The Official ACM Chicago Program Blog

That's a Wrap

2015-05-23T19:14:00.001-05:00

The program has come to an end and I am currently on the last hour of my trip home. What an amazing opportunity this trip as been. I've met so many amazing people, people that have the biggest hearts I have ever met.

I think my last post will contain a lot of photos from the end of the semester, because words can not do justice to what we were able to experience.

The last two weeks we were able to do such wonderful things. I had lunch with the staff at my internship and they gave me a lovely gift. We were able to learn about the Chicago Public Schools. Everyone got to present their wonderful and fascinating ISP projects. We ended the program with a boat tour and some fun goodbye games.

If you are even thinking about this program, I do it. You will have no regrets.

Bring on the photos!

Some of my favorite things from the Art Institute.

From the Chicago Home Theater Project at the MCA.

From a long walk home with Kinzie and Nikki.

My card from Intuit.

Boat tour!

Goodbye.

That's a wrap. Until next time, Chicago.

Anna

Core Course about CPS

2015-05-08T17:14:00.001-05:00

Hello!!!

These are the pictures I took during our core course at La Casa Resource Center! During the class, we got the chance to learn more about CPS and its impact on current education. We then met with couple high schoolers who are planning to start their college application process.

Photographer:

Hadee Ahmadi

ISP in Full Swing

2015-04-27T17:20:00.005-05:00

Well hello there!

The ISP symposium will be held in just a few weeks, which means ISP is in full swing now. I am doing a series of watercolor paintings that explore place around Chicago. Though, silly me, forgot to bring them one day when I was going out. Let me introduce to you all a soy sauce, ginger, wasabi, and some other sort of orange sauce painting while I was out for sushi. Check out this display!

It turned out alright, but I left it there because it was not drying quickly, and it started to smell funky...

My other watercolors are coming along and I hope to have my professional interview with an artist working at SAIC sometime in the next week. Things are starting to get busy, but they become more interesting as the days go.

One of the most interesting things I have done recently was visit the Chicago Cultural Center for Seminar. The architecture was just beautiful there. The Tiffany dome was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen in a building. We even got to watch a couple practicing ballroom dancing under the dome. Though, Danielle thought they needed a bit more work.

Speaking of Danielle, Nikki and I got her to paint with us one night. I think she did really well and I hope she does art with us more before the end of the semester, because I thought it was really fun. It's so amazing to see people coming together and doing something out of their normal routine. People are trying different and new things while in this program. I think this is because we are able to live in the same building, we can reach everyone so easily. It has really allowed myself, and others to gain really strong friendships.

I am definitely going to miss everyone when the semester is over, but I will stay in touch with the friends I have made.

I guess I'll be ending on a bitter sweet note today.
TTFN,
Anna

Logan Square

2015-04-24T20:50:00.000-05:00

Hello Hello Hello!
Today, we had the opportunity to visit Logan Square, located on the northwest side of Chicago.
I shot these images throughout the day.

Enjoy!!!

Hadee Ahmadi

Slow Art Day and Feelings

2015-04-14T17:36:00.001-05:00

Hello yet again! I told you I would get you more information on Slow Art Day at my internship.

First off, if you don't know, I am interning at Intuit: the Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art. On Saturday we participated in Slow Art Day, a day to go out and enjoy art in a more relaxed and slow manor, taking in all the details of the experience. I would say that it went pretty well. I was curator of the show and had to select which five artworks people should spend time looking at. I also was in charge of the discussion after the viewing. It was a really awesome experience, even though only two people came to experience the idea of Slow Art Day. Others visited the museum that day, but only two were involved in the "formal event." We talked about many different aspects and overall they really enjoyed the experience. I do recommend taking time to look at artwork as you make so many more connections.

Here they are!!

I'm so amazed at how far I cam come in my internship and all of the things I have accomplished thus far. Slow Art Day being one of them. While my two friends showed up, My supervisor was still very happy.

All the aspects of spending time in Chicago have really been amazing. I am learning so many new things each and every day, it's crazy! There is always so much going on that it can be overwhelming, I won't lie and sugar coat it. But, it has really been amazing. There are so many experiences that you are exposed to, and I think even those from Chicago get a new experience they can learn and benefit from.

I can't wait for it to really warm up so that I want to go out and do even more things!! I was doing some painting for ISP today and it was really fun (and warm, for a moment.) Nikki and I went to a few stops on the train and go off to find the perfect spot for me to do these paintings, though, she was taking photos rather than painting. After, we stopped by the office for Seminar and had a discussion about some of the works we did, and some of the projects we have yet to do.

Speaking of projects yet to do, I better get back to them. Until next time.

TTFN,
Anna

Threadless

2015-04-09T18:14:00.002-05:00

By: Hadee Ahmadi

ACM Students Volunteering at ElevArte Community Studio

2015-04-02T23:20:00.002-05:00

Jiaqi Li, impatiently waiting for other ACM students to arrive.

Eddie Elizondo, on his way to wrap all the flowers.

Gabe Saemisch and Anna Jean, attempting to cut the plastic bags.

Corey Lunden, gazing at an altar!

ACM students working together!

Curtis Roy Leicht, intensely wiping the pipe of the painting room.

Luther students, Curtis Roy Leicht and Ryan D Johnson, working together to clean the pipe.

ACM students working together to paint the table white.

Kinzie Jo, painting the chair white.

Danielle Pruger, getting ready to paint the chair.

Simon Emmett, almost finished painting her chair.

Before Picture

After Picture

Group photo with EleVarte's Executive Director, Giselle Mercier.

Photos taken by Hadee Ahmadi

Fun, Maps, and Flowers, OH MY!

2015-03-24T13:45:00.004-05:00

Well, well, well, where to begin. The past week or two have been super busy and super fun with class activities and events that my friends and I decided to go to on our own!

THE NEW STUDENTS ARRIVED! All the trimester students have moved and settled in. I think they complete our group, definitely adding a new flare.

For their first core course the semester students all had to present our perspective in regards to a topic about Pilsen. Nikki, Jessica, and I presented about politics and the Alderman. So, naturally, we each took a role as Danny Solis, Rahm Emanuel, and Chuy Garcia (respectively) and put on a brief skit. The day was pretty fun and after our presentations we went to help Elevarte spruce up their art room for some community service.

Gotta have a little fun, right?

ISP has provided many amazing opportunities to learn about mapping and what mapping means to all sorts of people. A little project we worked on was to create our own map, and the site visits helped us to learn more. I decided to do my map on the heights of the 50 most beautiful buildings in Chicago.

This weekend was pretty relaxed, which was super nice. A few of us went to a free concert on Saturday night. It's a little reminder to always be paying attention and looking for things to do, you can typically find many free or inexpensive things to do! And the chips and guacamole on the way home was also a day maker.

Sunday Curtis and I went to a flower show on Navy Pier. Walking in smelled wonderful and made me wish it was warmer outside. (Mother nature did not agree, as it snowed the entirety of the next day.) There were little houses set up, clothing made from plants, and TONS of flowers. I guess it is an event that happens once a year, so check it out next year.

TTFN! - Anna

Guess who thinks she's an artist now.

2015-03-08T23:02:00.002-05:00

I have never considered myself an artist until this program began. I thought "artist" was a title reserved for painters and sculptures. You know, the visual arts. However, after three weeks in Chicago I KNOW I am an artist, in many ways. As a writer I am an artist. As someone who operates mostly in the right side of her brain, I am an artist.

Something about my roommates, classmates and even coworkers has made me even more...creative. This is not meant to be a rant about how inspired I have become, nor how ambition has begun to consume me. I can admit that I still enjoy my lazy Sundays. However, I have begun to draw. I am still obviously an amateur (that is not a humble brag, it is a true statement) but hey...

A statue at the Art Institute of Chicago

My mother at 21 years old

I have absolutely no idea where these random sketching sessions will take me, but I have decided that when the muse hits me I will always take time to get creative (even if it is done during commercial breaks of the Vampire Diaries).
So, really the point of this post is to thank my classmates. They are truly bringing out the best in me and I am eternally grateful.

Surround yourself with people who inspire you, and let the creative juices flow! Tata for now folks.
-Much Love,
Kinzie

Succulents and Class Trips (Anna's Blog #2)

2015-03-08T20:58:00.003-05:00

Hello again! So much has happened since I last blogged.

The most recent and most exciting thing that has happened was spending a girls day in Edgewater. Kinzie, Nikki, Jessica, Angela, and myself took the day to head to Blue Buddha Boutique for a craft day they were having. We were able to learn about iodizing of metals (to get the cool colors you see on jewelry), make zipper pulls, soaps, and earrings. It was definitely a fun day, thanks to Nikki spreading the word. After our crafts we went separate ways.

Nikki and I went to Adams and Son Gardens to get succulents and materials to make our own little gardens with the containers we got at the thrift store. We were obsessing for a while and finally got the chance to get some. This was the finished product of my little guys!

A few of us stayed up watching movies that night, Come Back to Me and The Nut Job. The latter being an adorable movie about squirrels and other critters. It was a fun relaxing weekend that was much needed after a lots of running around for class.

Don't get me wrong, I love going and exploring the city and the different places it has to offer in a class setting, but it is nice to do some of my own exploring.

The past few weeks I have gone and done some amazing things. Visiting the Art Institute of Chicago and looking at all sorts of art (including tiny model rooms!) was an incredible experience. Hector, myself, Si Mon', Kinzie, and Nikki were all excited for the visit.

And some photos of my favorite works.

Last week we also got a chance to meet a former alderman, Helen Shiller, at a coffee shop where I was able to see some artwork from artists I follow on Instagram. Be sure to check them out @maggie__hubbard, @eeciganek, and @rachelmlindsay.

Winding down tonight with some homework and preparing for the week. TTFN, ta ta for now.

How do I become you in 5-10 years?

2015-02-23T16:26:00.001-06:00

Hello all! Have you ever met someone and instantly knew that they are living a life you aspire to? Well I did this weekend, and believe it or not I did blatantly ask this person, "How do I become you in 5-10... but hopefully closer to 5... years?"

I snuck this selfie with my very-offical-looking badge from this Saturday's Self Employment in the Arts (SEA) Conference, where I represented the Chicago Artist Resource (CAR) as their new Web Intern.

Originally this conference was supposed to be an opportunity for me to talk to young people about CAR, and all the ways it is useful. However, I also was encouraged to sit in on a few sessions including one where I met the extremely talented Madeleine Roux, author of the New York Times bestselling book Asylum (which is now at the very top of my reading list).

She spoke about the ways emerging writers can utilize social media to garner interest in their writing and even acquire an agent! She also compared and contrasted the pro's and con's of self-publishing verses traditional publishing. I will spare you all the details of her discussion (although if you are interested feel free to contact me).

