Obstacles aren't predictable

In my August post, I was concerned about intellectual posturing in art history. I'm happy to report that hasn't been the case. My problems have been of another sort.

In the overwhelming process of adjusting to graduate student life: loss of professional identity, loss of income, loss of direct contact with family, friends and familiar scenery, intellectual posturing has not been an issue. Adjusting to regional culture and feeling like I fit in this community socially has been a challenge unrelated to subjects of study. It's the classic case of trying to interact with people in the way that worked somewhere else, finding out that annoys people and then recoiling when you can't figure out how to do something different. All that navel-gazing has been sidetracked by the allegations of child rape in the athletics department at my university. Any personal concerns I had suddenly melted away in the flames of Paterno and Sandusky's reputations being burned to a crisp. I am trying to stop worrying about myself and shifting my discomfort to productive efforts to help the community that has willingly or unwillingly adopted me. I return to what motivates me to be an educator: the children.

I can feel uncomfortable and sorry for myself all day long, but I have nothing to complain about compared to those boys. I am grossly oversimplifying the issue when I say that it's unfair that this would ever happen to a child. I hope that the alleged victims of sexual abuse find some peace and a community that accepts them, regardless of how awkward they feel. My sympathy runs deep.

Online Graffiti Art

A fellow art educator and blogger posted an interesting link on his blog (which is a verrry nice blog, I might add) that I responded to earlier today, but I wanted to further explore the topic.
For proper background, first check out his post here:

The Carrot Revolution: A Blog About Art Education... and Vegetables.: online graffiti art

Now, assuming you read his post, investigated the web link he included, and read the beginning of my ramble in response format and decided that you wanted to hear me proceed with my thoughts on the subject, read on!

I clearly enjoy the visual experience that is graffiti, as my photography indicates. I enjoy the process of finding it and photographing it, too. I do not, however, engage in creating graffiti. I did grow up with friends that were taggers. They weren't the artists or writers that decorate the global human landscape that garnish gallery recognition. They were kids with sharpies and spraypaint stolen from the theatre department. We grew up in a poor community where 70% of the residents lived at or below national poverty level. I watched my friends tag their world without judging them as delinquent because I lived in two worlds. My 100 year old home was at the edge of town on 20 acres. We had horses, cows, a few milk goats, rabbits, labrador retrievers, and a variable number of feral cats in the hay barn. My parents were both educators by day and farmers in the evening. My siblings and I never went without. Just across the road that ran in front of our farm was a hill that served as a neighbor's hay field. Behind that was the Northside. It was one of the poorest neighborhoods in town. My tagging friends lived there.
Once those friends climbed the water tower and sprayed over the letters to change the name of the town into something humorous and illegal. Often though the tagging was restricted to bathrooms, lockers, walls on the Northside or desks in school. I knew my friends were angry. They wanted their tag on those things because they had nothing else to claim as their own. Many of my tagging friends went home from school to houses with no electricity or food. I doubt that any of my friends back then though of their actions as a way to claim territory, or have a sense of agency, or to bring attention to their plight. I think most of them just thought of tagging as a way to buck the system, in one of the few ways they could.
I wonder where some of those people are today. None of the handful of friends I had from that neighborhood went to college. I see some of them working around town when I go back to my hometown. I wonder if some of them finally had enough of being stuck in the Northside and found themselves stuck in jail as the alternative.
The point is, there is a certain amount of my personal identity that is wrapped up in photographing the graffiti. The tags are both beautiful and ugly to me, all at once. I see my friends and students reflected in those cryptic created identities. The invented names that the tags depict are mysteries to me. Is that name the one thing you can give yourself? Is it your property, your fame, your hopes, your dreams? Are you still tagging or have you found a way out? Do you tag because you need another identity after you leave your 8-5 job? I even wonder if the tags are a tiny bit of immortality for some of the writers that die in the perilous environments that squatters endure. It doesn't happen often, but the thought that some "anonymous" kid dies in the process of writing their alias sends a shiver down my spine.
I made an effort not to glorify or promote graffiti in my classroom when I taught middle school. We studied the history of graffiti (which is huuuuuge, by the way). We looked at the evolution of styles. I showed them some of my photography and some impressive urban bombing and expertly executed pieces. I contrasted that with simple tag images. We discussed key differences between categories of graffiti. The one point I emphasized in all cases was the legality and safety of writers from all categories. Rather than drag you through the rest of that unit, let me say that the students did create their own tags and they were displayed in our school. My principal and the campus police officer supported the unit wholeheartedly. I think that was due to my emphasis on the safety/legal issues and the fact that we didn't use spraypaint to create the final pieces.

I reflect on that unit often since leaving that school. I have mixed feelings about the results. While I think the students learned quite a bit and were proud of their finished products, I can't help but think something about the unit was askew. The finished works weren't really graffiti, by street definition. It's the same weird feeling I got when I saw that the Brooklyn Museum's Graffiti Exhibit. I can't help but think that many people, including my students and the museum goers, have the same voyeuristic fascination I have with graffiti. For some of those people it becomes an interest in making artistic creations of many forms. For others, viewing is enough. Do these hybrid creative forms and appreciative cultural audiences take the urgent messages out of what some of those street tags are shouting? Does transforming graffiti into an acceptable art form further silence the disempowered? As an educator with a heart for the underdogs, I hope not. Conversely, can this proliferation of sophisticated tagging such as the kinds found at Graffiti Research Lab bring the message of youth in peril to the forefront by presenting in in a flashy new media format? I have a sinking feeling that it's often a mixed message that isn't living up to its socially transformative potential.

Tagging as Teaching?

I have spent a week trying to wrap my head around several conversations. On leap day I met with my fellow blogger/artist/teacher/researcher and our professor to discuss our progress. I have been writing in a meandering fashion trying to reflect on many things that I encounter and relate to my learning and teaching. I felt that the tangential posts I was developing were logical until I had the blog opened up on a projector screen. Suddenly I had this sinking feeling that what may to me seem a cohesive process of connecting the dots (or aiding a growing rhizome) may just be a big mess to everyone else. So, I don't think that's how arts based research is supposed to go (?).
I am currently trying to contemplate how I can explain the photography I have been doing for a few years. I know how it is integral to my thinking and my teaching... but how can I tell you?
I have this funny vertical gallery that I add a few pictures from each photo shoot on the right hand side of this page. What questions do these images raise, if any? I think about how this blog could be speaking to people I'll never meet in person. I wonder if they wonder what kind of artist/teacher/researcher I am. I do.
The tags meet me, but I've never seen a writer in the process of tagging.
I wonder who they are.
I recognize some writers' pieces and tags as familiar. I know their unique style.
I have no way to reply to their pieces, so I photograph them.
I wonder where my students will go when they leave my classroom. Will their unique style reflect their experiences with me?
I keep thinking of those six degrees.