Picture of the Week - May 18, 2013

One of my favorite things about working with the PNCA Youth Program is watching children make art! The looks of concentration and focus that children wear at times can be so serious. With our classes this Saturday being the last for the Youth Program this academic school year, the kids in our classes were extra focused to finish projects in time for our In-Classroom Exhibitions.

As you can see, our Picture(s) of the Week show our students hard at work on projects and artistic endeavors. We love working with kids that are seriously in to art. How children stay focused and still manage to make things that are playful and completely uninhibited is a mystery. So cool. If you would like to see more work from the last day of class visit our PNCA Youth Program Flickr!

Picture of the Week - May 11, 2013

This last week of classes was super fun and super productive. Since we have only one session left in Spring Term, our students worked diligently on Saturday, with Instructors and interns, to finish projects. In Draw, Paint, Sculpt. Heather McLaughin is teaching her 9-11 year old students to paint self-portraits. This one is pretty rad, right! I think this student captures her likeness very well… especially the cat hat she is wearing.

Educator Development

Incorporate fine arts practices into your teaching curriculum. Three courses are available for graduate credit this summer— Advanced Painting, Color of Place and Printmaking: Collaboration Studio. These classes challenge the participants to engage deeply in art and design principals, incorporate new media and advanced techniques into their own practice and into the classroom.
Scholarships are available for qualified teachers.

FAQs:

What does the scholarship cover?

This program is designed to allow teachers to take classes for graduate credit at PNCA this summer. The scholarships will cover the cost of credit minus the average reimbursement rate of classes ($490). In other words a one credit class costing $1203, the scholarship would be for $713. For two classes costing $2406 the scholarship would be for $1426.

What classes can I use this for?

Only these three: Advanced Painting, Color of Place and Printmaking: Collaboration Studio.

How do I apply?

Fill out the application form for the classes and send an email to ce@pnca.edu requesting a scholarship for the class. You will need a documentation of your current employment as a teacher in a public school.

What is the studio time for Advanced Painting?
Scholarship recipients will eligible to use of an on campus studio for the duration of the class and the week of July 15th to complete their additional work. Access will be for normal building hours and subject to availability.

Picture of the Week - May 4, 2013

This week there was a lot of paint and play going on in our Young Painter’s Workshop. There were several abstract compositions crafted by various students in the class… lots of experimentation on the art-making front! That is what we like to see! One student worked a great deal with splatters and drips. This was her hand… you should have seen her shirt.

That was such a fun day. If you would like to check out what else we did on Saturday, including plate printing and creature glazing, check out our Flickr Site.

Picture (Video) of the Week - April 27th, 2013

This week our Picture of the week is actually a video. How sweet is that! As we grow as a program, we would like to capture more comments from students about what they are making or what they enjoy… how they respond to a new medium, etc. Below is a short clip of one of our ‘Young Painter’s Workshop’ students trying out the program’s digital SLR cameras. Here is the result!

If you would like to see more photos and videos from this round of Spring classes, check out our Flickr Site.

Web Development

Jack Bouba, a former Continuing Education student who is now a front-end developer at Planet Argon, wants to give back to the community the gifts of learning that he received as a student and that prepared him for his professional practice. Jack and the Planet Argon team are offering a one-day web development workshop on May 6 that will provide an introduction to Github, SCSS, Bootstrap, and Jekyll. Be sure to take advantage of the 10% discount, promotional code “PNCA.”

You seem to really like your job as front-end developer with Planet Argon. What is special about the work you and your studio do?
The Planet Argon founders have done an impressive job of finding a group of people who are incredibly dedicated to their work. At the same time, we all take ourselves pretty lightly; the atmosphere at Planet Argon is extremely funny and sarcastic and terribly raunchy.

What is essential for anyone wanting to make a career in web and mobile design and development?
I think curiosity is immensely important, as well as a desire to stay informed and current. I think there is a tendency for schools as well as many if not most agencies to have a hard time keeping up, so it’s up to the designer/developer to continue to learn, push themselves, and stay inspired. This is an incredible time to work in the field; there are a ton of jobs but there are also a lot of talented web creators out there. Set yourself apart; putting just a tad of extra effort into your portfolio, resume, or cover letter will go a very, very long way.

What draws you to teaching when you already have a quite demanding project schedule?
I taught front-end development and Flash classes a few years ago, and before I started working in this field, I taught adults and children with developmental disabilities, both in and out of the classroom. I proposed the idea of teaching this workshop because this is exactly the workshop that I’d want to take: contemporary, relevant, emphasizing best practices and forward thinking, etc. Also, it’s a cliché, but teaching is absolutely the best way to truly learn something. Really, there are so many reasons to teach, e.g. to connect with your community, to meet new friends and peers, and to spread knowledge.