The best part of the discussion came afterwards when she hung around to answer questions. I strategically placed myself at the back of the line, because most were satisfied to just shake her hand and thank her, but not I. She seemed open and excited to help out emerging writers so I plucked up my courage and blurted out my question (the question from the title of this post). She was thrilled that I asked and gave me the most simple, yet powerful, advice, "Never stop writing."

She expanded, "The very first thing you need is an abundance of content that you are ready to show off. If you have a novel already, then start writing the sequel. Just never stop writing and reading!" She recommended starting with Stephan King's On Writing, which is also now at the top of my reading list. She then encouraged me to follow her on twitter and continue our conversation, which as a social media enthusiast I am more than happy to do. I couldn't believe how easy it was to make a connection with such an accomplished writer.

The point is... in just the first week of my internship and my time here at the ACM program, I have already received affirmation that I am exactly where I am supposed to be in order to follow my dreams. One goal in coming to Chicago was to get a head start on my writing career and I have already been surprised at all the opportunity there is to get involved in the writing community.

Moral of the story: Don't be afraid to blurt out the question that you are dying to ask.

[For more on Madeleine Roux check out her blog http://www.madeleine-roux.com/blog/ or find her on twitter at @authoroux]

Anna's First Blog Post EVER

2015-02-22T20:15:00.002-06:00

Hi, welcome. I am not super sure how this blogging thing goes, but I am going to give it a try for you. We are in this together.

I have been in La Casa for two weeks now, and what a two weeks they have been. ACM sure knows how to keep their students busy. Busy in a good way. I have learned so much in such a short period of time. Right away on move-in day we went on a walk around Pilsen, the neighborhood we are living in for the next few months. There was so much to see, so much culture and colors, very different from home. After our walk everyone had the night to get to know one another and rest up in preparation for the next day, and the rest of orientation week.

Monday soon came and we were sent off on a scavenger hunt to learn how the transportation in Chicago works, and to experience different parts. While our team didn't get the most points or win awesome baseball hats, we did meet a very special "street performer", one of our goals.

If you don't know who the man second from the left is, he is the current mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel! Don't worry, I didn't know who he was at the time either. They say you will learn about politics quickly, as Chicago is all about it.

The rest of the week we continued our orientation sessions. Including an improv workshop that was super fun. We got to have fun with everyone and be silly, it was a nice change of pace during a hustling and bustling week. We also were able to go to the Chicago History Museum and learned a lot about the city and its history.

I almost forgot to mention! I had my internship interview at Intuit: The Museum of Intuitive and Outsider Art that Wednesday. It went amazing and I started working right after my interview! I even was invited to their board meeting that night. It is a wonderful little place with a great show up right now. I highly recommend it.

This past week classes have started up and we are getting into the swing of things. I now have Internship Monday and Wednesdays, ISP and Seminar on Tuesday and Thursdays, and finally Core Course on Fridays.

Thursday evening we saw the play "Twilight: Los Angeles" at the Chopin Theater. It was very eye opening about the LA riots that happened some years ago. It was very interesting, and I am glad we had the opportunity to go.

I was, however, not glad that I (along with 8 other people) got stuck in an elevator for 50 minutes on Friday. We survived and made a new friend, though we were hot and had to use the bathroom.

I'm out for now. Check back again!

Final Reflections

2014-12-15T12:34:00.003-06:00

Experience is not what happens to one man;

it's what one man does with what happens to him.

~ Aldous Huxley

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

~ Henry David Thoreau

The last post deserves two snazzy quotes. And I actually have who said them! I found the first one a while ago, and once I saw it I knew I wanted to use it in my last post. During orientation, our instructors stressed embracing the chaos that the program is and just rolling with whatever happens. Once we got here, it was really overwhelming because we realized what we were getting into and that we'd have to go through a lot. Facing three and a half months of a job, a project, and classes in a completely new city was kind of terrifying. We did go through a lot, I did a ton of stuff, probably more than I did at Knox the past three years combined, but I'm glad for everything. We were taught so much, and now it's up to us as to whether we make something of it, whether we do something with what's happened to us. That's the experiential part of the whole thing; not only experiencing what you're learning about, but then taking it on yourself to do something with it.

I remember going to that "Welcome Home" opening art reception at that alderman's office that Patrick Putze, the person I've been working with through NVAM, invited me to. I met Patrick K. for the first time and I was really terrified of going up to people and talking to them, I talked to Patrick Putze about it and he said, "At least you're here." I'll never forget that. I was really nervous and intimidated, but at least I was there, at least I was doing it. That's what really mattered. And that sentence applies to the program; even if you don't enjoy what you're doing or it's terrifying, at least you're here. Or, you were.

Also, this program has provided me with an incredible amount of experience through my ISP, my internship, going to galleries and events, meeting people through my classes, and just living in a city, that is really important for my future. My professional goal is to be a screenwriter, which means probably moving out to LA and struggling. I have lofty goals set for the future, and this program has helped me build the foundations under them. Not only have I realized what I really want, but I'm now that much closer to it.

Okay. It was really weird to leave La Casa this week. I'm so used to packing up and leaving things/people at the end of the school year, in May, so to have to go through that halfway through the year was really disorienting and it never felt like it was really happening. When I first got here, everything was so surreal and just weird, and it was like that again, but this time instead of being nervous about it all, I didn't want to leave it.

We finally cleaned the ten-person fridge out. I never found my ground beef, you guys. Either it was rotting in the fridge for two months until the fridge was cleaned, or someone cooked it, and I hope someone cooked it.

I never ended up cooking meals all that much, meals in the sense of lots of ingredients and doing more than just putting pasta in a pot and adding sauce/flavoring. It just required a lot of time and work and extra skills that I didn't have. Given the choice between putting dinner in the microwave versus spending an hour making it, I always chose to just heat up something or make pasta. I was hoping I'd end up cooking a lot more than I did, and basically all I ate was pasta and salads and bagels and soup. And candy. But I'm still alive, so that's what counts.

We didn't really have a one-last-dinner/party-all-together since we all ended up being so busy, but last weekend one of the other students curated her own show that involved artwork from two of her friends, and the majority of us went to that (which was way up the Brown line. I have now officially been to close to the end, if not the end, of every line except for the Purple). It was really cool! She got this classy venue and had cheese and wine and it was fancy. Beforehand some of us stopped at Margie's Candies, which is a really awesome place, to get ice cream, and they came in containers that were a lot bigger than we thought. Here's a picture:

Yeah, someone ate almost all of the ice cream out of the (chalice)-looking thing. There was a pint of it in that.

Okay. It's really weird to talk about the end of things. I guess the best way to go about it is by taking each component of the program at a time.

For Core Course, the last major thing we did was give presentations on Pilsen to members of the neighborhood's community, some people we've worked with through the semester, creating a brand geared towards college students and encouraging people to live and work there. We did a lot with Pilsen in Core Course. That was cool, that they incorporated where we lived so much and we weren't just put into whatever cheap housing; where you live is part of the learning and the experience.

I don't think, if I ever come back to Chicago, I’ll live in Pilsen again; there were other neighborhoods I liked a lot more. But I liked living there too.

I'm fully willing to admit that when I first got to Pilsen, I was really scared. It's a Hispanic neighborhood, and I didn't and still don't know how to pronounce half the store's names or what's in them. The neighborhood is going through gentrification, and there's a big tension between the people who are coming in, the artists and hipsters looking for studios, and the Hispanic families and businesses that are already there. As a white college student, I represent the population that's pushing out the one that's established now, and I felt like, going into stores, the waiters and the cashiers seemed to treat me kind of coldly, and I could never tell if it was because it's Chicago and people tend to be ruder in big cities overall, or if it was because they'd been having a bad day or if it was because I was white and couldn't speak a word of Spanish. Probably a mix of those things. But when I first got here, I felt incredibly out of place. I felt like, walking down the street or going into stores, people took one look at me and thought, you don't belong here. That it was really, really obvious that I wasn't from there. And I wasn't. But I was uncomfortable with the fact that it showed so much. I have never, ever lived somewhere where I felt like I didn't belong, and that was really hard to get used to the first couple weeks.

I think, three months later, sometimes people still look at me and think I don't belong here. But I care a lot less about it. I've learned that not everyone is the same, that you can't base an entire neighborhood on the rude cashier in the first grocery store you went to on your first day, that there were people in Pilsen who were friendly and passionate and genuinely good. Just like anywhere else, there's a mix; not everyone will give you dirty looks and the silent treatment, and not everyone will hold the door open for you or help you. Every community has both. I've learned to not care about the people who do treat me like crap, because it's a huge city and I'll never see them again, and just because they treat me like that, that doesn't mean everyone will.

The neighborhood and the ways people treated me never changed. But my attitude toward it did.

I have never been so aware of my race, as I've been here in Chicago. There were a couple times I rode the green line by myself for Arts Seminar, and as it got farther south from downtown, there were more African Americans on the train and it'd get to the point where I was the only white person in the car. I'd look around and realize that, and get really uncomfortable. I wasn’t uncomfortable that everyone around me was black; I was uncomfortable that I was the only one who wasn’t. Nobody else cared, nobody was looking at me or saying anything. But I became incredibly self-conscious of the fact. I was just like, there is something about me that's separating me apart from literally everyone else in this car. Just the idea of being the difference was scary. And nothing was happening, nobody thought anything of it, I was just like, whoa. And I realized, this is how other people feel all the time.

Yeah. Between Pilsen and its gentrification and stuff like riding the green line, I've never been so aware of my race or had it affect me the way it has. It was really good to experience that, something I needed to have happen at some point in my life.

For my arts seminar, our last assignment was to do artist statements, about our work and our process. At Knox part of our senior capstone course is writing a 20-page paper on how we've changed as writers and how our process has changed as we've gone through Knox. So basically we write a 20 page artist statement, and doing the assignment made me start thinking about that. I think I was probably the only one in the class who liked doing it. To me it was cool to step back and really look at how I write and why I do it, and what I'm passionate about, and what has happened this semester that's influenced that.

For our last class we met at Wishbone, this awesome restaurant that had really good food, and it was really nice to sit and talk about our assignments and the end of the program and life/class in general. I really wish we'd done that more often, gone out to eat and just hung out and talked, it was great.

My last day at 826CHI was on December 3rd. That was super weird too, leaving that. The only job besides babysitting I've ever had is working in the cafeteria at Knox and I'm going back to that in the winter, so I've never gone through the ending of a job before and I didn't know what that'd be like at all. I was like, do I hug people? Are they going to have a mini celebration? That'd be really embarrassing. And then there's that awkward, I'll-probably-never-see-you-again, have-a-great-life thing.

Goodbyes are weird.

