80 Days of News, 80 Collages & One Truth I've Learned about People & Cultures in Collision

Another Mother's Grief (8.11.14)

Reconciliation Can Happen Between Equals (8.12.14)

From May 25, 2014 to August 12, 2014 I read The New York Times each morning and then created a collage based on some aspect of the news.  (You can see all 80 here and in the slideshow below). It has been a difficult time in the world with wars and coups happening in Iraq, Gaza, Israel, Thailand, and the Ukraine. At home (USA) issues related to economy, immigration, governance, women's rights, rape, and racial and gender injustices have been raised, argued, ignored, pitied and repeated.

Across these somewhat disparate situations, matters of power can be discerned regardless of the topic. Economic injustice rests beneath all of these concerns. There can be no peace without economic justice. Until we not only see other as worthy, but also know other as economic equal--we will continue to be mired in local and global contention. We must become (other)wise.

It was Edward Said who in writing about Palestine and Israel told us:

"I sincerely believe in reconciliation between peoples and cultures in collision, and have made it my life’s work to try to further that end. But true reconciliation cannot be imposed; neither can it occur between cultures and societies that are enormously uneven in power. The kind of reconciliation that can bring real peace can only occur between equals, between partners whose independence, strength of purpose, and inner cohesion allows them fully to understand and share with the other."

To make peace in the world, economic justice is
critical.  We must ensure that all become equal partners, not people colonized who are juxtaposed to one another across vast distances where servitude is insisted upon.

We can do better.

We must.






Cited:

Said, Edward W. (2012-10-24). Peace And Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process . New York: Vintage.

Slideshow - 60 Days: Collage Journal 2014

Become (Other)Wise

Who Will Protect the Children?

 

More than 100 Children

For the last 6o days I have created a collage each day based on my reading of the news--most often sourced from The New York Times. This work is part of a series of collage journals I have kept that were first inspired by the art of Peter Jacobs beginning in 2012. Jacobs has kept a collage journal since 2005.

The art is created though traditional collage methods and digital.  I prepare substrates using newspaper, newspaper images, gesso, pan pastels, acrylic paint, watercolor, watercolor paper, and other found papers. I then import these substrates for use each day and remix these with images from The New York Times.  The finished collage is my take on that days news.

I could not agree more with Jacobs who writes:

“The Collage Journal has become integrated in my daily life as a meditation, contemplation and re-evaluation of culture and identity.”

The slideshow below represents the last 60 days of news.

Music: Bernard Labadie, Les Violons du Roy & Alexandre Tharaud, "Keyboard Concerto in D Minor"

Thinking Visually in the Humanities Classroom: Constraint and Possibilty

Contact Sheet of the 42 collages.

I. Making

As some of you may know I have been keeping a daily collage journal since the end of May. I've composed 42 collages to date. I created the collages, almost always, in response to reading The New York Times, which is one of our home papers. The practice here was to (re)present meaning through image, word, art elements (texture, value, space, color, shape, and line) and art principles (balance, contrast, movement, unity, emphasis, proportion, & pattern) based on something I read and/or viewed in the paper.

Now that I have a bit of a catalog of images I wanted to review them and see what themes emerged about current affairs and then think about how such a project might be applied to the classroom.

Deconstructing the Collages to Name Current Affairs

The news as reported in The NewYork Times at the midpoint of 2014 has been difficult to read each day. I found myself hunting for something in the paper that was not a report of human cruelty. Usually I found interruption to world drama through stories about food (hamburger 6.25.14, ice cream 7.2.14.), authorship (Reconstructing History, 6.29.14), play (South Bronx on the Map, 6.2.14) or love ("More Love" 5.26.14).   Of the 42 collages 19 focused on issues being played out in the world and 23 collages focused on purely national (U.S.) issues such as: "What Did the Framers Really Mean?" [5.27.14], "It's the Economy, Stupid" [5.29.14], or "Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl Freed" [6.1.14].

II. The Themes

There are four dominant themes:

500,000 Flee

1. Death and displacement represent the largest theme present across 14 of the collages--be it here, in the United States--or at distance: Thailand and the Middle East. "Military Coup in Thailand" [5.25.14], "What Did the Framers Really Mean?" [5.27.14], "The Watchmen's Misdirected Gaze"[6.3.14], "Ireland: Orphanage's Mass Grave" [6.4.14], "Sustaining Genocide" [6.5.14], "Driven Out of Mosul" [6.10.14], "ISIS" [6.1114], "Mission Accomplished?" [6.12.14], "500,000 Flee" [6.13.14], "Brother Kills Brother" [6.15.14], "Displaced People" [6.17.14], "A Gloomy Assessment" [6.23.14], "Two Mothers"[6.30.14], "Bereft: Two Mothers" [6.30.14].

   

   Justice
2. Justice (racial, gender economic, political) is a significant theme that is present in 11 collages: "Kids Learn about Social Class through Home visits" [5.30.14], "Stop Holding Us Back" [6.8.14], "Tipped into Poverty" [6.9.14], "Seeking Justice for  George Stinney" [6.16.14],  "Justice" [6.20.14], "Voted to Divest" [6.21.14], "Release Journalist, Now" [6.24.14], "Detroit: A Dream Deferred" [6.27.14], "Christie Vows to Save the 1%" [6.29.14], "Our Divisions are Deep" [6.30.14], "The Boys are Back in Town" [7.1.14]. 

