FACE Four Seasons Opening at Stone Dragon Gallery

Arizona, Art, Life, Opinions, UofA — Alisa on February 7, 2010 at 8:28 pm

This past Friday was the opening of the FACE Four Seasons show. The show is of women artists, and it includes emerging (juried), mid-career (invited), and advanced (jurors) artists. It is pretty open-themed, but the goal of the show is to give a sense of the multi-facets of women’s lives.

The show is split between three galleries in Tucson: Stone Dragon, Kachina, and 5th on 6th. I have a photo diptych in the Kachina Gallery (3rd floor of the SUMC at UofA), so come by and visit!

See works by the artists here: http://www.face-uofa.com/Artists.php

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Feb. 3-Mar. 31 Four Seasons show Dragon Stone Gallery, 1122 N. Stone Ave.
Feb. 1-Mar. 31 Four Seasons show Kachina Gallery
Mar. 8-21 Four Seasons show 5th on 6th Gallery, 439 N. 6th Ave.

Feb. 13
5-6pm Opening ceremony at Kachina Gallery, The University of Arizona, Student Union Memorial Center, Level 3
6-8pm Panel discussion: Life as women artists The Union Kiva
Panelists: Julie Sasse, Chief Curator of TMA; The University of Arizona Prof. Barbara Rogers, Prof. Beiley Doogan, Student Union Memorial Center, Level 2
Feb. 26 5:30-7:30pm Workshop on career development Stone Dragon Gallery
Mar. 2 6-7:30pm Co-event with the Women’s Resource Center: Kachina Gallery, Launch of movie on professional artists, The University of Arizona, “Who Does She Think She Is?” Student Union Memorial Center, Level 3
Mar. 3 7pm Movie: “Who Does She Think She Is?” Gallagher Theatre, The University of Arizona, Student Union Memorial Center
Mar. 20 6-9pm Closing ceremony at 5th on 6th Gallery
Mar. 27 12-2:30pm Potluck and closing ceremony of Four Seasons Dragon Stone Gallery

Interview with Dove&Snake

Internet, Life, Opinions — Alisa on November 4, 2009 at 5:01 pm

Dove&Snake, a local Tucson zine, interviewed me after I contributed to Issue No.2. I’ve always wanted to be interviewed, and I wanted to be a professional blogger once. I think I’m reaching goals.

Read the interview here.

Buy an issue here.

Winter foods

Crumbs, Opinions, Photography — Alisa on December 15, 2008 at 7:01 pm

With fall semester coming to a close, the weather is cooling down, and I’m trying to empty out my pantry before I leave the house for a month. 

I like it when foods match the season. Acorn squash, carrots, roma tomatoes and garlic, drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper, then oven-roasted for 35 minutes fit the seasonal taste requirements. I ate them with a dollop of tomato sauce on top. Mmm…

The education excretion

Opinions, School — Alisa on October 18, 2008 at 6:59 pm

At age 16, I was slightly intimidated by my community college general biology class. I had never taken a chemistry class before (it was highly recommended), my peers already had a high school diploma, and my professor was an old man who answered a question by asking a question.

It didn’t take long before I figured out how to play the mental game that is called the Socratic Method. A question from the pupil is always followed up by a question from a teacher. Just as you would not do your child’s homework for him, you would not give a direct answer to the pupil without making him find the answer. The simplest example of this I can give is this:

“How old are you?”
“If I was born in 1978, how old would I be?”

Teaching with the Socratic Method encourages dialogue, logic, and self-confidence. Large lecture halls discourage dialogue, spoon-feed materials, and students are unable to know for sure if they understand the material until an exam (and then it’s too late).

I love going to large lectures, but after thinking back over all the college classes I have taken so far, I’ve retained the most information from the professors who taught classes using the Socratic Method. And those class sizes have been 20 people or less.

Marty Nemko, an author, career counselor, and advisor to 15 college presidents, asks in a recent article, “How much do students at four-year institutions actually learn?”

Colleges and universities are businesses, and students are a cost item, while research is a profit center. As a result, many institutions tend to educate students in the cheapest way possible: large lecture classes, with necessary small classes staffed by rock-bottom-cost graduate students. At many colleges, only a small percentage of the typical student’s classroom hours will have been spent with fewer than 30 students taught by a professor, according to student-questionnaire data I used for my book How to Get an Ivy League Education at a State University. When students at 115 institutions were asked what percentage of their class time had been spent in classes of fewer than 30 students, the average response was 28 percent.

While art majors do have a reputation for being useless (art is basically a physically tangible form of philosophy), at least they are learning how to be a professional in their field. By the time they have a B.F.A., they also have a portfolio, an example of what they can and cannot do.

Okay, so what if you’re not an art major? What do you have to show for yourself?