I assumed that my boss and supervisor would know that I was leaving. But they didn't. When I got back from in school tutoring I was like "It's my last day" and my supervisor was like "what." The staff got mad at me because they didn't know, I'd taken the Monday beforehand off to spend time with my brother, and it never occurred to me to tell them before I left for Thanksgiving. So I felt kind of bad. But they were all saying how they would've done something if they had known so I'm kind of glad I was spared that.

It was actually really hard to leave 826. I ended up really liking working there. It's an awesome organization and does really great things for kids. The staff were some of the friendliest, energetic, passionate people I've ever met and it's awesome to see the organization doing so well. Yeah. I really liked the people and what they did, and I really liked working with the students.

Oh yeah! So for the whole semester we had to do this learning goal thing, and keep track of the things we wanted to happen with/at our internships. My biggest goal throughout the semester was to have a student like working with me so much at in-school or after-school tutoring that they asked to specifically be put with me. And that actually happened! On the last day! It only took a month and a half. But at in-school tutoring, when a staff member brought in a new group of students, a girl pointed to me and said something, and she wanted to work with me. I'd had her before, the last time I did in-school tutoring, which was almost a month ago because of Thanksgiving and stuff, and when we'd worked together she'd had no idea what her story would be, and in ten minutes we'd come up with the setting and characters and plot, which was awesome. She remembered me and she liked me, and it was really awesome to have a student ask to work with me. Because going into this I'd only ever babysat, and I've never tutored any kids or helped them academically, so it was completely new and I didn't really know how to do it, and I know as a more reserved person I'm not as fun sometimes as the other volunteers. And… yeah. That made me feel really good. Like, I feel like I did well and learned a lot at 826, and the thing that confirms that to me isn't my supervisor's final evaluation or what anyone said to me, it's the fact that that student asked to work with me. That tells me out of everything that I did a good job. My entire existence has been validated.

Yeah, saying goodbye was weird, especially because no one knew I was leaving. I wasn't expecting all of the staff to hug me, but they all did and they all said how good it was to work with me, and good luck with everything. It was nice that everyone cared, that it wasn't just my supervisor. Another intern, who's had the same schedule as me the whole semester, was really upset when she found out I was leaving, and she hugged me too. Her hug and my supervisor's hug were so… unartificial. They were really, really sincere. The way they hugged me showed that they really cared and that as hard as it was for me to leave 826, it was hard for them too. That was really, really great. It was nice to leave my internship that way.

For my ISP, I had my last interview with a veteran on Monday. I've had to give back the tripod and the camera and the audio recorder I've been using, and I was actually kind of sad, I had this weird attachment to them, and returning them officially meant that the project, at least in terms of the interviews, was over. My last interview was with Patrick K., who was my first one too! It's been so long because it was crazy trying to schedule.

It's a long story. But Patrick K. lives out in the suburbs (and by suburbs I mean over an hour away by car), and Patrick Putze drove me out to him for my very first interview, and I talked to Patrick K. at his house. During that, he told me how he doesn't come to Chicago anymore because of his PTSD, because he really can't be in crowded or noisy areas and things like the trains really bother him, so he doesn't come to the niehgborhoods or downtown unless it's something really important to him and he cares a lot about it. As soon as he said that I was like well there's no way I'm asking you to meet me somewhere that means something to you in/near the city, so the plan was to go to his house again and for over a month I tried to schedule it. It was really hard, since by public transit it would've taken me almost four hours just to get to him so I needed a ride from Patrick Putze. The days that both Patrick K. and I could do it, Patrick Putze couldn't drive me, and it was impossible for our three schedules to match up. It was also really difficult communicating with Patrick K; because of his TBI, I think he kept forgetting about the emails. Either he'd forget he ever read them or he'd forget to reply. It was especially frustrating because I had his military photographs! They're in a huge album that would've been really expensive to send, and they're also kind of important. If he didn't have time to talk, I wanted to at least return those to him.

It got to the point where Patrick Putze was like, you'll just have to mail his photographs back to him, sorry the second interview didn't work out. I was really bummed. I felt really bad for Patrick K., since both Edgar and Maurice had really expressed how they were looking forward to the second interviews so it was hard to have to say it wouldn't work out. And I was needlessly stressing out about it, I was like, now there are questions I have that'll go unanswered and I'll never know and there might've been so much that would've been said and ahh. So I emailed Patrick (I didn't get his phone number throughout all this, until the end. Which is one of those things that's so stupid and obvious, you literally cannot understand why you didn't think of it the entire time. I got Maurice's and Edgar's phone numbers so I have no idea why I didn't get Patrick's during our first interview) and told him I'd be willing to meet him halfway if he could work something out. I just couldn't do those almost-four hours to get there, because of finals. And Patrick's wife replied, she said how Patrick forgets about his emails and she talked to him and he would be okay with coming to me. She gave me his phone number and said to just let them know the address of a good place near me to meet.

So Patrick K. came to Pilsen, and we ended up talking at the resource center, a study space, next to La Casa, which was the quietest, least likely place to have a bunch of people I could think of. We set up in there and literally hung out and talked for four hours. The actual interview, what I have for footage for the film, is an hour and a half; we'd talk between questions, and when he got there and before he left. But it was great to have that much time to just hang out.

Out of everything that happened with this project, out of everything that was said or done, I think that means the most to me. Patrick never said it, but the fact that he was willing to come to me, to Chicago, and to have his wife drive him over an hour just to get there, shows how important this is to him. And the fact that my project is one of those important things that he'll come to the city for, means the world to me.

Patrick brought his service dog, Zeus, with him. I was really nervous at first because honestly, I have no idea how a service dog exactly helps with PTSD (which, looking back, was an important and really obvious question to ask. Wow). When they first got there Zeus was freaking out and I didn't know if that meant Patrick was freaking out too, if Zeus was reacting to what he could feel from him, or was just warning him of the situation. So I didn't really know how to act or treat Zeus at first except keep my distance and not pet him. Then Patrick was like, "He's invisible. He's not even here, act like he's not even here." Which immediately made it better because that let me know what to do and how to act, and at the end Patrick told me that I did a good job with it. When Zeus whined I kept going with the interview, and when they got up and walked around I didn't just sit there and stare.

Patrick rescued Zeus a while ago, and they've been training together, Zeus has been training to be Patrick's service dog and Patrick's been training along with him and teaching him. Patrick commented on my personality and how I'm such a calm person and it was really good for Zeus to be around that, and that through ignoring him I was training Zeus too. When they first got there, and to take breaks during the interview, they'd get up and walk around and do these exercises. Patrick had a bag of treats he kept in his pocket for when Zeus actually did what he was supposed to do, and he brought Zeus's blanket from home, apparently you use something like that or a toy that smells like home, and it gets to the point where the dog learns that every time that object is around, they're needed, and they have to be not a pet but a service dog for the moment. The whole thing was great.

I'm actually kind of glad that it worked out that our second interview was without Patrick Putze; the first time I really depended on him and this time it was all me. Actually, I'm glad that there was only one interview that Patrick P. helped me out with, which is totally the opposite of how I felt at the beginning. Doing the rest on my own made me learn more than I ever could have with him. Patrick K. mentioned the difference just between his two interviews; he was my last and my first. He didn't put it this way, but basically I was a lot less awkward. I was a lot better at follow-up questions, at paying attention to what he was saying and when he mentioned he went to college, asking what he studied instead of going to the next question on my pre-made list. Having him tell me that there was a huge difference and he could tell how much I'd learned and that I was a lot more comfortable and confident was great.

Yeah, my interview with Patrick was awesome. It was a really great interview to end on. He was really excited throughout the whole thing, I could tell he really liked just sitting there and hanging out, that he'd been looking forward to it, like Edgar and Maurice told me they were looking foward to their second interviews. He's a really cool guy. I'm so, so glad that he was willing to come to me, and it worked out.

He hugged me at the end, and told me to email him the next time I'm in Chicago. That too meant a lot to me.

Leaving the veterans was interesting. It's been kind of a weird relationship. They've done something for me by giving me their time and their stories, and I'll be giving them something in return, with the film. I've come in and out of their lives in a couple months and we'll probably never see each other again. We worked together pretty intensely in such a short time, in the way that their artwork and their stories were so personal and meaningful, and they have given me a huge amount of trust. They were all great people, including the art therapist, she was really awesome too, and I think going in they might have been a little nervous about what the whole thing would be about, but they all told me they liked my questions, that I wasn't just interested in the hard things they've been through but also in what the food was like, and mundane stuff like that, and I wanted to know about the entire process. To have a total stranger come in and be like, "I don't know anything but I'd like to, and you can/don't have to talk about whatever you want" was really cool for them. I ended up really liking them, and I hope they liked me, I don't know, hopefully. I think they did, because of the difference between the first and second interviews. Those first five minutes were always so awkward, it was like "hey nice to meet you, I have no idea who you are but could you sit here and awkwardly put this mic up your shirt" and then during the second interviews they were so much more relaxed and I was too. Instead of answering my questions in two sentences, they'd take ten minutes. It truly became a conversation. And when we left each other, we were both happy.

Our relationship was way different than it was when we started. When we left, I felt like we were friends. When Edgar and I said goodbye at the museum, he shook my hand, and this is kind of weird to say but you know how you can tell a lot about someone/how they feel about you in the way they shake your hand? His shake was like a thank you. He seemed to say, thanks for everything. And it was really great. There was a gratitude there, and a sincerity. It was like the hugs I got at 826; it was so sincere, there was something that passed between us and mutual gratitude is just the best way to desrcibe it. I was telling my boyfriend about it, about how sincere the hugs at 826 and that handshake from Edgar was, and it's been a while since goodbyes for me have been so sincere. I could tell how much people cared and it was hard to leave. And I was a little weirded out by it, I was like, why is it that way and I finally realized, it's because we left as friends. And this sounds super cheesy but it's always really hard to leave friends, especially when you've both done something for each other.

The absolute last thing I expected when I started this project was to end up becoming friends with the veterans. But that's what happened. Looking back all three of them were awesome. I understand that I had a great experience with this and it easily could've been different, and I know I'm lucky that not only did I end up with three men who were so open, but who were so great about it and so sweet. Yeah… they're awesome guys.

The first time I was with Patrick K., as we were leaving his house he shook my hand and said thank you. I didn't understand. I was like, no, dude, thank you, you're the one who was in the military and was willing to participate in this project and gave me all your military photographs, and you're letting me creep on your life for two months. Why are you thanking me?

But when Edgar shook my hand at NVAM, I understood. I think, just as I was excited to tell the high school students at the event we went to where we were put with groups of them about Knox, these veterans were excited to talk about their experiences, and were happy that I was asking questions about the food and to explain things. There was this mutual gratefulness, they wanted to talk and I was there to listen; I wanted to understand and they wanted to be understood.

