Hello there!
I'm Bethany, and this is my first (rather belated) post here on the Fine Arts Connection website.
Karen and I traveled to Kansas City, Missouri for the National Collegiate Honors Conference last week, and it was a great trip. We ate some great food, met some awesome people and generally had an awesome experience.
Our masterclass went well (video will follow soon), as did the masterclass showcase.
My favorite experience there was the Arts and Improvisation workshop that I participated in. The professor gave us abstract directions like "draw five lines. Now erase one. Now move one to a different part of the page." all while listening to music (mostly jazz). We were supposed to interpret the music through what we were drawing. I am not an artist, but it was so fun to be able to have the freedom to smash oil pastels and make a mess with watercolors and draw whatever I felt like without worrying about what was "right". The professor had us listen to John Cage's piece "4'33", which is basically a piece where there is no instruments playing. Here's a video of one performance of this piece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HypmW4Yd7SY&feature=related
I was talking to my composition teacher about this, and it was very interesting to think about this piece. My first instinct is to say "that is completely and utterly ridiculous", but in that room, listening to the sounds of pencils scratching and paper rustling, I really appreciated the sounds that I was hearing. I concluded that this piece is not about music, it is about appreciating the sounds that exist in this world, and that it draws attention to these sounds and allowed me to truly listen to my surroundings. It was quite moving to me. The picture I ended up painting for this piece was taking a white oil pastel crayon and smashing it to create a textured paper, and then putting brief flashes of color at various points on the paper. It was very inspiring to me to listen in a new way.
I found this very interesting as well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcHnL7aS64Y&feature=related
Anyway, we went, and now we are back, and it was a great trip!
Have a good week,
Bethany
 


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