Integrated Learning Thanks Sammy and Marlena

Integrated Learning San Joaquin Valley Laton, California.

EXPERIENCE:

Romina and I signed up for the San Joaquin Valley IL class. This class was amazing thanks to Marela Donahue (Art Historian), Sammy Flores Pena (Anthropologist) and all of the students (especially the seniors because we killed it.)
The class was an introduction to fieldwork. One of the graduate students suggested this program to our teachers at Otis because she was born and raised in Laton. Chelo's goal was to return the visual arts back into her community.
We went the San Joaquin Valley because it is one of the major "bread baskets" in California. Being one of the main suppliers of produce and dairy we wanted to learn the community's struggles and achievements. We discovered that the farmers are greatly suffering because they are not getting enough recognition for the work that they do. 

PROBLEM:

Farmers are being under paid and unappreciated. With the no child left behind act there is a huge emphasis on teaching main courses like math and reading. Although, school administrators do not make the correlation between art and science. That everything is intertwined. Most importantly the benefits that art has a on a community. Their school systems are not receiving enough funding for extra curricular activities. Therefore programs like art, drama, music etc is being cut.

OUTCOME:

Marlena said that if nothing else was to be accomplished that if we could see a change of awareness and thinking within ourselves that would be a well worth trip.
As seniors we interviewed the community trying to learn their history and emphasis how important Laton was even though many of them didn't think so. It was wonderful actually connecting with the people face to face. Unfortunately we did not get an idea of all of the social classes in Laton. We were mostly interviewing middle class/ working class citizens. We were told that if we went into the working fields we would endanger the people's jobs or worse be shot... righttt so at the end we did get a few people who worked in the fields interviews. Marlena and Sammy had us all work in groups to put together to create a book about the histories and lives of the people in Laton. We were put in four groups of four to three. Each group created a proposals of what some families that represented stories essential to Laton culture. It was nice to see the different visual interpretations of how we thought the pages should look like.

ROUTINE:

Each day was intense. We woke up around 7:00am interview sessions, then lecture, and discussion about interviews and lecture with Sammy and Marlena, reflections at an abandoned Protestant church with the graduate students and juniors, more lecture from Laton administrators, dinner, homework to at least 1:00am.

CLOSING REMARK:

This was an amazing opportunity and I'm glad I was able to be apart of it.

THE WORK:

 These were just some of the examples of the pages we did for our final project. Our team consisted of a Beth(fine artist), Taryn (graphic designer) and Romina and I (Illustrators) We all contributed a little bit of everything. Beth really helped with the theory,Romina, Taryn and I did a lot of the designing and the image work. Our idea was to make the pages look like a sketch book.1

At the Lions club an hour away from setting up the final show. Thanks to Daniel we were able to print out all of our work.

Friday morning of the show. We all pulled an all nighter to get the work done.

Farmers Market!

In Exter before Laton for Lunch.



These were some sketches I did while we interviewed some of the local teachers and farmers.


While Sammy was lecturing... notes on Hegemony and Ethnography

Melon Head

I really like this small painting I did over Summer of Art. My students went grocery shopping and bought a watermelon. I said they were all melon heads for buying such a large one and not eating even half of it. By the way they named the melon Jackie. Jackie went to waste. I guess he will live on in the painting.

Summer contuined

INTERNSHIPS:

This Summer has been really crazy working at one time four jobs. At one point I was working for gallery, a marketing firm, school and corporate.

GUESS?: 

it was a good opportunity to see how fast pace things move and what exactly type of work they do. It was interesting because all of the guidelines are figured out for you. How big this logo is allowed to look on mailers versus a catalogue or what color palette you can use of GbyGUESS line versus the Marciano by GUESS. Since GUESS is an international corporation you had to be careful with using the guidelines versus GUESS China to GUESS Paris etc. It was nice working in the advertisement department. I worked for the graphic department and modeling area. I was scheduling shoots, picking models, preparing the clothes etc. In the graphic dept I got to make mailers, I worked on an ad the NY Times, giftcards, loyalty cards and other small projects. As helpful as the job was it was pretty intense. No one really talked to each other. It was all business.

Here is one of the designs I summit ed to be turned into a gift card. There is a G charm that is diacutted in the white circle area.

This was one of the catalogues I got to go on the print check for. Print checks are the best.

PROMTIONS GROUP WEST:

A marketing firm in Venice that helps to promote clients receive more awareness about their product. We do all of their identity (business cards, logos, websites, etc.) I collaborated with Sean on a project for Tarah Smith bags. It was fun working at the marketing firm because I strictly worked as a commercial illustrator. I did a lot of sketching and painting. On the Tarah Smith bag we talked about how she wanted to change her image. Her old image was extremely corporate and so what we wanted to do was make her image more bohemian and natural. Sean designed a lot of the insides and I painted a lot of images for her website, look book, pamphlets, website. There were other projects but this was my favorite one. Special thanks to In and Out. I stole all their salt to use on the watercolor.

WEBSITE WITH MY WATERCOLORS:

http://www.ihcagency.com/TS_Site/