Through this, I could tell how much they wanted and needed to talk. They would tell me how excited they were to do the second interview, and a lot of what they said I could tell they said it because they wanted people to know and they wanted me to know. They really, really need to talk about it. Not every veteran wants to, or can. Assuming every veteran went through terrible things and needs to talk to you about it is absolutely wrong. Some of them flat out don't want to talk; some people weren't in combat and worked an office job; some came away from their service with a pretty negative view on the government and our military, and get into intense politics. You have to know to ask the right questions too.

But, sometimes, they do really enjoy talking about it and need to talk about it. What they like talking about though isn't the hard things that you assume they went through; they like talking about the pranks they pulled on their buddies or how they told off an officer and got away with it or how they never got sick. When you talk to a veteran, instead of just thanking them for their service, ask them what exactly that service was, what they did. Be interested in whatever they say. And when they say they were with a certain battalion, don't be afraid to ask them what a battalion is. They'll go into the structure of the whole thing and explain to you what a company, platoon, and squad is too. Ask them about the everyday things and the structure, and they'll talk for hours about it.

So. My interviews are over, and what I've been doing the last couple weeks has been trying to edit the film. The editing has, by far, been the hardest and most frustrating and overwhelming aspect of this project, because I have never edited anything whatsoever. Deciding to have my first editing project be something that involved four other people and twelve hours of footage was not the greatest idea. It's not something I'd recommend. You're learning just how to do it and about all the little technical things at the same time that you're dealing with the narrative and the story itself, and it sucks. Looking back, I really should've started practicing with Final Cut Pro like a month ago. I should've taken a ten-minute clip from an interview, and made short movie from that and just practiced. But I didn't. For one thing it took over three weeks to get FCP on my laptop with Patrick's help, and then I had to find a way to convert all my video files because they wouldn't play on my computer, and then there were more issues and when I finally got it all together, I struggled with the syncing. Since Patrick gave me his audio recorder, I have the audio and the video of each clip, and there's this thing you can do where you sync them so the audio from the microphone matches up with the video. It's absolutely amazing, but I didn't realize that FCP didn't put the synchronized clips in the places I thought it did, and for a couple days I was really confused and really frustrated because it wasn't working, and I got a really late start on the editing. I'm bascially a week behind where I really should be. I had a meeting with my ISP instructor that first week of December, and because I was struggling with the syncing I hadn't started organizing the footage into the narrative yet, and Jason was like "What do you have so far?" and I was like "Nothing."

But. I got it figured out. And since then it's been really intense, like constantly-stressful, no-rest, stay-up-til-4-in-the-morning-two-weeks-in-a-row stressful.

Most of the stress has come from the 12 hours of footage, and the how-the-hell-do-I-cut-it-down-and-match-up-3-completely-stories-and-a-random-art-therapist-question. But a lot of the stress has been emotional too. I interacted with these people so much and really got to know them and became friends with them, and now I'm taking what they said and manipulating it and taking advantage of it and picking and choosing what'll make the best story. A lot of people wouldn't have a problem with that, but thanks to my parents, I'm a really sensitive person, and unfortunately I'm not heartless and putting a value on what people said and felt and being like, that's not important enough, has been kind of hard. I've definitely moved on from it. But at first I was like, crap. I know they'll understand, and they obviously don't remember all of what they said, so it doesn't really matter. I think, since this project took on something that I didn't expect, and I was really impacted by the veterans' stories and the way they really opened up to me, and it was my first project, that added a big emotional attachment to it. Plus there's 12 hours of it! 12 hours of feels. Oh my God.

I've just been so worried about how the veterans will be portrayed. Part of the reason why we got along so well was because I asked about the everyday things, and those everyday things will not be in the film, I'll be pulling out their hardships. Basically, I'm reducing them to someone who has PTSD and someone who took a life, and they're so much more than that. Plus, Patrick, when I asked if there was anything more he had to say at the end of his second interview, he was like, "I just want people to not take advantage of us. Like with this film, don't take advantage of us" and I was like well shit am I taking advantage of you? I told him that and he was like "I didn't mean it that way, I just meant in general, you've been so good about it and I wanted to say it for other people" and he said how each veteran did this voluntarily. They talked about what they wanted to talk about, and they completely understand that I'm taking these hours and hours, and compiling them into an hour or less. They understand. And if they watch it and get mad, they were willing to do it, so they just have to live with the end result. "It's your project," he said. "Don't worry about us."

But of course I worry. I don't know. You just have to be like, "you did your part, thank you, I don't really care what you think now." You have to put aside their opinions and focus on yours, and I'm not used to that. It's just, real people are involved. As a screenwriter/fiction writer, I'm so used to dealing with fictional characters whose feelings aren't hurt if you cut something they said that they really care about or if you box them into stereotype. Obviously the veterans have been real people this whole time but that didn't really hit me until the editing for some reason.

Also, a big part of the narrative/what I've learned is how so many people don't understand, or just flat out don't know, about how hard it is for veterans years and years after they come home. No one knows how high the rate of suicide is. A lot of this needs to be said and heard and shared, and it's my responsibility to share it. I'm feeling this intense responsibility to carry on their stories and to provide that bridge of commuication with the film. Yeah. Not the easiest first project. There's also always the fact that this is my first editing project and it might not be that good because I simply don't know enough to make it good. The fact that I don't know how to do a lot has added stress. And Patrick K. was like, "This will be great, I have high expectations" and I was like no Patrick have no expectations.

But. As frustrating as it's been, it's also been interesting and cool and great. As a writer, I usually come at this type of thing the exact opposite way; usually I provide the material and then I'm left out of the rest of the process. This time, the material was given to me, and I am the process. The veterans did their part; they gave me the words. Now I have to make something of it.

I've understood the other side of film. I'm way more sympathetic with directors/editors now than I ever have been, and have a completely new admiration for their jobs. Now I know what it's like to love a thirty-second clip, but it doesn't fit into your narrative at all so you have to cut it even though it's really amazing. Now I understand why writers get screwed, and the original material is manipulated and changed. Film is so, so manipulative, and people really underestimate that. It's crazy. I can take something a veteran said, and something they said an hour later, and put them next to each other and it sounds like they said it all at once. Editing warps time. You have to understand that there's raw material provided and that the final film you're seeing has been reshaped over and over again.

As these past two weeks have gone on, I've gotten more detached from the veterans and the feels. You just have to make peace with the fact that it is absolutely impossible for everyone to be happy with the end product, and the people who are unhappy with it might be the people who were involved but ultimately, it's your project so whatever. You have to really focus on what you, the artist, the sculptor, the filmmaker, want. I need to really decide what I want this film to say and how it'll say it. I need to forget all the talk and everything I've learned, and look back at when I was sitting in my dorm room at Knox a year ago, talking to my boyfriend over Skype about this cool off campus study program in Chicago, and that one of the things the students do is an independent study project, and how great would it be to talk to veterans. I need to look at what I've told people about these veterans these past couple months, what's really affected me, and put that in the film. People keep telling me, it's your project. I have actually been given the awesome freedom of doing what I want with it, of having control throughout the entire process, which is usually nonexistent in film. Yeah. I just need to deal with it. And if people are unhappy, including the veterans, if they don't agree, at least I made it and they saw it. So.

Patrick Putze has been helping me out, as always, a ton with the editing. He sent me literally over twenty links to tutorials and watched what I have so far and offered suggestions, and he called this week and we talked about it for twenty minutes. I would've died without his help, oh my god. But I think our artistic syles are clashing. Patrick made a documentary film for his thesis in grad school, he is professionally trained to do stuff like this and his film is legit. I'm a screenwriter and I'm like no this story will be told following the traditional structure of a film. Patrick keeps trying to push documentary-ish things, and some of them are helpful and some of them aren't. It's awesome that he's giving me so many suggestions and he's letting me do whatever I want, I don't have to do anything he says at all. But since I've never made a film before, let alone a documentary, it's hard not to be heavily influenced by him and what he thinks. He's so much more knowledgeable than me, and so often turns out to be completely right. Up until this point, whatever Patrick's suggested I've done. So it's hard not to follow his suggestion of structuring it a certain way because maybe that's the actual, right way to go about it, but that's not what I want. It's hard to shut out what Patrick is saying, and go with what I feel the story should be, especially when I'm not completely sure what exactly that story is.

Patrick and I met for lunch for tacos last week, so I could give him his sound equipment back and we could talk about the editing and the film. Patrick's a really great guy too. And he's thinking of making another film! He really wants to do a legit, feature-length documentary on NVAM and the people who have worked there and the artists. That's the film he mentioned when I first met him, he was like, "if you're still around, maybe you can help me work on it" and he hasn't mentioned it again and I was asking people about it, and they were like, that sounds like a job offer, you need to ask him about it before you leave. It turns out the film's more of a personal project than a job-thing, and Patrick said it'd take two or three years to make. It's not official, and I have plans in Colorado after graduation. But I told him I'd love to come work on it, and he said he'd love to have me. So it's an option. We'll see if he ends up truly making it; he might not. And I don't know where I'll be two years from now when my boyfriend graduates pharmacy school and we can move wherever we want, but I do want to come back to Chicago someday. Hopefully, hopefully, it'll work out that I can come back someday and work with Patrick on his film. I really liked working with him and part of the reason why he helped me out so much with this project is because he's anticipating working together; we were talking about teams/groups and how important it is in film to find a group of people you like working with and who do their jobs, and you know you can make films together, and he was like, "You can be on my team." So. Even if the NVAM film doesn't work out, maybe something will. It's an option right now, and I'm just happy to have an option outside of Colorado, outside of Knox.

And even if nothing at all happens, at least I have a connection, an established relationship. That's one of the things I'm really proud of with this project, is the relationships I've established with it, with Patrick Putze who wants me to be in his filmmaking group, and with Patrick K., who told me to email him the next time I'm in Chicago. Especially as a shy person, it's really great to have people who I've worked with, and had a good experience with, who I can contact again in the future, in a place that's not just where I've lived my whole life. It's awesome.

This could not have been done without Patrick Putze. I still have no idea why he helped me so much. I think he believed in the project and had a good feeling about it. When I mentioned how great it was to learn all this, he said it was great to teach it, and he's hoping we'll work together again in the future (and this time he won't have to correct all my amateur mistakes). I really needed someone who could teach me me how to do this. Meeting him literally changed my life. And it's weird to look back and think, if the artist my ISP class met with back in September hadn't asked about our projects and followed up on his offer to give me a contact and connected me to NVAM, and if I hadn't gotten completely lost that first day I tried to go and Patrick wasn't there, it might not have happened at all. I met the right person at the right time.

