Mr. Miller’s Podcast
& Monumental Community Connections Assignment
 
 
WSD Community Connections.Episode 4
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Imagine the fantastic stories that might be shared by the trees and buildings in our community. Everything and everybody has history. It might be good to identify someone real or imaginary and to
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WSD Community Connections.Episode 3
Sunday, February 18, 2007
It’s always interesting to discover that people we meet are sometimes connected to us through friends and relatives in ways that were not noticed by us before. It’s sort of like the six degrees of
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WSD Community Connections.Episode 2
Sunday, February 18, 2007
We sit in class, we go to work, we hang out. Occasionally we realize that we don’t know much, if anything about the people who sat in class, went to work and hung out before us.
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WSD Community Connections.Episode 1
Sunday, February 18, 2007
The first step is to research our community and we are fortunate to have someone in our district central office that is a fountain of information and is willing to share his insight through
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Hello, My name is David Miller and I'm an art teacher at Wissahickon High School in Ambler Pennsylvania. My students are preparing to construct a monument commemorating something real or imagined in their local community. Please begin with Episode 1.
Photo on left by Mel Antler.
 
Honors Art Reflection, 2006/2007 Signs of Influence, Sites of meaning Fall Semester, 2006 Fragmented Self The goal of this investigation was to address the influence of print media on our sense of identity. Two essential questions were: • How is our social/cultural identity framed by projections of visual culture in the forms of advertising and graphic design? • How does mass media influence our identity and inform our views on class, race, gender, privilege and need? At the beginning of the investigation some of our classmates denied that the media influenced them, but our reflective papers indicated that it is virtually impossible to avoid such influence so media literacy and semiotic awareness are primary tools for survival in contemporary society. Recontextualized Object Students investigated visual communication in terms of the semiotic relationship between the sender and receiver of information. Some essential questions were: • How does communication occur? • How are context and content related? • How can the communication process be manipulated? We created a series of drawings of an everyday object of our choice. We delineated visual relationships of personal interest throughout our drawing series and extracted them with scissors. We composed collages of our extracted delineations and created drawings of the collages that included text as a design element. We returned to our original collages and embellished them as we wished. We then returned to our original drawings, revising, recycling and recontextualizing. We engaged in formal, contextual and intuitive criticism of the products created. It was obvious that the objects originally selected had been represented in such a way as to create a completely different frame of reference. We revisited our essential questions considering the significance and implications of the design experience and its relationship to communication in the world at large. Monumental obstacles, narratives and texts Spring Semester, 2007 Monumental Obstacles Book The goal of this investigation was to identify and challenge obstacles of monumental proportions in our everyday life. Prompt: What must I overcome to become who I wish to be? Using quotidian ephemera we relied on our powers of bricolage to palimpsestically construct a book (from scratch) that haptically communicated our message and/or reflection. We wrote prompt papers before and reflection papers after making the artifact. Monumental Community Connections The goal was to become familiar with the historical narratives of our community. Mr. Miller made a podcast with Mr. James Malley (an administrator from Central Office) that provided insights into our communal past. We then used corrugated board and hot glue construct "monuments" to a real or fictitious person of local historical significance. Prompt: To whom do monuments "speak" and through what language? As usual we wrote prompt papers before and reflection papers after making the artifact. This time we had great fun with the reflection papers because we were instructed to explain who our monuments commemorated and where we envisioned the installation of our monuments and why. After hearing the made - up "histories" of our classmates we questioned the "truth" of universally accepted narratives. Monumental Text Diptych There were two goals for this project: one was to monumentalize text as a graphic image and the other was to communicate with our ancestors and descendents. Prompt: What would I like to say to or ask of my ancestors? What would I like to say to or ask of my descendents? The sides of our diptychs addressed each of those questions. Again we wrote prompt papers before and reflection papers after making the artifact. This project is due this week so you are the first to see the artifacts. Community Connections We go into the community twice each marking period to review an art exhibit. We then produce a review of that work in terms of formal, contextual and intuitive criticism. Venues include local sites as well as gallery openings at the First Friday events held each month in Philadelphia. Gallery exhibits from other states and countries have been reviewed over the course of this project. Sketchbook This is an on-going project in which we complete a minimum of six thematically related pieces in a sketchbook each marking period. Works must use both sides of the binding, incorporate mixed media and use text as a design element. As the result of student creativity and ingenuity, the Alternative Sketchbook has come to exist. This is proposed to the instructor for approval. We wish to fondly acknowledge Mel Antler, our student teacher this spring from the University of the Arts. Her future students will be very fortunate to learn from her...