Smiles of a Summer Day

[Blog title inspired by Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music, adapted from Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night]

Cellphone Shot by Yin Wah Kreher along Pennsylvania highway, May 10, 2014.
This image shows a young man playing a saxophone, seated on a bench on a woody rest-stop
along the Pennsylvania highway.

Moments of beauty and curiosity have ways of showing up when they are the least likely qualities I'm holding in my heart. Driving home from Syracuse University, we stopped to unfurl(?) -- our folded bodies contorted within our sedan for some hours and to have a bite. Walking into the woody rest area, I espied a saxophone player. As the music notes floated out into the woods, I was thankful -- for this time of refreshing at a highway rest-stop.

Curiosity, yes (What a story one could write using this picture prompt!). But more so, gratitude.

Whole Me's Mystery Theater and Spaghetti Dinner

"Whole Me Inc. is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization providing educational and social services designed to promote the success of Deaf and hard of hearing individuals, their families, and their communities." It works particularly with deaf and hard-of-hearing children to ensure their successful transition to adult life; this is done by establishing strong partnerships among key individuals in the child's life. Read more.

This coming Saturday, September 10, Whole Me will be hosting a spaghetti dinner and mystery theater. I can't wait to go! Check this out: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=108494662579738 

Edson's W;t

I came across the Pulitzer-Prize-winning play enough in my readings to decide that it's definitely on my readlist and maybe, watchlist. After some scouting around my vicinity, it was ferreted out. The book/play and DVD were both located within a five-mile radius. I started by watching the movie, egged on by Bob. My preference would be to read the play first. But time is of the essence with my research.

The movie with Emma Thompson in the lead as Dr. Vivian Bearing was pretty intense. Bob says it was "riveting". Suffice to say, it held our attention because we could relate to moments in the movie where as patients, we were at the mercy of doctors. I want to believe that live theater would do it even greater justice. Also, I think some familiarity with John Donne's metaphysical poetry would help.

Vivian is a professor of 17th century poetry who was told at age 50, that she had contracted stage 4 ovarian cancer. Harsh experimental chemotherapy treatment was used on her as a "research" patient, with her consent. Predictably, the movie shows her going through the humiliating process of losing her hair, getting nauseous, losing appetite, the intense pain from the ravages of cancer spreading in her body, to be alleviated somewhat only by morphine.

The movie focused on the doctor-patient relationship and depicts medicine as an institution of social control. Using a highly-educated English literature professor heightened the impersonal dehumanizing role medicine plays in stripping a person of her dignity, regardless of one's intellect, saved at the last battle. When her heart stopped beating, the oncologist fellow, once her student, tried to resuscitate her with the tools of science. But advised in advance by her caring nurse, Vivian had opted for DNR, not to be resuscitated. The medical fellow realizes his mistake and Vivian is left to die, with her dignity intact, alas.

Published in 1999, it was probably an eye-opener then of how invasive and paternalistic medicine and medical providers can be, beginning in the mid-60s, when power abuse in medicine began to come under strong public criticism. However, Schei (2006) argues in his article, Doctoring as Leadership, that this need not be so. Power may be abused but it is this power that a patient relies on, more so during severe illnesses. Schei advocates a model where doctors wield leadership instead of authority. Doctoral leadership is "an improvised adaptation to the transforming processes of the situation" (p. 399).  Improvisation implies potential for creativity. This concept is worth exploring for my study.  

Schei, D. (2006). Doctoring as leadership. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 49(3), p. 393-406.

Image source: http://bit.ly/hjiUrK

Expert Advice on Community-Based Arts

I'm having a lot of fun right now learning and conceptualizing my yes, new study! I've attended a talk on art-based research (See Nov 30 posting). Today, I had the honor to talk to Dr. Jan Cohen-Cruz, Director, Imagining America, author and expert on community-based performance (CBP). That is, on an unforgettable day of rain and snow, making the walk to Tolley Building a wet and slushy one. Nevertheless, still memorable.:)

Marj had recommended I read her book(s). I've started with Local Acts. It documents the historical origins, establishes the field and introduces the principles, methodology and performance structures of CBP. As an amateur in theater productions in Singapore, it's never crossed my mind before how theater/arts can be such a collective grassroots, hyphenated and cultural event, (possibly guided by a professional) at the same time.

Her book engrosses me in many parts. Reading about her positionality(?) vis-a-vis CBP fascinated me. I could make a similar comparison with myself. An avid arts lover and coordinator in a high school, producing amateur productions for national youth competitions, a first encounter with a Deaf student, then my HOH niece going profoundly Deaf, learning ASL in Singapore and Syracuse, and then being on this Access project. I see several parts of my life connecting me to this dissertation interest.  