This project has made me realize that filmmaking is what I really want to do. This whole thing was so awesome. Like I said it was really overwhelming and the hardest thing I've ever done. The entire process was really difficult. It was just obstacle after obstacle; once I figured out one thing it was on to the next that I didn't know how to do. But I was more afraid of it not happening, than struggling. The idea of the interviews not working out, of having my computer crash and losing the footage, is a lot more terrifying than facing having to work out and complete seven interviews and sift through 12 hours of footage. I read through all my other posts before I made this one, and I think it was in ISP Adventure that I first talked a lot about my project, and I said that I hadn't really brought it up because it was a huge hope/dream and I was afraid it wouldn't happen. And now I look at that, and it has happened. And that's the best thing in the world.

I was so excited to just be doing it, that carried me through. Even though the film is not the best technically, I was happy enough to just be doing it. Patrick Putze laughed at me because he was sending me a ton of tutorials on using Final Cut Pro, and there are so many things you can do and it's all so cool!! And I told him that and I freaked out about it and he laughed at me. There are techniques that people use for feature-length films, for the superhero movies that I'm in love with, that I use in my film, and that is so cool just the idea of it is awesome! And with some of the tutorials Patrick was like "The pros do this" and I was like, you do realize I'm not a pro Patrick, but I am learning things that legit editors do. I am so excited.

Learning so much about editing and filmmaking was incredible. Not only do I now have experience, and the fact that I have both screenwriting and editing skills makes my chances for a job better, but just the fact that I can do this again and it'll be easier and better next time, and I can keep building on what I know, is great too. I can't even being to describe how happy I am that I did it. But I'm also really, really glad that I made a film so that Patrick's, Maurice's, and Edgar's stories can be shared. NVAM is only in Chicago, but a film can be watched anywhere, and I hope it creates conversations.

Yeah, the filmmaking was awesome and it changed my life. But the best part of all of this was the opportunity to talk to veterans. I still can't believe three people were actually willing to talk to me, that they were willing to be so open. I am eternally grateful to these guys for sharing so much with me. They understood that this was a student project and when I messed up with the camera or the audio recorder during the interviews I was like "I've never done this before" and I gave them fair warning that I've never edited anything either, but they have had so much faith in me. I told Patrick K. about the editing and how stressed out I was because I want to do a good job for them, and he said, "Don't worry. You will. I have the feeling this will be great." And I'll never forget how, when I first met Maurice at the 100 Faces opening art reception at NVAM, he said he was excited to watch the film and I said I was already nervous about the editing, and Patrick Putze said, "I have the utmost faith in you." People have believed in me so much with this project, and the fact that they think I can do it has made me feel like I can do it.

I'm really hoping at some point this next week, I'll have kind of a rough draft version of the film, something that I can at least send to the veterans to watch and have other people watch. I am determined to produce something, I can't walk away without at least finishing the first version of it. I want to do it for the veterans; they least they deserve is the (hopefully) decent film they were promised. When I started this, what really carried me through was wanting to do it so badly. Before, it was like, "I really want to do this," and now it's like, "I have to do this."

Compared to a week ago, I've basically come from nothing, right now I have a rough cut of the film and I have everything I want from the interviews and it's just a matter of shaping it. I know I have a lot of work to do, but I've already come pretty far. Especially considering eight days ago when Jason asked me what I had and I was like "Nothing." It'll be a work in progress and I'll keep working on it in the winter, finally adding in all those coolio little pro techniques Patrick wants me to learn, until I have a more complete version. But for now I want to get that rough draft done. If I still have access to this blog, I'll post it on here; otherwise it'll go up on the ACM website somewhere. I'm also creating a website that'll have all of the interviews on it, so that the veterans can watch their whole interviews, and other people can too, if they're interested in hearing/learning more. Basically 11 hours was left out of the film, so there's definitely a ton more and there's a lot that I really wish could be in the film that I had to leave out. Patrick Putze suggested grouping the videos by veteran but then also organizing them into short clips that are 2-5 minutes each depending on the subject, like there'd be a 7-minute video titled "VetCAT and other creative arts therapy programs" from Suellen's interview. I like that and I have no idea how to make a website but apparently it's easier than it sounds, and I will link that too if possible. So. Yeah. I will keep working on it.

Thursday we had our ISP Symposium. We all had to create poster boards for our projects and had 5 minutes to present them, then had 5 minutes to answer questions. It was nervewracking, extra work and stress, and I had to think a lot about how to condense my project into 5 minutes and what exactly I wanted to say about it- which was really good because it made me really think about what's the most important. And I realized when I made the poster and I was gluing on photos of Maurice's and Patrick's and Edgar's artwork, I was more excited about their stories and their art than I was about having made a film. Like I said, the filmmaking was incredible and I'm so excited about that, but I was more excited to talk talk about their veterans and share their work.

It was really cool to see everyone's projects. People did great things. There was the outline/development of a screenplay, a website about the Haymarket riots that was created, an app for rideshare services created, an exploration into what makes a safe space, a statistical study of what influences a student's chances of getting into college, the creation of a website that connects businesses with artists who can paint murals inside or oustide the building, someone who curated their own show with eight pieces of art from two friends, and an exploration of rejecting the male gaze. We all worked really hard, and the symposium was really the capstone to the entire semester, a culmination of what we've done. It was really great.

Anyways. To wrap things up, throughout this semester, when I learned or did something that blew my mind or that was important or completely new to me, I wrote it down, so I started creating a list about halfway through the term. This is my list.

Things I've learned in Chicago:

1) You can't judge a whole neighborhood based on the first couple of people you meet.

2) The Pink Line will constantly stop for signal clearance.

3) There is so much to do in big cities, even people who have lived here forever feel like there's never enough time to do everything.

5) Half the people you ask for directions are either lost or tourists themselves.

6) Don't mess with Chicago-style hotdogs.

7) People from Chicago are often friendly, funny, and fiercely proud of their city.

8) Millenium Park used to be an airport.

9) Exactly what gentrification is, how it can be a bad thing, and how it can also be a good thing.

10) The Willis Tower is really still the Sears Tower.

11) How it feels to leave at 9 a.m. and get back thirteen hours later. Basically, I've learned how to adult. And it kind of sucks.

12) To be thankful that I'm leaving before it gets really cold.

13) It really is possible and not so terrible to get around without a smart phone.

14) We are constantly trying to understand each other. Our lives revolve around sympathy. I think we never completely succeed, because no one can ever completely understand what we go through. But at least we try, and sometimes that's enough.

15) What an alderman is.

16) How to tutor a young student in writing, and to collaborate with them to create an awesome story.

17) Little kids are the best.

18) Anything and everything is potential art.

19) Covering an entire room with photos of bad selfies actually looks really cool.

20) When you do an interview in public, people will notice and instead of acting silly/crazy in the background, they'll avoid coming near you/being in the shot.

21) The best way to make someone feel good is to really care about their work.

22) People have more faith in me than I do in myself.

23) Just rolling with whatever life throws at you is sometimes the only way to live.

24) It's completely okay to feel overwhelmed, and to talk about it and get help.

25) Networking is terrifying, but so, so worth it.

26) What a SAW gunner is.

27) The most amazing, life-changing experiences bloom from complete coincidences that possibly are meant to be.

28) I realized how much I like Chicago when people came to visit, and I was crazy excited to share the city with them.

29) Knoxies are everywhere.

30) The Chicago I knew before this, which was downtown, is actually not much of Chicago at all.

31) The Chicago Public School system is unfair, unjust, and the contrast between schools is outrageous.

32) How important writing skills are.

33) Editors have one of the hardest, most underappreciated jobs ever.

34) Instead of thanking a veteran for their service, to ask them what their service was, and if they're willing to talk about it, that means so much more to them.

35) That Millenium Park is a favorite place for both tourists and Chicagoans.

36) Talking to people actually isn't that scary.

37) It is possible to function after getting less than three hours of sleep.

38) Pilsen is a great neighborhood.

39) Produce, things like bell peppers and cucumbers and asparagus, will go bad after about two weeks in the fridge.

40) To label food before it gets lost in the depths of the refridgerator.

41) That complete strangers will put an incredible amount of faith and trust in you.

42) That I am a very privledged person, and I was ignorant of that privledge.

43) How to create a film.

44) That you can come to love something you were terrified of at first.

45) What it's really, truly like to go to war and come back.

46) Chicago is one of the best places to live and work in the world.

It's weird to look back at when I first arrived and how I felt, how incredibly overwhelming everything was, and everything felt so surreal and I had no idea where I was or where things were for the first two months, and I felt so ostracized in Pilsen and now I don't care, and how we were told that we'd have to get to our internship interviews on our own and having to get somewhere completely by myself was terrifying. I've come a long way; everyone in the program has, and it's been amazing.

I remember talking to my friend who did the program last fall when she came back to Knox in the winter about it. She told me that the person you are when you leave for Chicago is not the same person who comes back. That was a little scary and after that I was wondering how much I'd change, and in what ways. I definitely have changed. I've learned so much, I've learned an incredible amount this semester, my eyes have really been opened to a ton of things. Not only am I way more confident living in a big city but I really want to come back someday. I've been through a lot and not all of it was great, but overall this program was awesome, and deciding to do it was one of the best decisions I've ever made, because the changes I've gone through has made me a better, more understanding, more experienced person, and what I've learned is going to be invaluable. And I'm also really glad I chose to do the blog, so I could share it all.

In my first post, I talked about how Victoria explained her theory about windows, that we each see the world through our own window and it's a very singular perception. But we can learn how to see through other windows, and although we'll never have any window but our own, we can at least understand other ones. And I was wondering if by the end I'd learn how to see through other windows. Not only has that happened, but the wide range of windows I've learned has been broader and more meaningful than I could've imagined, from the veteran's windows and Patrick Putze's and navigating the CPS school system and working at 826 and learning about gentrification and segregation to living in Pilsen. These are windows I never even knew existed before, and if I did, they were not what I thought they'd be. I've also learned what I had no idea of before: that art, because of its communication through images and the way it speaks from and to the soul, is a way to learn to see through other people's windows, and sometimes, it's the only way we can.

In my first post I also talked about Uglies and explained about learning to see beyond the little men that mark the boundary of your world. I have learned to see beyond my little men. And part of what I've learned has been a lot about myself, from the fact that I can get over my fears and not only talk to strangers but make something really meaningful from it, that I absolutely love film, that I was so ignorant of the privledge I've had and how lucky I've been, that I love big cities, and more. I think that's the best kind of program or project you can participate in, when not only your world expands but also your place in it.

