Pencil Marks & Land Forms (gj)

The design of the grading metrics and rubrics of a class is really an important place for the students to understand the positioning of this course within a curricular structure, and how they are supposed to reflect on themselves and their peers, so they can learn and grow from it. I teach one section of the first year class Collaboration every fall. Because of the fact that the roster list of students who will be in one section is randomly assigned, the content and methods of this class needs to be open enough where students with any category of artistic inclination would benefit from it.

On the other hand, every professor/instructor has their own artistic process and inclinations. We should not ONLY teach what we are best at, but at the same time, we HAVE TO be ourselves, and there is a particular way we, as artists and designers, engage the world, through a certain sequence of tools & methods, whether that being thinking, drawing, making or anything else.

The visual analogy I would use is as if we are tracing a three-dimensional object with a pencil line that moves around in space. Some starts from the top, some from the side, some goes around the 3D object in a rigorously spiraling trajectory, some draws patches of shadows here and there, some might erase their previous line and start again but overlapping the lines is already adding something to this collection of pencil marks.

Eventually, at the end of this “drawing session”, the shape, the character or the nature of this three-dimensional object will come through via this “collection of pencil marks”, and that is where we all converge again, just like how we started, in the same place that all is vague and unexpressed.

And that is the visual guide I have for myself, when trying to write, rewrite, revise and erase assignments I use in Collaboration. This year would be my third run of this course, and the time I am finally feeling comfortable to write about the way I compose and make tweaks to it.

As the instructor of the course, I am aware of the key “shapes” of this unknown three-dimensional object, that I would want to guarantee my students to have made pencil marks on.

The river deltas built upon visual languages, where their expression and their peers’ understanding align and echo with each other, the other visual details, no matter how intentional they could be, will just flow along their own river of consciousness and not make a mark on the other side.

The wind screen behind which, they can safely make their own interpretations and comments based on the vast pool of visual information that is available to them, on the internet, through social media, projecting towards them from all advertisements they see on street driving by, on pamphlets they have been handed on, the kindness and stereotypes they receive from people they encounter every day.

The canyons, through which, they can understand the forces that shaped the recognizable visual terms of a certain style or school of thought, the logic behind the “shaping” process, and how they can adopt as a starting point to generate their own visual mark.

The cliff climbing rope, that is hanging on the steep mountain of materials, craft, practical parameters and restraints, and above all simply efforts and work. The rope that one has to power through, and keep holding on to, until they get to the top of the cliff.

The dune field, of teamwork,  where they need to learn to keep in mind their own artistic priorities, enjoy the journey riding on the ridge where their creative input gets celebrated not only by themselves, but also a group of supportive teammates, and at the same, avoid the troughs, where they lost their vision in details causing conflict that places harm on the bigger picture of projects.

I was obviously in a mood for land forms, when I wrote the above paragraphs. The main point I was trying to make with all these explicitly visual and landscape-like terms, is that, the assignments I have designed, I hope, does not only lead to wonderful student work that express their true creativity, but give them a time-based asset, an experience, that becomes a visual analogy in its own way, lighting up their future creativity journey with a bit of extra brightness.