting professors over zoom and email and I’m sure I’ll face different challenges once I move into more in person learning, but the experience of making that connection with my professor showed me that sometimes I just need to go for it which is what I would tell incoming students as well.
Making connections with other students this semester was also difficult, but I had slightly more success with it. I was able to make connections with some of my fellow students from my engineering courses by bonding over artistic interests unrelated to the class. This then allowed us to form a close enough relationship to confide in each other about struggles we were having with courses or adjusting to the college life. Again, the greatest obstacle for forming these relationships this year was being online, but I also found it difficult to initiate conversations unrelated to course work which I think would have definitely made these relationships progress faster. I’d tell next year’s freshman to not be worried about trying to make friends or build relationships and if you think you have a shared interest or just feel like sharing to go for it because doing nothing won’t make you friends any faster.
The biggest example of the Arts Scholars Program fostering community was when I participated in the at home scavenger hunt for my Arts Scholars pentathlon credit. Though we didn’t know each other there were some funny moments and I definitely saw the potential to form closer relationships with other people who participated. I also saw another example of this with the field trip I participated in at the end of this last semester which allowed for some deeper conversations than I was able to have with students from in other courses. I hope to continue contributing to the Arts Scholars community in the future by participating in some of the events like the Arts Fest logo design challenge and the dumpster painting project from this year. I am also interested in leading a workshop for my capstone where I can hopefully teach my peers something useful.
The biggest contributor to the expansion of my appreciation for art in my life was the workshop I participated in. Even though it was on Monday evenings and I was tired from the day, I always found painting and drawing for the workshop to be a really peaceful and relaxing way to wind down from my busiest day of the week. I also gained a deeper appreciation for art from learning about critiquing art and seeing all of the different ways people in the workshop expressed themselves artistically. Future Arts Scholars can definitely also deepen their connection with art through workshops and also through really looking at what other students create and how personal all the pieces are.
Participating in the workshop and pentathlon were definitely the most beneficial in supporting my work as they forced me to actually do things. I love art but sometimes it can be overshadowed by the feeling of needing to focus on academic things, and the workshop and pentathlon not only let me merge art and academics and form an appreciation for both, but also made sure that I was creating throughout the semester. For incoming scholars to make the most out of their time in the program I think they really have to want to get something out of it. It’s easy to passively participate in the workshops, but when you actually go with the intention of learning, creating, and better understanding your peers it’s much easier to see the skills you are gaining, artistically and socially.
Image link: http://www.picturequotes.com/we-are-less-lonely-when-we-connect-art-is-connection-quote-844885
Quote by Nikki Giovanni
Semester 3
During my third semester of Art Scholars I gained several new skills as well as a deeper understanding of many subjects. One major theme that was explored this semester was how art recontextualizes learned history and beliefs. One way I was able to explore this was through the research for my Capstone project. Researching architecture and building design through architectural drawings helped me understand how art can reshape one’s beliefs or perceptions of a place. Drawings of buildings can reveal a lot about the function, intended impact, and artistry of a place or structure that may have been wiped out or overlooked over time. I was also able to explore the creative process through the preparation for my Capstone project. Figuring out my final project took me through the stages of initiating the creative process such as inspiration, where I got the overall subject of my project, and illumination, where after conducting research and allowing everything to marinate in my head, I was able to finalize the central question of my project. All of the opportunities for peer evaluation during the process of writing our proposals were effective in helping me understand how to take feedback and turn it into productive changes within my work. For example, one of my peer’s feedback in the original draft of my skills section brought me from just stating what skills I wanted to work on to actually elaborating on how the project would allow me to explore and improve the skills.
Being able to interact with other scholars through peer feedback also demonstrated to me how beneficial these interactions were to my learning. Living in the dorm with my peers was extremely beneficial in ensuring I always had people to ask questions to when I needed feedback with something I was doing creatively or academically. I wish I had been able to expand upon this in class through more opportunities to interact with my peers in an unstructured way, where the feedback our peers gave us was less guided and more individualized.
One really interesting news related story I encountered this semester was an exploration of the graffiti artist Banksy’s critiques of capitalism. Banksy uses a lot of his eye-catching and easy to comprehend pieces as commentary on the average person’s reliance on big corporations. My time in Art scholars helped me understand and analyze why street art would be a good medium for these messages and prompted me to think into how the criticisms would be received differently if they were presented differently.