Thank you for reading my posts this semester, and I really wish I'd been able to do more. If I could go back and redo things I'd post more. But, doing the blog was also one of the best decisions I've ever made, and I'm really glad I've been able to share my thoughts and process with you. Yeah… This is another weird goodbye.

The program was incredible and the city it was in, as well as its people, is even more incredible. I am leaving loving Chicago more than I thought I would. I am so happy I had the experience of being in this city, and I'm leaving changed, but in positive ways. Yay.

See you again soon, Chicago.

- Laura

[Doyi's Blog] Independent Study Project #2: My ISP!

2014-12-10T01:17:00.000-06:00

Wow. I knew that It's been quite a while since my last post,
but I just realized it's already December! Time flies!

Like Laura, I've been crazy busy especially in the past month.
Internship forms, ISP posterboards, Seminar papers, Core homework...
Everything seemed to be flooding over me that I needed some time settling down and figuring things out.

Finally, after a few weeks, I feel like I'm getting there.

SOOOOO!

Today I'm going to talk about my Independent Student Project (ISP).
Yes, my ISP, separate from the group's.

It took a long, long way for my project to shape into its current form,
but I'm gonna try shortening all that into one blog post.

Beginnings (that were nothing like the end)
About a month and a half ago, I wanted to apply for a digital marketing summer internship at Jacob's Pillows Festival. Two of the requirements to be intern was proficiency in Adobe Suite products (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator) and basic computer programming skills. I didn't have any. Also, as a third year Art major, I had to prepare for an exhibition before graduation. So, I naturally tried to utilize this ISP opportunity to achieve both of them by making some type of digital artwork--something I could make art out of, while at the same time learning computer and software. I decided to do a digital collage.

Now that I had the medium set, I needed a subject.
Who or what should I depict? Should it be completely abstract? Political? Just aesthetically awesome?
After a few days grappling my head and searching for my subject, I thought I should do something edgy and fashiony--things that I am interested in. A look-book, maybe? A fashion illustration? Then, BOOM, I thought of a cool thing to explore more about: mannequins. I think I wrote on my proposal that I'll find different mannequins at different retail stores, compare and contrast them, change the interaction of it and its original environment and creatively use it beyond the fashion context. To start, I went out downtown and took some mannequin pictures:

These plastic models are from American Apparel near State street. After taking photos, I incorporated them to the demo versions of my collage. I wanted to somehow poke fun at the nipples, though maybe not done so well here:

Realizations
After getting hyped about mannequins, I told my friends, told my adviser, Jason,
"I'm going to make art out of mannequins!" Both of them seemed to be super excited, and so was I. Jason told me that this topic had so much potential, and there were many ways I could take it.

Then he asked me, "Why mannequins?"

Well, I honestly didn't have an answer for that. I just thought they were cool and interesting.
He said it really was cool and visually interesting, too, but he also felt that it didn't have a core, something really meaningful and purposeful. It wasn't meaty. Why the oranges? Why a stock image of oranges? What do these mannequins reflect, and how do they do that?
Still, Jason reminded me that my art doesn't need to carry any weight at all. In the end, it was all up to me.

Although it didn't really matter what art I make and whether it should be socially significant and what not (after all, I just wanted to be an Adobe pro), I didn't want to make bull shit, either. I wanted it to be meaningful and interesting. To do that, I may have had to discard the mannequin and find something I truly cared about.

But where did I have to restart?

New Directions
I had to take a step back and rethink. The topic had to be something that resonated for me, and at the same time was relatable for others. Then, I realized the best way to approach the universal was to start from the personal. The experience I chose was cat-calling.

It's one of the most interesting and often intimidating experiences I've had in the city. All I did was wear makeup and a dress, and I get unasked stares, comments, whistles. Many of my (largely) female friends have been cat-called as well. Whether we want it or not, we could only ignore it and carry on. Each person has mixed feelings about the issue, with mine being more negative. And for my project I decided to bring it up in more general terms--the male gaze--and explored ways to subvert it.

Now, don't get me wrong; I'm not an expert in feminism or gender studies. I have never taken a course in the field, though I have read a few feminist literature just for my ISP, such as "The Feminine Mystique" by Betty Friedan and "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" by Laura Mulvey. So, I may actually know as little or as much as you do. However, knowing that the objectification of female body/sexuality (and other feminist topics included in my art) have been common issues experienced by all women in some form or level, I thought this subject would come across as more than familiar for many of us.

The Process

Basically, I had a million ways to approach the rejection of the male gaze. I decided to take a more assertive stance, something very in-your-face. Instead of hiding the body, I wanted to boldly reveal more of it, not to make her look vulnerable, but to empower her by overtly, willingly showing (maybe even intimidating through) an oppositional type of nude. I also thought about portraying provocative poses and stereotypical body images to parody how society have continuously eroticized and objectified the female form.

Before I reach the end result, here's a documentation of my creative process:

First drawings on sketchbook by permanent marker

Exploring my own body and reflection of my visage by taking photos

Sculpting surreal bodies and eyes using clay

This seems like extra, petty work, but doing each of these smaller exercises really helped me develop and finalize my ISP end-product. Seriously--after finally choosing 'rejecting the gaze, embracing the body' as my final topic, I had no idea where or how to start creating the art. All the conceptualizing smart stuff overwhelmed me to an unproductive degree. Luckily, Jason was there to advise me into taking these baby steps. I took his words, and it proved more than helpful.

And Now...The Result

I won't say much about what I've ended with. They're five foot large posterboards of one female subject in each posterboard. Below is one of the two works. Everything about it has basically been explained throughout my entire process, from thought to practice. What's new and exciting is that they're going to be cut-out. Similar to the clay sculpture I've done, the cut-outs will turn these flat ladies into a more interactive, portable piece of art with a somewhat three dimensional aspect to it. Maybe I could take them around the city, or leave them somewhere in the neighborhood to observe. But that's for future reference, when I have more time to work with them. We'll see what I do....

My Chicago

2014-12-08T22:37:00.002-06:00

All the arms we need are for hugging.

I can't believe it's almost been a month since I last made a post. I've really missed blogging and I really wish I'd been able to do one or two instead of none, but life happened. Things got really crazy around Thanksgiving, and they've been really crazy since. Also, I've been putting this off because I've been really needing to talk about my ISP and there is so much to talk about. This will probably be super long, so bear with me.

I made fancy asparagus a couple weeks ago! I cooked it with garlic and lemon juice and cheese. It was actually really easy, I should cook stuff like this more often. Look at my awesome asparagus!

I have not cooked anything like this since then. But that's okay.

Anyways. Awesome/weird things said to me by the students at 826:
"Go back to college."
"No more burritos for you."
"You really should read the bible, you know."
"You're probably a sinner. But that's okay, because we all are. And that's okay too because God forgives us for our sins."
"You look 19…80. Like you were born in 1980."
"You don't use gmail? What are you from, the sixties?"
"What do you think is wrong with me? Don't answer that question."

Things they've said in their stories:
"The only conflict is who in the world will be my boyfriend."
"Sometimes you are going to have to be heartbroken."
"King George was a cheap-o."

Just wanted to share how awesome the kids at 826 are.

It was interesting, though. Two of the kids I've worked with at after-school tutoring in the past couple weeeks were from military families, and their stories, out of the ones I've read, were the most violent and weapons-focused. For the whole semester, the students have been working on coming up with an imaginary land, and they've been creating titles, rules, animals, weather, and people. These two kids, who were not related, had lands that were all about weapons. They had an admiration for guns and tanks and bombs and they'd look up pictures of them on the internet and show me, and they were so excited about them. They had older brothers who were in the military, and they wanted to grow up to be just like them. One of the students had it all figured out, he knew where he was going to go to high school and what exactly he wanted to get into. It was kind of concerning. Their conception of weaponry wasn't healthy, I think. They didn't seem to understand the consequences of them. Like, they were so wrapped up in what the weapons did, and that they wanted to fire them, they couldn't even grasp the fact that they kill people. Our misconception of the military and warfare that's in our society starts when we're so young. It was really weird, since I've been talking to veterans, to have these kids think warfare is just the coolest thing in the world, because it is so not. It was just hard to see. But it wasn't my place to even attempt to try to change their minds, so I just did my job and focused on helping them make the best story out of it, minus some of the violence.

A couple weeks ago, for Core Course, I took a break from little kids and helped high school kids instead. As sort of a capstone for our Education Navigation assignment about the Chicago Public Schools system, we went to the University of Chicago and worked with high school seniors to figure out how to calculate how much college will cost, and to lead a discussion about college in general. There were two hundred students there, apparently, who were applying to ACM schools, and they had each of us sitting at a table with a group of students. First we did a workshop on financial aid, then the ACM students were supposed to lead an affirmative inquiry activity, but it turned out to be more of a Q&A session on what college is really like than the activity.
I was supposed to be paired with another student, but there were more tables and more groups than they originally thought and I ended up being by myself, with 7-8 high schoolers. At first I was kind of freaked out. It's already been established that: 1) I'm not good at talking to people 2) groups are scary.
But I did okay! I hated the awkward introductions, but it was really great to get to just hang out with the group and talk about college. After the first couple of awkward questions, everyone relaxed and it became more of a conversation. We talked about the food, homework, homesickness, do college kids really sleep, is it actually fun and not just all work, how to make friends. In the end it was actually awesome. I really love Knox, it's the perfect school for me, so I like talking about it, and what the students asked about made me remember what it was like for me four years ago, when I put off applying for college because I didn't want to think about leaving home. I was terrified about making friends and being homesick. It was great to sort of help ease those fears for these students. The majority of them were first-generation college students too, so their parents couldn't help. I could see myself in them, how I was four years ago. It was recent enough that I can still relate to them.

Yeah, it turned out to be completely fine and fun. At the end, one girl asked me for my contact information, because she had some friends who wanted to apply to Knox and she wanted to give them my email so they could ask more. I haven't gotten any emails, which I expected, but the fact that she asked me meant a lot to me. That actually made me really happy! I didn't screw up. Yay. I can handle groups now maybe.

The weekend after Thanksgiving, my brother came back with me to Chicago, and it was one of the best weekends I've had on the program. He goes to school in Portland, Oregon, and what he knows of Chicago is through the touristy, short vacations we'd take growing up, and he kept saying how excited he was to see the city through my eyes, and to see what I've been doing for the past fourteen weeks.
The first day he was here, Saturday, we literally rode seven trains. We went up to NVAM, and it was so cool because Maurice's artwork is in the front hall, in the entrance to the museum, and it was the coolest thing in the world to be able to say I knew the artist and I talked to him and I knew the personal story of each piece. It was awesome. And NVAM has a room that has their permanent exhibit of the Vietnam War, and when we were in there I talked a lot about Maurice and what he's been through. The other exhibit, 100 Faces of War Experience, is made up of 100 portraits supplemented by written statements the veterans provided. Since there was 100 of them and there's all that writing, I thought Justin would go through it pretty quickly, because he's never really liked museums much and he doesn't do a lot of reading. I could tell he mostly came to the museum to see what I've been doing and because he knew it mattered to me. But when we were walking through 100 faces, after the first couple, he slowed down and he started really looking at them. He actually went through and really took the time to read the written statements, and we didn't say anything, just walked. I got bored since I've been there so many times, and I thought he'd be the bored one. But it was cool.