In his article, Nemko lists things that he thinks should be included in recruitment materials. He argues that this would give people a better understanding of if their university of choice is worth the money that they’ll be spending on it.

The results of a national test with some parts in a career context
Unless there are at least 20 variations of this test, I disagree. The point of going to college is to specialize in something. English majors are not going to need to take a test that looks anything like what a physics major would take.

Retention data
The percentage of students returning for a second year would be an interesting statistic, but earlier in the article, Nemko states, “Colleges trumpet the statistic that, over their lifetimes, college graduates earn more than nongraduates, but that’s terribly misleading. You could lock the collegebound in a closet for four years, and they’d still go on to earn more than the pool of non-collegebound — they’re brighter, more motivated, and have better family connections.”

Four-, five-, and six-year graduation rates
I know a lot of students who are here for more than four years, simply because they cannot get into the classes that they need. Also, a lot of people double-major.

Employment data for graduates: the percentage of graduates who, within six months of graduation, are in graduate school, unemployed, or employed in a job requiring college-level skills, along with salary data
There are a couple problems with this. First, all science-related jobs require college-level skills. Second, even though a lot of people with B.A. degrees go on to do jobs that high school graduates could learn to do with ease, that doesn’t mean that companies hire high school graduates. While searching for jobs this summer, I found that a lot of job postings required a bachelor’s degree for something as simple as gathering legal records and organizing paperwork.

Results of the most-recent student-satisfaction survey
I’m a little eccentric, so I think that this data would be a little discouraging for me. I’ve stopped looking at sites like ratemyprofessors.com because I’ve always had different opinions of professors than the general student body has. Personal experience has shown me that a lot of my peers are unappreciative and lazy. “Hard graders” are usually just trying to eliminate errors from your work. “Unclear” professors use vocabulary words that are used in research journals. “Unhelpful” instructors just want you to go to office hours. Besides faculty, there lots of other reasons why a school could be unsatisfactory. Expectations are often higher than reality.

Large lecture halls and statistics aside, my friend Lauren (editor-in-chief of the Daily Wildcat) has always said that having a job during college is one of the most important parts of your education. Another friend, Jaclyn, said, “You need jobs to get jobs.” They’re right. You don’t need a national test when you have recommendations and a resume.

Finding the untouched

Opinions, Photography, Project Impact — Alisa on August 8, 2008 at 5:32 am

In his book Escapism, Yi-Fu Tuan explores the relationships between humans and nature. He argues that humans invite nature into their lives by planting gardens and growing grass, but try to escape that nature by trimming it back, forcing it into patterns and designated places, and arranging it according to our standards of beautiful.

I’ve thought about that a lot since I arrived in Colorado for the summer. My stereotype for Coloradans (particularly people who live in the Denver Metro area) is that everyone is very environmentally conscious, runs up and down mountains in the summer, skis all the time in winter, bikes to work or takes the bus, and is generally aware of their actions towards nature. Because of my stereotype, I thought that more people would prefer natural-looking flora over manipulated, pristine rows of common suburban plant-life. I was wrong, and I found that yuppie troops march in full force, leaving in their wake highly-structured and tightly-scheduled gardens.

I went looking for an ungroomed plot of nature that was within walking distance. I promised myself that I would look without touching, appreciate without prying, and seek to find beauty in even the ugliest of creatures.

Patiently awaiting the morning

Crumbs, Opinions, School — Alisa on January 15, 2008 at 1:16 pm

School starts again tomorrow. I can’t believe that I’m starting on my second semester of college. I don’t feel like I’m a college student. I guess I had always imagined that it would be different somehow. I think that the media portrays college as something that is akin to Disneyland for big kids–fun all the time. And not only fun all the time, but the ONLY place on earth that you can have fun. I’m so disillusioned that sometimes I wonder if it’s possible to have fun once you grow up and get a real job.

At any rate, college is fun, but it’s not fun all the time. Just sometimes. It’s fun to look at all the different classes that are available, and imagine all the possibilities of the future. But it’s also been the most stressful time of my life. Now I understand why psychological problems start appearing once people hit the college age.

I’m hopeful and optimistic. This will be a good semester.

How it all measured up

Life, Opinions, School, UofA — Alisa on December 19, 2007 at 1:35 pm

All of my final grades have been released. The following graph shows my final grade, what grade I think my professor deserves, and how I grade the class as a whole. I gave my professors grades based on how I felt I was treated, how much interest they put into the class, and how well they taught. I graded the class on how people interacted together and how interesting the material was.

For all of my classes, the material was pretty interesting, but not necessarily something that I would use outside of college. In the case of my Books and Dialog class, the material will be useful for my whole life (I didn’t sell back any of that class’s books), but the people in my discussion group did not want to participate.

