I really loved hearing from Brooke Montgomery at Cut in class this week, and it’s definitely dangerous to start down the rabbit hole of watching Cut videos… there are so many that are so engaging! So, we’ve been prompted to suggest some ideas for videos in the style of Cut that could be done with graphic design students or with SCC students in general. Here’s my best idea:
Portrait art
The concept for this one is that we could have design, media, or maybe even fine arts students do figure drawing sessions and create art of other students. The idea would be to get a variety of students who’ve never been the subjects of an artwork before, with lots of different kinds of appearances & demographics: age, gender identity, race, physical size, fashion, subject studying in school, etc. I’d try to match them with art/design/media students who seem like they’re from very different demographics than them. Then, the video would go like this:
- Interviewing the design/media/art students to see how they feel about making an artwork about another student. My guess is that visual media students are pretty comfortable recording or photographing folks, but maybe design students might have a range of experience creating portrait artwork, so there could be a wide range of feelings there. Are they nervous? Confident?
- Interviewing the students to find out if they are nervous or what they think of being an art model. Do they think they’re beautiful enough to be the subject of art? What do they think of people who do art for a living? Do they value having art in their lives? Do they do anything creative? This would help to kind of establish the relationship between the artist and the student and also help the viewer of the video to relate to them a little.
- Introduce the student to their artist(s). I think it would be ok to do 1:1 or to have a couple of artists per student, but not too many to make it overwhelming. This could have some get-to-know you question prompts or icebreakers, etc. The idea would just be to begin to get to know each other and to really listen to who the person is, what they love, etc.
- Sketch/photography session: where the student poses, and the students creating the artwork do photography or sketching or a combination. If you wanted to get maximum provocative, there could be nude figure drawing, but that might be hard to film in a way that work for school, and I don’t think it’s necessary for this video to work. In the final video, I’m imagining that this would be a little montage-y.
- The artist/design/media students have some time (a couple of weeks maybe?) to create the artwork about the student. They should be making the artwork to try to really celebrate something beautiful or interesting that they noticed about the person during their session with them and try to make it true to who that person is from what they’ve learned about them.
- Art/design/media students present the artwork to the person. They get to chat a little with each other about it.
- Interview each person separately about how the experience was. Questions might include:
- Was it what you expected? What surprised you most?
- Did you enjoy it? Why or why not?
- What made you most nervous?
- What was it like working with the other person (artist/designer/media student or with the other student)?
- Do you like the artwork?
- For the student who made the artwork: What was it that you wanted to highlight about this person? What did you find beautiful about them? Are you happy with your result?
- For the student who’s having the artwork made about them: How does the artwork make you feel about yourself? Does it make you see yourself differently? Do you feel like it reflects who you really are?
The drawback of this idea is that it would take longer to create than many of the Cut videos because the process of making the artwork could be time-intensive for the media and design students. I know that we all have a lot on our plates, and this would be the kind of thing that would not be acceptable to do a half-ass job on, so it would be a commitment we’d have to have bandwidth for. However, I think there’s a lot of potential here to explore the idea of how people view themselves and others. I’ve done a lot of figure drawing exercises in a very art school way before, and although I’m not a figure artist, one thing that I really appreciate about a regular practice of figure drawing is that you begin to really notice what’s beautiful about people in a very artistic, non-sexual way even if you’re drawing nude figures. It might be how someone’s hair catches the light or how the bottom of their foot happens to be curved at that moment that’s really lovely, and everyone is beautiful in this way constantly, but we just move through life and almost never think of these little things. I also think that the power of seeing someone and being seen for who you are is so, well, powerful, and maybe this could be a way to bring that to a few students who might feel like they aren’t always seen at school.