I was happily surprised to see Thich Nhat Hanh quoted on your web page. How do you bring the spirit of this sage to your work?
Honestly, as much as I try to remember to “walk as if I’m kissing the Earth with my feet,” I don’t do it nearly enough. I absolutely get stressed and overwhelmed and bogged down by the minutiae of my work, but I do love the sentiment of that advice. I know that I am immensely fortunate to be alive and healthy and working in a field that’s exciting, inspiring, and important. That quotation helps remind me to try to stay light-hearted and positive, and to laugh at all the silliness that easily gets overlooked or dismissed.

Picture of the Week - April 20, 2013

So, our picture of the week is actually picture(s). Three to be precise. This Saturday seemed to be ‘make a silly face at the camera’ day. These are a few of the funniest/sweetest.

It’s nice to know that students feel comfortable enough in our classes to be playful, and even act a little silly. Art class is, of course, the type of environment where ‘play’ is a major component of the artistic process. We try to encourage play, experimentation, and moments of free expression whenever possible.

If you would like to see more funny faces from our classes on Saturday you can do so by visiting our Flickr Page. You can also visit our Reggie Site to see what classes are coming up soon!

Sense-of-Place Mapping

Kimberlee Chambers will lead a workshop on sense-of-place mapping at PNCA, July 11-14, that explores Portland’s foodscapes. I have recently come across sense-of-place mapping in a surprising variety of context and consulted Kimberlee on the topic.

What is sense-of-place mapping and why has it received quite a bit of attention inside, but also outside, of research and educational organizations?
Sense of place maps are an opportunity to document a particular attribute of a defined landscape that is not regularly seen on a topographical or political map. Sense of place maps provide opportunities to record things that are of importance to individuals and communities that a researcher or map maker may not see or value in the same way. Because these maps move beyond the traditional structure of cartography they appeal to educational institutions and those outside of academia who want to understand what a place feels like, smells like, sounds like and why it may be important to a group or individual. The best part is that the representation of this ‘sense of place’ can be done creatively and collaboratively.

Mayne Island. Map Coordinator: Tina Farmilo. Map Artists: Tania Godoroja with Sarah Sexsmith and Glenda Goodman. In: Islands in the Salish Sea: A Community Atlas. Sheila Harrington and Judi Stevenson (eds). TouchWood Editions, 2005.

What are “foodscapes” and why might Portland serve as an interesting focal point?
The term foodscapes is being used in a wide variety of fields from urban planning to the layout of your kitchen. Within the past ten years, the concept ‘foodscapes’ has become a pivotal point for research in food, food chains, food production, food ethics, food policy and other fields related to food studies. Although no single definition has yet to emerge, a foodscape is basically the multiplicity of sites where food is found and/or consumed. Food can provide a lense to explore everything from the meaning of the space, place, and attributes used for eating to the layers of global flows of people, technologies, ideas, money, and ethics shaping the future of food. Documenting and reflecting on foodscapes can help us to understand how the built environment shapes our behaviour and what may be unique or lacking in a particular place. Portland, with its fascination (obsession?) of all things food related provides a great place to use the foodscape as a focal point.

What will participants investigate and do in your July workshop?
Our objectives for this workshop are multifaceted. Both Rebecca and I find that our best teaching experiences are for classes that we do not have the answers to. With this in mind our goal is to share with the participants this valuable tool of sense of place mapping and then work collaboratively to understand and document the Portland foodscape. We look forward to working with diverse people to draw from their unique perspectives and experiences to build a broader understanding of what the Portland foodscape is and how sense of place maps may be used as a tool that results in an informational source and artform. Ultimately we hope that everyone learns more about this place and the unique foodscapes, explores their own ideas of place and how we interpret them, learns a new tool for their own explorations, and has fun while doing it.

Kimberlee Chambers is an interdisciplinary scholar and a sustainability advocate whose work focuses on food, agriculture, and systems of land and resource management. Her current research includes the ‘locavore’ movement in the Willamette Valley, Oregon. Kimberlee received a Ph.D., from the University of California, Davis, in Agrobiodiversity Conservation and has published her research widely. She holds appointments as Assistant Professor of Collaborative Design at PNCA and as Research Affiliate and Adjunct Professor of Geography at Portland State University.

Picture of the Week - April 13, 2013

Wow! This last week of classes was so fun! Students are keeping pace with projects and making some very interesting things. Our MiniMasters class is making pizza… from painted paper and collage, of course. Draw, Paint, Sculpt. has been hard at work on clay castles and the creatures that live in or protect them. Young Painter’s Workshop has been working on imaginative drawings inspired by a story. This week’s image is from our YP Workshop.

This young lady brought in a tiny dry-erase board. Both she and I collaborated on the image you see above. If you would like to see more from last Saturdays classes, visit our Flickr Page!

Picture of the Week - April 6, 2013

We are now well in to our Spring session of Youth classes here at PNCA! In order to give you some insight into our classrooms over the next month or so, we’ll try to post an interesting picture or two from classes on Saturdays. This guy was kind enough to show me the tool that we was using to draw his still-life in our Young Painter’s Workshop.

If you would like to see more images from Youth classes, check out our Flickr Page. If you would like to learn more about future offerings with PNCA’s Youth Program you can visit our Registration Site.