As for the professor ratings, the two professors who got an A knew how to teach well, had a tight lecture schedule that they stuck to, and knew my name. My professor in my Latin American class knew my name by the second week, and I was one of 200 students (give or take a few) in her lecture hall. My English teacher, though very nice, did not teach me anything. I’m not sure if she taught anyone in that class anything. And my Human Geography professor seemed to enjoy teaching, but he didn’t enjoy anyone who was not an honors student.

How it all measured up

I got a B in English. Eighty percent of the grade was based on 4 essays, and the remaining percentage was based on other little writing projects that we did. My essay grades were really all over the place in that class. I don’t feel like I’m that inconsistent in my writing, but maybe the inconsistency comes a little from my professor and a little from me.
Essay Graph

It is such a relief to have this semester over with.

English is the devil in academic form

Opinions, School — Alisa on November 2, 2007 at 2:35 pm

With only four weeks left in the semester (OMG!), I have realized that I may not have learned a whole lot of things that are completely necessary to my future well-being (Von Thunen Model, anyone?), but I have learned one thing: English classes are the devil.

I’m not saying that because I’m bitter (even though I am a little bit). I’m saying that because, oh yeah, I’m going to be writing essays for a living after I graduate. Because people spend four years of their life learning to craft the perfect essay in order to find a deeper meaning in the first couple stanzas of Ginsberg’s Howl. No people, let’s be realistic here. The man was high, and in order to enjoy a poem of his you must be high, and in order for someone to even being to want to read literary criticism on a poem of his, that someone must be high. The point here is this: I read it and I like it, or I read it and I don’t like it, but I’m not all that compelled to read an essay that someone wrote about it.

Okay, instance number two. Picture me, giving a presentation about my company to a group of investors.

“And thus concludes why Company X can be related to the short story ‘The School’.”

“Are you on crack?”

See what I mean?

So, after next semester is over, I vow to never write another essay. I’m not sure what I’ll do, but know this: I’ll be damned if I take another English class.

Fake Fags

Opinions — Alisa on October 3, 2007 at 4:34 pm

The other day I was watching a couple of guys on the volley ball court acting totally gay with each other.  They were talking with a lisp, fawning on each other, and throwing around the phrase “FABulous honey!”  The thing is, they weren’t gay.

This isn’t anything new.  I see guys from about middle school age on up through recent college graduate age acting gay without being gay.  They’re the same old straight guys who don’t like clothes shopping, have a questionable sense of style, and would be offended if a stranger in a bar teased them about their sexuality leaning.  So what gives?

I decided to ask my straight friend Alex.

“Alex, why do you think it is that straight guys sometimes act gay together?”

“To be funny.”

Okay, yeah, I guess, but that didn’t satisfy me.  Girls don’t act lesbian together unless they really are lesbian, or drunk.

So then I consulted my Brazilian friend, Silas (straight, but speaks a love language).

“Silas, do guys in Brazil act gay together?”

“Yes, humor is one of Brazil’s greatest strengths.”

“But do they do this because it’s funny, or because of something else?”

“They only do it because of humor.  Guys can express their emotions here and not worry about it, so what other reasons would there be?  I mean, here guys kiss each other and aren’t called gay.  It’s common to see two old guys kissing on the cheek.”

I thought Silas’s answer was pretty telling.  I told my friend Meagan about what Silas said, and she ran with it.

“I think that two straight guys acting gay together is one way that they can show just friendly emotions for each other, not be called gay, and be funny all in one.  It’s a win-win situation.”

I think that’s true.  Is American culture turning the boys of Generation Y into fake fags?

Reaching Adulthood

Life, Opinions, Photography — Alisa on September 22, 2007 at 1:59 am

So I turned 18 on September 21. I think being 18 is less about buying cigarettes, cough syrup, and porn, and more about being able to look adult problems in the eye and not cringing.

I think being 18 is about realizing that I need to get over myself.

I think being 18 is about stopping worrying about those social rules that society lays before me. I feel like I can say what I want, ignore who I want, and stop laughing at stupid jokes that aren’t even funny. What will they do? Tell my mom?

I think being 18 is about appreciating art, politics, and the feelings behind them.

I think being 18 is about thinking of myself as equal and not beneath.

I think being 18 is about not hiding the bad days, the bad thoughts, the bad things.

I think being 18 is about being above what other people think about where I put my attention.

I think being 18 is about accepting the thoughts that I have and not pushing them away, because really, there’s probably a good reason that I had those thoughts in the first place.

I think being 18 is about not being embarressed about being interested in the naked barbie pictures on the walls of the local café, buying candles with alcoholic names, talking about sexual feelings, or thinking that medical marijuana should be legalized.

But mostly, I think being 18 is about thinking for myself because, well, I’m an adult now and so my opinion counts just as much as any other adult’s opinion.

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