I also took him to 826CHI, and showed him the awesome secret agent supply store that's in the front of the space, then showed him the intern room and where we did all the tutoring. And we ate at Filter, this super hipster coffee shop on Milwaukee a couple blocks away from 826, and went and saw Mockingjay downtown and walked around Millenium Park that night. I took him to Chinatown and to Los Comales in Pilsen the next day. It was great because Justin saw Chicago's neighborhoods instead of just downtown. He also saw how much I ride public transportation and how exhausting it is and I laughed at him when he fell as the train moved the first couple times.

We also went to the field museum, which I actually haven't been to yet, because they have their Vodou exhibit, and Justin went to New Orleans last spring break and I knew as soon as I saw the ads he'd want to go. That was really cool for him too. I felt bad because I didn't think he'd want to spend too much time in the museum so we didn't get there until 2, but he spent forever in the Vodou exhibit, and he said that he could've spent the whole day in there. I didn't realize he liked walking around and looking at things so much, because he didn't used to. Yeah, I felt so bad, we had to leave the exhibit before he was done cause we'd paid for general admission, which includes a 3D movie, and the movie was starting. We saw Tiny Giants! It was the cutest movie ever! It was about a little chipmunk who's trying to get acorns for the winter, and his store gets stolen and he almost dies but he doesn't. It was the cutest movie I've ever seen. And the 3D glasses were awesome. Here's us in our glasses:

Some pictures from the Vodou exhibit:

Yeah… it was just awesome to show him everything, to take him to NVAM and 826 and the movie theater downtown, the things that have been my life for the past couple months, and to show him another side of Chicago.

Now that it's almost the end of the program, everyone's asking me if I like Chicago and if I'll come back. I didn't mean to fall in love with the city, but I really did, and I didn't realize that until Justin came to visit, and in the weeks beforehand I was thinking of all the awesome things we could do, and what I could show him from the city and I was so excited. I really love Chicago. I love walking around downtown at night and all the different neighborhoods, and Millenium Park and how much people want to help each other out here, and the trains and getting around by myself. I've just started to figure out how to get places and I know my way downtown now, and it's an awesome feeling. I actually really don't want to leave. I love it here. My boyfriend, who I'm planning on moving in with after graduation, hates big cities. But he's visiting at the end of the semester! All I have to do is make him fall in love with Chicago too. But, at this point, all I know is someday, somehow, I really really want to be here again.

Anyways. I'm not leaving yet. So. ISP. In my last post, I'd met Maurice at NVAM during the Veterans Day opening art reception, and I'd talked to Edgar without a tripod and didn't know the audio recorder just needs a change of batteries. Since then, I've had four more interviews; I interviewed Edgar at NVAM, talked to Maurice twice, and interviewed an art therapist, Suellen. My life has changed, in so many ways, through the all the knowledge I've gained about the military, what it's like to be a veteran and the struggles they go through, how art helps heal from trauma, how our nation is not there for veterans, and how to make a documentary. Basically these past couple weeks have been a crash course in documentary filmmaking, courtesy of Patrick Putze and a billion Final Cut Pro tutorials, and between what was said during the interviews and dealing with all the technical schizz with the video and the editing, this project has been really, really overwhelming. It kind of took over my life.

It's been incredibly stressful. But what I'm learning makes it worth it. Out of anything this project has made me realize that filmmaking is what I really want to do, and it's one of those things where you really have to do it in order to learn it. I was never that interested in the editing aspect, but now I realize how important it is to experience that as a screenwriter. I've learned a lot about the little things, and it always felt like there was one thing that went wrong, but then I never made that mistake again. For Edgar's second interview, I forgot to press record for the first three minutes. What he said during that won't be in the film, he just talked about the training process because I was curious, but it was really embarrassing anyways. Then my memory card ran out of space and for a while I couldn't figure out what the icon was saying and I went up to Edgar and I was like "is that the memory card?" He was probably like, wow. But I had extra memory cards! So I redeemed myself.

During Maurice's first interview, I learned that the sun is evil and we had to shift around as the interview went on, and for most of it his face is in shadow and kind of dark, and other times sunlight was right on him. Which makes the footage really meh. Also, we sat right next to vending machines, and I didn't realize until I listened to the audio afterward that you can totally hear them throughout the whole thing, they're a constant hum in the background.
People who watch this film who know anything about filmmaking will probably cringe a lot. But that's okay.

I've also learned a lot about people, in general. You can hear it in their voices in the audio when the veterans talk about things that are hard for them. They sigh, and when they talk again, their voice has changed, it's deeper, gruffer, it's weighed down. And their bodies weigh down too, they slouch more. You can see the change in their face. And whenever they choked up or struggled with what to say, they'd touch their hair or their face or scratch their head, as if their bodies were trying to make up for the loss of words, as if it was still trying to do something.

Also, memory is crazy. There were things I thought they said, and then listening to the audio afterward, I realized they never said it at all, or if they had it sometimes wasn't in the same way I thought they did. It showed me how much our mind makes things up, and substitutes what we think for the things people say, and we believe it's what happened. Going through the audio and realizing Edgar never said something I thought he did was kind of shocking.

My second interview with Edgar was at NVAM. To interview him where the 100 Faces is would've been cool since he was in Iraq, but there was this teen council thing going on, and we had to sit as far away as possible from it, in the The Things They Carried room. It was the first time I was interviewing someone the second time, and we were both so much more relaxed and comfortable. It went really, really well. There were two things that he talked about, though, that hit hard. The interview ended up being really hard to go through, emotionally.

In his first interview, Edgar brought up the fact that he's gay. I'd asked him if he would go back and change anything, and after answering that question he said that he hardest thing he went through in the military, out of everything, was having to serve under Don't Ask, Don't Tell. He said that being gay and being in the military were two conflicting things and he felt like they negated each other, and it's something he still really struggles with.

One of my questions for the second interview was why exactly he felt like they negated each other. I wanted to understand that. He said how having to pretend that you're not gay, or at least not acknowledging his sexuality, was an exhausting charade that really wore him down. You basically have to live a lie, you have to be careful of what you say and who you say it to, and you can never be yourself. He said he feels like they negated each other because whenever someone would tell him he did a good job, or that he was a good soldier, he'd think, would you say that to me if you knew I was gay? And he felt like they probably wouldn't. His sexuality undercut everything, made him feel like everything he recieved he didn't deserve because it wasn't completely him who did it.

The first interview, he'd told me how he was in the reserves during college, and in his senior year he got the call to go to Baghdad. He had to quit all his classes and change everything, a few semesters away from graduation. People were telling him he didn't have to go, that he should stay here and finish school, and he was like, no, I'm going to do it, I'm the one who signed my name on the dotted line, I took the risk and I can't imagine someone else going over there in my place. He had a couple friends who knew he's gay, and they were like, "Just tell them you're gay, then you don't have to go," but that was the last thing Edgar wanted to do.

This time, he brought that up again, and he said that he went not only because there was no way he wasn't going to and it was his burden to bear, but that part of the reason was also because he hadn't come out to his family yet, and there was no way that he would be like "Hey mom and dad, I was dishonorably discharged from the military because, guess what, I'm gay! Surprise!" So he went, and he came out to his parents a couple years after he came back.

Part of the reason, he said, that he went and didn't say anything about his sexuality was because he was afraid of what his parents would think. Edgar literally told me that he was more afraid of what his family would think of the fact that he's gay, than he was of getting blown up in Iraq. "It was a little less scary," he said. "Well, a whole lot less."

We moved on in the interview because I asked him when he did come out to his family, and we talked about that. But what he said just floored me. I couldn't stop thinking about it. It's been over three weeks, and I still can't really get over that. I'll never forget that. I just can't… there has never been something that I've been so afraid to tell my parents, that I was more okay with dying than saying it. And it's not something you can change. It's an integral part to yoursef, it's who you are. I can't even begin to imagine what it's like to have to suppress who you are like that, to hate it and deny it because of other people's view of it. It is so terrible that we live in the kind of society where Edgar was more afraid of telling his parents who he is, than of what he was facing in Iraq. And on the parent's side… that would kill me, if I were a parent, and I found out that my son was more okay with getting blown up than telling me something. I would want my kids to be able to come to me and tell me anything. Especially before they left for their deployment.

That affected me a lot. Then I asked him at the end of the interview if there was anything else he wanted to talk about. He was like, "I could talk about the politics for hours," and I was like, "It's okay, you can say whatever, it's good" and he said, that some of the politcs he'd discussed "is representative of the whole thing, of the massive disconnect between how we say we value our troops and our action." He went on to tell me how he really believes that people are really ignorant about what's going on in the world, and the issues veterans are facing. A lot of people assume that veterans are okay when they come home and if they're not, that they'll get over it in the next couple years and be fine, but in reality, they deal with things for their whole lives, and they're not fine.

He talked about the statistic- which is a true statistic- that twenty-two veterans commit suicide every day, and how no one knows about it or acknowledges that we send people overseas and they come home, and they're still dying. He started telling me about a friend of his who he met through NVAM, who went to Afghanistan twice and was a great guy and when he was in Chicago in 2012, Edgar took him about to lunch and just really liked being around him, and this man took his own life in September. It wasn't until I was listening to the audio afterward that I realized that was a couple months ago. Edgar was really upset, he said how disgusted he is with the whole "support the troops" thing, because we have all this money and all this support when we send people overseas, but then that disappears when they come home. We're like, great, you survived and you're home now, you're a hero, thank you for your service. And we leave it at that. We think it's fine, and it's not fine. They need a lot of help, and we do not provide them that, because we refuse to believe that anything terrible happens in this country and we shield ourselves from what really goes on. He hates the supposed support and the concerts and the events. "What real, tangible effect does that have?" he said. "What sort of substantial change? Nothing. It does nothing."

I came away from that interview just feeling, like, whoa. I had absolutely no idea twenty-two veterans commit suicide every day. I didn't realize how little support there is when they come back home, that people know about PTSD and the transition into civilian society again, but they don't realize that it can still be a struggle five, ten, fifty years later, that the transition is never complete and PTSD isn't something you completely heal from. All I knew was that now I knew, and other people should too.

