State of the Union: A Student-Curated Exhibition was a show solely developed, created and curated by the students of the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Professional Studio practices class in the fall of 2017.
When this project began I was told the goal of this exhibition was for us to learn the process of developing and curating our own show. After many meetings within the class discussing what we would showcase and how to do so, we developed the theme of “What does it look like in America in 2017? ” At this time it had been several months of adjusting to our new President, and we were thoroughly intrigued by what other people thought of when asked this question.
Along with the overall theme, there was the question of finding artists to participate in the show. It took some time to figure this out, and in the end, we decided that we would be the artists within the show, however, we needed to collaborate our work with someone of our choosing. Because my concentration within my art practice is education and creating connections between myself and students, I chose to reach out the Blackburn Alternative High School in the hopes of being able to work with their students.
Luckily I had been apart of a project there in my Art Education days, so when I reached out to the Service Learning Coordinator Cathy Nelson (love her!), I was eagerly accepted into their community for this project!
To begin the project I had to create lesson plans for when I would be in the classroom with the students (there’s no way you can ever be prepared enough to stand in front of a room full of teenagers) and then jump on in! Days with the students were very relaxed; discussions about current events, American History, and social issues were the topic of most of our days. Throughout the discussions, students were encouraged to speak as freely as possible, and create one piece of artwork during each day. These artworks could be anything from a drawing, painting, collage, all the way to journal entries of poetry. The space and environment during this time was meant to be as free as possible.
Day after day the students and I had great discussions and created so many unique works of art. Towards the end of my time in the classroom, I had piles of student-created work that I was so proud of! Because there was so much work to go through and such a little space in the gallery, I chose to take apart some of the students’ pieces and then created three collage prints consisting of parts of the pieces that best explained the students’ perspectives.
In order to be able to do a workshop such as this again, I created these prints using a printmaking technique called “photo transfer”. This is a very simple technique that is great for many ages and easily transported into a classroom. Using a computer-paper printed image of the collage, I was able to transfer the students work from that onto high-end printmaking paper using Transparency and hand sanitizer.
Being able to work with the students, hear their honest thoughts and ideas on topics that are so, so important was seriously such a blast. Creating a successful body of work within that time is just an added bonus! Click here to check out an article the Service Learning Academy featured on the project in their Fall newsletter.
Cheers!
