Project Proposal

My partner, Zippy and I, have this idea to create a website that highlights young local artists. These artists range from musicians to painters to poets etc.

Why is it important?

• Stress the importance of Arts vs STEM
  
• Rather than an adult made community full of young artists, it would be more meaningful for fellow peers to create one
  
• There are many talented people in our area who are not appreciated for what they do because it is not school or STEM related
  etc.

What is the end result/final project?

The end result of our project would be a website with different artists’ profiles and work. Depending on what they do, it will be a different project. For example, on a musician’s page they would have an live recording or a recorded audio version of their song. Whereas a painter would have a photogallery of their art or a time lapse of them making something. Also we would end with having strong relationships with the people we meet and a community of people our age who support each other’s work.

How is this a risk/challenging?

This is a risk and challenge because this project is solely based on finding people to support the idea and join. This project we are trying to create is basically the profile documentary project but with more people, smaller profile highlights, and a web/audio student with a film student.

Project Productions

Read my research paper

Project Reflection

Zippy and I love our friends and we love talking about all the amazing things they do but are too humble to brag about. The basic idea to profile young artists struck us during a car ride to one of her interviews for a profile on Walter Mayes. We loved the documentary unit and the in-depth perspective we gained on the people we interviewed. We realized that we actually enjoy taking the time to get to know a new person and then turning around to tell everyone about this great person we’ve just gotten to know. Our first thought was our best friend Robert Sanders, a wonderful musician and artist who we believed wasn’t getting his deserved amount of time in the spotlight. This sparked a list of 25+ of our friends and acquaintances that we knew to be artistic, musical, poetic, and underappreciated. We knew from the start that we wanted to interview our artists; to get inside their heads and share their style with a larger audience. We decided the best platform for us to meet our goal would be a website to post the interviews and as much of the accompanying artwork we could get from our artists. Choosing a small number of artists to profile was difficult for Zippy and I so we decided to limit ourselves to only 5 in-depth profiles that each included original media from us. From a film of their performance or album artwork

I researched the relationship between STEM culture and Art and how the environment and society affects the value of art.
My research aided in the development of basic interview questions to ask the 15 artists Zippy and I profiled. With every interview, I asked at least three questions pertaining to the subject of my research paper. The answers I received from each artist were extremely helpful in forming the structure of my paper and I was able to quote a few of the artists in my paper.

My main collaboration was with my partner, Zippy, however we coordinated with 15 other artists for a multitude of events for each one. There were crews of one to two freestyle students that would assist us in setting up filmed interviews and performances. One of our artists is an athlete as well as a poet so it was difficult to find tie to film his performance. We finally filmed him from 9pm to 11pm one night until he felt he had gotten it perfectly.
Our scheduling and communication with our artists wasn't flawless but we got the job done every time while still respecting everyone's prior engagements.

If I could do the project over again I would stick to the rigid schedule we had formed in February instead of taking on too many artists at once and having waves of time when we were overwhelmed with work and scheduling and then lulls when we didn’t have much to work on. Other than sticking to our schedule, Zippy and I met all of our goals for our artists since in the end it was all for them. If I could change anything I would want more time to have gone more in depth in our profiles of the 15 artists and maybe even expand on the number of profiles.
Designing in Illustrator, recording in the studio, and interviewing artists was immensely fun for me since I was learning on my feet most of the time. Out of the large and versatile project we took on, my filming and editing skills improved the most.

Through this project I realized I really enjoy journalism and writing is really enjoyable to me when it’s a profile on a person or thing that I think should be shared with others.

The project that Zippy and I ended up pursuing was an insane learning process. I was able to learn and apply new skills from either the guidance of Zippy (a web student) or from pure troubleshooting on my own. Weather it was an issue with audio recorders in the field or with Adobe Illustrator in class, it was all the more memorable because of my passion for the project and my determination to get it right.

This project was an amazing opportunity for my growth and development in many of the 21st century skills. My own perspective on art and the culture I was raised in has changed greatly since I began this project. It has been an incredible journey for myself, Zippy, and most of all the artist we profiled. The look in their eyes when we told them we thought their work deserved to be shown and appreciated on a larger scale was worth every minute of work we put in. It was a truly wonderful feeling to see the smiles and feel the warmth from these wonderfully humble people Zippy and I had the honor of meeting and learning about. I hope anyone who stumbles upon our website can see and understand just how great these young artists are.