   

   For Want of a Home

3. Six collages focus specifically on issues and representation of national identity and immigration: "Leave Afghanistan" [5.28.14], "National Identity in Europe [5.31.14], "The Way North" [6.14.14], "A Message to the World" [6.18.14], "Makeshift Haven?" [6.19.14], and "For Want of a Home" [7.4.14].                                                                                                               

   

   A New Story at Ground Zero
   

4. The practice of memory and remembrance is a theme I found present in four of the collages. These collages focus attention on remembering: "Remembering D-Day" [6.6.14],  "A New Story at Ground Zero" [6.7.14], "Seeking Justice for  George Stinney" [6.16.14], and "Walter Dean Myers" [7/3/14]. 

III. Applying Collage Work to Classroom Learning

"Seeking Justice for  George Stinney"

As I reviewed the work I've done, I wondered how viable a project like this might be as a choice for students at school. Elliot Eisner (2002) explains that representation “[s]tabilizes ideas and images" and "provides for the means for sharing meaning, and creates the occasion for discovery” (p. 239). I found all of that to be true in making collages and recognize that this ongoing work has shaped how I read, the amount I read, and how I anticipate the newspaper and the news of the day. There's an interconnectedness across many of the collages beyond the idea of theme.  For example, stories about children matter greatly and cross barriers of geography, politics, and time. Making each collage creates strong remembrance of the news and stories that informed each work. I am not likely to ever forget George Stinney. The hours I took creating the collage and looking at his young, and in my mind-- innocent face, has embedded his story in my consciousness. 

In thinking about the transfer of this work to classrooms, I think of Eisner (1997) who contends that “different forms of representation develop different cognitive skills” (p. 349).  Collage making can produce the potential for learners to not simply transfer their understanding of world events as they engaged across sign systems, but rather to develop new understandings. It is the idea of not merely reporting the news, but rather developing new understandings that creates so much potential in this work. The myriad of choices that are made while making a collage help to create new understandings as the work emerges.

Cry Down into a Big River (Reilly, 2012)

I wonder how much more I would have benefitted from the humanities courses I took had the arts been more present.  Instead of only reading about the Triangle Factory Fire, listening to a lecture about The Battle of Gettysburg, or viewing a news show about school shootings--what understanding might have been developed had I been invited to make art--not as a filler, but as an important correlate to the work at hand?  By crossing symbol systems, understanding is deepened, complicated.  By embedding choice into the the work we offer, agency is maintained. Eisner reminds us that “the choice of a form of representation and the selection of materials to be used both constrain and offer possibilities we use to represent what we think influences both the processes and products of thinking” (p. 349).

Now imagine a space (physical and virtual) where the work is shared--perhaps a local library or media center and/or an individual or class blog. One of the surprises I encountered while doing this work was when a friend who has been following the daily collage commented to me via social media that she had been anticipating a specific story she thought I would use to create the collage and expressed surprise when I did not.  In thinking about that I began to realize that the work might inform how others anticipate the news.  I also am keenly aware that there is a potential audience who reside across the globe and this knowledge influences how I read the news and create collages. Audience becomes real and (in)forms the work.

I would love to now if this type of work is being done in classrooms and how it's going.

Works Cited

Eisner, E. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Eisner, E. (1997). Cognition and representation: A way to pursue the American dream? Phi Delta Kappan, 78(5), 348–354.

Increasing Vocabulary through Transmediation: Newspaper Reading & Collage Journal

"Democracy in Turmoil" (Collage made in response to NY Times, 2.18.2012)

In this post I want to share what I have been doing lately with a collage journal and how I think it can be an excellent method for increasing students' interest in reading a daily newspaper which in turn will increase vocabulary.  Three things to keep in mind:

1. Vocabulary is acquired through direct and indirect methods, although the majority of one's vocabulary is acquired through heard and read texts. 
2. Rare words are often the type of words that learners have difficulty knowing. Newspapers are an excellent source of rare words.
3. Transmediation helps to deepen learning as the meaning made in one symbol systems often does not translate intact to another symbol system. This requires the learner to 'reread' and interpret.

During the last week, I have composed a daily response to what I have read in the newspaper.  In my case, that paper is The New York Times. What I have found is that how I read the newspaper has altered as I am reading across articles, advertisements, letters, and images. Further, I am attending to single words and headlines in ways I simply did not do prior to keeping the journal.

In this Slideshare I explain about vocabulary acquisition, transmediation, and the specifics of creating a collage journal.

Reading Newspapers and Keeping a Collage Journal: Increasing Vocabulary through Transmediation

View more PowerPoint from Mary Ann Reilly / Blueprints for Learning, Inc.

Creating the e-Collage Journal

1. Another way to create the collage is to access an online newspaper and to read and/or listen to articles and to peruse images.  
2. Make screen shots (command + shift + 4 keys on a Mac; home key and power key on an iPad, iPod touch) of the images and text you want to use in your collage.
3. Import images into a graphics program. I use Adobe Photoshop, although Illustrator would work as well.
4. Create the collage and upload to an e-journal.
5. This is an example of a collage I made in this manner.

"An American Crisis of Identity" Collage made from NY TIMES, 2.17.2012

If you try this, please let me know how it works for you and I hope you'll share any collages you compose.