Dr. Cohen-Cruz was amazing. She shared many website links, names of people to contact and stuff to read up. How incredibly helpful!

Resources to explore:
Project Muse database (I'd always been using Web of Science!)
www.communityarts.net (archived resources, but on Facebook as CAN, which I'd already "liked")
CAN writer John Sullivan
Linda Frye Burnham
Society for the Arts in Healthcare
Center on Age and Community, Anne Basting, U Wisc-Milwaukee
forgetmemory.org
ESTA, Elders Share The Arts, Susan Perlstein, founder
National Center for Creative Aging

So here I go, again, deep diving into new literature! *SSS-PLASH*

We Remain Ourselves

(Image source: http://bit.ly/idu9Xa)

I was definitely intrigued by the title. Art-Based Research and the Intersection between Making Art and Teaching Art.

"Her primary scholarship is in curriculum development, arts integration, the uses of contemporary art in art education and the intersection between creativity and cognition." Of course I had to make the trip to Shemin's Auditorium at 6:30PM!

Dr. Julia Marshall's presentation was fascinating. She spoke on her art practice and how much she learned from teaching art to younger people, like undergraduates and graduates. That if she had just remained an artist sans the teaching aspect, her life wouldn't have been so enriched. She also presented her own art-making ideas and her students' art pieces. I took away from her presentation several ideas on how to express creativity. And to keep collecting and documenting ideas that fascinate me. Someday, they will come in useful. Like the one above, one of the Beijing Olympic Mascots, Yingying, the Tibetan antelope.

She teaches her students to keep research or reflective sketchbooks which document their development and interpretation of different source ideas juxtaposed to create some novel concept or metaphor of their understanding about an issue.

Dr. Marshall (mentored by Graeme Sullivan, just like Dr. James Haywood Rolling Jr.) believes that art research is facilitated by curiosity, purposeful art-making, investigation and creative interpretation, just like social science or scientific research. Students construct their own knowledge or understanding by observing, collecting, drawing, mapping and reflecting.

She counts Mark Dion and Simon Evans as artists worth following for their insights on art. Some primary sources for art, mapping and metaphor-making? Brace yourself: scientific illustration, maps and diagrams (e.g. acupuncture/reflexology charts), conceptual maps, packaging, popular visual culture. These were some types of maps she used to frame stories.

One clever metaphor was the use of seeds or plants to illustrate the concept of seeds of social change. Dig-plant-seed. *light bulb on*. A seed was painted up and had a propeller stuck on one of its ends to illustrate the idea of accelerating change. Fab.u.lous idea! My mind kept racing as I thought of how her ideas could be applied to the Access project and my dissertation.

She also showed us a student's Map of Printmaking. This particular student placed a veil of tissue over a graph paper and then drew an intricate web with annotations of the history of printmaking. Wow! More student work included metaphors on the Dance of Making Art and Making Meaning (drawings of dancers with words). Dr. Marshall concluded with her own art pieces. As a cartoonist (illustrator), her drawings included maps of the Art of Research. She used snowglobes with images of fallen "empires" on a theme of Snow Globes from Iraq and Afghanistan. Another collage piece was called the Game of Juxtapositions; unexpected elements brought together to unlock creative potential.

She presented a conceptual collage of imagery she created with her sculptor husband, Pangea (Greek for the ancient supercontinent), commissioned by some Korean organization. An enormous collage with images of American and Asian icons.

I'd have loved to ask a few questions but I was famished and everyone seemed eager to get out as it was 8 on a cold night and the winds were howling. I decided then that I'd write about her presentation first and then email her if I wanted to ask her anything later.

Her presentation made me think of how we could work with art students to create a performance with an exhibition. We need to think of several things first: who is our audience, what is our theme, what metaphor can we use to illustrate our message. Think, think.

At the end, Dr. Marshall said, "There is this germ (seed, bud...) in us that doesn't go away. We remain ourselves through life's trajectory." Well said. Through the years, I have stayed close to my interest in the arts and social science, and of helping others express their creative potential.

It's in the blood

Hough agreed, saying that after he began dancing with her: 'I knew that it was in her body, that it was in her blood'

(Image Source: http://bit.ly/cj5NQ5)

Some things are just genetic. I know that I'm more inclined towards the arts. It's a part of me. But it doesn't stop me from learning and growing beyond. However, as I've always been told, be an expert in an area and don't spread myself too thin. It takes too much commitment to be good in more than an area or two.