One of the supporting courses I took for Arts Scholars revolved around literature and communication in the digital age. Something that really stood to me was the discussion of the idea of the “aura” of a work of art, a term used heavily by Walter Benjamin particularly in his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. The term aura refers to the “one of a kind” unique nature of a hand-crafted work of art. Benjamin argues that with mechanical reproduction and mediums such as film and photography which can be mass produced and wide-spread, this aura is diminished. This particularly stood out to me as I had recently been discussing utilizing mass production and social media to allow an art piece to reach a larger audience and spread its desired message during one of my Arts scholars classes. It was interesting to see the juxtaposition of the critique of art in the digital age along with the benefits of wide-spread coverage and reproductions of art pieces. The contradiction allowed me to better understand my own reactions to works of art I see online and on social media and to understand why in some instances the “aura” may be a desirable feature of a work, but in other cases may pale in comparison to the message a piece is trying to convey.
One activity that allowed me to build my Arts Scholars community and also contribute to it was weaving during the choose your own artventure day. It gave me an opportunity to talk to people I hadn’t previously gotten to know, and I also helped out a few of my peers who were having trouble with the activity. I wish I had been able to capitalize on more opportunities to give feedback on my peers’ work and I also wish I had interacted with more people during the photo transfer workshop with Pyramid Atlantic.
I haven’t yet been involved in a situation related to Arts Scholars where my opinions and beliefs have been challenged. I think this is largely due to my first two semesters being online and this semester largely focusing on individual work towards the Capstone project. I’m looking forward to taking part in an in person workshop this spring where I will hopefully find myself in more situations where my opinions can be challenged. I think it is really important to expose oneself to alternative ways of thinking and converse opinions as it can demonstrate ways a person may need to expand their horizons and just broaden the lens with which they look at life. If someone goes through their whole life with one perspective, it's hard to remain inclusive and open minded which can cause damage to relationships and unintentionally hurt people. One experience in which my opinions were challenged outside of Scholars this year was when I was collaborating on a presentation and wanted to use a certain font but was informed that a different font would be more accessible and easier to read for people with dyslexia. This experience changed my perspective for the better and now I remember to focus more on accessibility rather than aesthetics in assignments where my goal is to spread information.
Image link: Walter Benjamin quote: To perceive the aura of an object we look at... (azquotes.com)
Citations:
Robins , Alex. “Theory in Studio: Walter Benjamin and the Concept of Aura.” Burnaway, 8AD, burnaway.org/magazine/theory-in-studio-walter-benjamin-and-the-concept-of-aura/.
Semester 4
I have seen myself grow a lot over my first two years of college, which has been reflected in my submissions to my website through the years. My first few Pentathlons especially are very short and don’t dive into too much detail or make any meaningful connections. I’ve definitely gotten a lot better at synthesizing ideas about a piece of media. Arts Scholars has also opened my eyes and allowed me to see a lot of performances differently. I really like how as you go through my eportfolio, there are more and more mensions of Arts scholars and how it’s shaped my views and perceptions.
One of the main ways my perception of art has changed during my time in the program is I see art as a tool as well as just a form of expression. Working on our freshman year podcasts and finding working on my Capstone therapeutic really showed me how valuable art can be in improving my quality of life. I’ve also noticed I see art from a more academic standpoint. Completing and synthesizing all the research needed for my capstone project showed me how much work is put into the artistic process. Even if an artist isn’t looking for an academic backing for their art, they still may need to gather reference pictures or interview people to understand the emotions trying to be captured or communicated.
These two new perspectives were really instrumental in helping me use my own capstone project as a tool for conveying what I wanted to convey. I was also able to draw upon my experience working on the podcast and in last semester’s workshop. The podcast really improved my skill at conveying the information I need to convey without adding extra information, really focussing on the important details. My previous workshop helped by showing my different artistic techniques used to draw emphasis to parts of an artwork and helping me understand a little more about how to capture myself in an artwork.
These new perspectives also really helped improve my art during my time in Arts Scholars as I’m much better at communicating my intended message through my art. My capstone project also definitely improved my drawing skills with pen. I’ve gotten a lot better at capturing details and not letting the ink be too dark or muddled. I have also gotten a lot better at layering my pen to create different values on the paper. With ink it’s easy to lack contrast between dark and light areas, but I’ve gotten a lot better at layering my pen to create transition values and more dynamic pieces overall.
One way Art Scholars allowed me to collaborate with a broad range of people was in the capstone development process. Everybody who peer reviewed or offered feedback on my work was focussing on a different kind of art for their capstone and had varying art abilities, but were all able to give valuable advice to me about my project. I did the same for my peers and did my best to collaborate with and offer feedback to individuals despite experience or talent level difference.
I know I’m going to take the experiences and knowledge I gain from Arts with me throughout the rest of my undergrad career and beyond. Being able to convey my thoughts concisely and efficiently will be helpful in almost all of my courses, and definitely carry into my future career no matter what it may be. Personally, my relationship with art has grown immensely during my time here, and I’ll definitely keep using art to regulate and convey my emotions as doing so has already made such a difference in my life.