I also talked to an art therapist, Suellen. When I started the project I originally didn't have any questions about art therapy and I didn't even think of that side of it, and then Patrick Putze was like "I'm going to set you up with an art therapist" and I was just like, okay.
I went to Andersonville, I think. I'm still not entirely sure where her office was, it was in a completely new neighborhood. When we left afterwards I was like, "Where are we?" And I think Suellen said Andersonville? Hopefully that's an actual neighborhood.
Suellen was so nice! We were texting before I got there because we were both going to be late, and she was like "do you want a coffee?" and I was like "a coffee would be awesome" but when she showed up she only had one and it was hers. Throughout the interview I kept thinking about it, I was like, that question totally sounded like she was offering to buy me coffee, right? Why didn't she? Did she see my reply and be like, whoa, I'm not buying you anything? Are my social skills really that bad that I misinterpreted her and now it's awkward? But then at the end she looked at her phone and she said, "Oh, I didn't see your text." She also gave me a ride to a bus stop so I could take an express bus and be less late to my ISP class.

Going in to her interview, I was like, "all right this interview will go well, we'll talk about how art helps veterans and about happy things" and then it was one of the hardest interviews I've had. I didn't realize how therapeutic art can be for veterans and how much it provides communication between them and civilians. Art can tell you what happened when words aren't enough. We can get a sense of how they feel by looking at their productions of it.

Suellen talked about how incredibly important it is that we hear these stories. It's our military that carries the truth, who know what really goes on, and we have to listen, because what they have to say involves all of us and by helping veterans, we help ourselves. As a society, she said, the least we can do is try to understand them and listen. We owe them the support they deserve, we owe so much.

Suellen was very emotional and passionate throughout her interview, but when I asked what the role of veteran art is in society, she broke down and cried. We had to stop filming, because she asked to stop. I was kind of shocked? I didn't know what to do. I was like, I didn't think that was that hard of a question. What did I say? I just sat there and let Suellen figure herself out. She said that she wanted to stop and get herself together because she wanted to answer without any tears. I think the fact that that simple question made her break down, shows how important it is.

She discussed how asleep our nation is, how we are so out of tune with what really goes on. The people who do know what goes on, who know the true, domestic consequences of our international conflicts, are the military personnel, and she said "if there was a time that veterans needed to be looked at, listened to, highlighted, it is now." She said how incredibly important it is that we start paying attention, and we need to "understand what's going on in the world through their expression, through their poetry, through their art." The nation as a whole needs to wake up and start paying attention, and art by veterans holds such an important role in that, because not only does it help them heal, but it helps us understand.

Between Edgar's and Suellen's interviews, the purpose of my project completely changed. It's still about veteran artists and their art, but now there's an aspect to it about how important it is to listen to veterans, to not judge or stereotype or question, but just to let them talk and share their stories. We might not agree with what they say, but it's incredibly important that they're given the space to say it. There are a lot of things we're very ignorant of. And people are dying because of it.

I've seen how much veterans want to tell their stories through the project itself. My interviews became really long; Maurice's second one alone was over three hours. We really just hung out and talked, and I could tell they appreciated my questions and my interest and they really want to share what happened/is happening with other people. A lot of what Edgar and Suellen said, I came away thinking, that wasn't the original purpose of my project, but it can't not be in the film. It has to be in there. How can it not be? It's just not right to not put it in. Because they're right; people really, really need to know about all of this.

My next interview was with Maurice, who I met at the NVAM reception. He was a mortarman in Vietnam and I really liked talking to him. Well, I really liked talking to everyone. Maurice is just so cool. He's got this really gruff voice and he says "Nam" but his family is also really important to him, and he told me about his grandson and how there's another grandkid on the way, and we met for our first interview at the Newberry Library (which, it turns out, is not public, and we had to awkwardly film in the student lobby) where his daughter got married, and he showed me the stairs and said, "I walked her down those stairs." He has a problem with authority; there were a couple of things that kept you from being drafted to Vietnam, and one of them was being in college for an education degree, which he was, until he dropped out. Another thing was being in the army reserves, which he also was until he quit. So then he was drafted, he got a letter saying, "Your friends and neighbors have selected you for service in the U.S. Army," and he didn't get along with a lot of his sergeants because he wasn't there voluntarily and he expressed that.

The thing that I didn't know at all about the Vietnam war is how unpopular it was. The U.S.'s strategy was to bomb North Vietnam through air raids, and they ran search and destroy missions in South Vietnam, which were useless becasue companies never held the ground they cleared. Eighty percent of the casualties from the air raids were civilians. People in America began realizing that, and with the draft, people became hugely anti-war and there were demonstrations across the country, especially on college campuses. And veterans, whether they were drafted or not, whether it was their choice to go, were hated. Maurice told me when he got back to America, he asked his girlfriend to bring a change of clothes to the airport, and the first thing he did when he got off the plane was go into the bathroom and changed into "civies" so no one would know he was a veteran. He didn't talk about the war for thirty years, and at first it was mostly because it was socially unacceptable. It was something people just did not talk about. They knew he was a veteran, but they never asked him anything. So Maurice didn't talk about it either, and he started doing a lot of drugs. He told me how at the time he thought he was getting caught in the hippie movement, but now that he looks at it, he realizes how much he was escaping, and the heavy drug use was just a way to try to forget things. He started crying when he told me how much his wife helped him get over it and how much having a family helped.

I asked Maurice what he's done that he's proud of. He almost received a bronze star for a time when his basecamp was attacked by the Viet Cong, they tried to overrun it, and he fired mortars at the perimeter. He could've hit his own guys, but he did it well enough and helped hold the attack off; later on, the men who had been at the perimeter told him how much his mortars helped them. So he's really proud of that. He didn't get the bronze star, though, because he wasn't "real popular" with his sergeants.

When I asked him that question, Maurice said, "there's something I can tell you I'm not proud of." He talked about the bronze star thing and we moved on in the interview, but later on we came back to it because he brought it up again. He told me how, as a mortarman, he was always so far removed from the front line and he never really saw the effect his mortars had. He knew, the day he helped hold off that attack, that his mortars had probably killed some men, but it didn't bother him because he didn't know. Then a lieutenant who he was friends with invited him to join his group that was up on a mountain, and Maurice fired mortars one night, and the two of them went down the mountain the next morning to see if it'd done anything, and Maurice did see the consequences. He told me that he and the lieutenant found a VC who had been hit. Maurice's mortar had blown him to pieces, and the man had a letter to his girlfriend in his pocket. Maurice had a girlfriend then, who he married after he got back home, "back to the world" as he said they called it, and the letter really got him. The letter is what made him feel like, this guy and I are the same. There's no difference between us. His government told him to come out here, my government told me, and it could've been the other way, and why wasn't it? Maurice couldn't figure out what they were doing out there, why they were doing this. "That moment on the mountain changed me more than anything," he told me. That was the moment he decided he was anti-war, that war is not good at all and never will be, and he didn't want to fire another mortar. So when he got back to base camp, he told another guy he was going to be the gunner from now on, and he didn't do it again.

The really hard thing about talking with Maurice was that I could see and hear and feel how much seeing the man he killed is still tearing him up. It still really, really affects him. He has been carrying this guilt around for almost fifty years. As time goes on, in a way it gets worse, because as you live your life you experience all the things that the people you killed, and the friends who have committed suicide, will never get to experience. Maurice told me, that guy never got to have children or grandchildren. Maurice goes through his life and he thinks, I have denied someone this. And for what?

He's making art about what happened. He has a couple pieces he's going to start working on, and he told me that it's still painful, after all this time. I could see how painful it really was. Maurice gave me a flash drive of pictures, he had four pictures from Vietnam and about fifteen pictures of his art. We went through his photos and I asked him about each one, for the documentary. I had them up on my laptop and I'd click on them and he'd talk about it, and there were two that he didn't talk about. Like, he spent a couple minutes on a piece of art and I clicked on the next one and he said, "That's from the war, yeah." And that was all he said.

I just can't get over how long it's been and how hard it's been for him. That's… I don't even know what to say. And I look at the veterans coming back today, and wonder where we'll be in fifty years. I look at Patrick K., the first veteran I interviewed who lives in Oswego, who'll still be suffering from his TBI, his Traumatic Brain Injury, which he got when his convoy hit an IED in Afghanistan. He can't live like most people. He talked to me about it during our first interview, how his relationship to Chicago has changed and he can't come to the city anymore, because of his PTSD. He can't be in crowded areas and he can't handle noise. And he forgets things, a lot. His memory loss is really bad. His injuries have also prevented him from being the kind of artist he alway wanted to be. Before the Marine Corps, drawing was Patrick's life, and he wanted to be a comic book artist and go to art school. But when he came back, his hand-eye coordination was so messed up he couldn't draw a straight line and it's taken him years to get to the point where he is now, where he can create a painting and it takes him a couple weeks instead of a couple hours. He really believes he'll never be as good as he was before the Marine Corps.

Since I've talked to him, there are moments where I'll be sitting in a movie theater or I'll be at the Kris Kringle Market or just on the train, and I'll think, Patrick can't do this. There are so many things he's unable to do, he's literally not able to lead a normal life. Because of one day in Afghanistan when his convoy was in the wrong place at the wrong time. At NVAM, at the 100 Faces exhibit, one of the written statements by a veteran states that the day he got his injuries has never ended. That's true for Patrick. And for Maurice, that day he saw the man on the mountain has never ended either. They live with these things, they don't just heal and move on, they learn to deal with it. And I think that's what a lot of people don't understand, that it's not something you can get over. When it comes to helping veterans accept their life long injuries and nightmares and do the best they can with them, that's where we are not there for them.

It's hard too because Suellen was saying how the families of veterans are also incredibly affected. I have a lot of respect for Patrick's wife and how much she's helped him. When he came home, she was the one who was like, there's something that's changed about you, you're not the same, you need to get help. And I look at Charlie, his two year old son, and wonder how he's going to grow up. When he's five and he has certain events that his dad can't come to, how do you explain that? He's going to have to grow up dealing with his father's memory loss, with his dad not being quite like anyone else's. The war has an indirect affect on him too.

One of the most important things I've learned through this project is that when we hear of things being hard for veterans, we think of PTSD. But that's not the only thing that haunts them, that they have to deal with their whole lives. There's a huge amount of guilt too, for Maurice and for Edgar. We talk about ghosts following veterans around. Everyone thinks those ghosts are those who died overseas, who were at their side. But so many of those ghosts are people who have died since. Edgar told me that losing his friend made that suicide statistic hit hard. He's friends with a lot of veterans, and before he'd distance himself from the statistic, he'd think, yeah, I have veteran friends, but they're not those veterans. But now he looks at them and he worries about who's going to die next. That's what they had to put up with overseas, they had to face everyday the chance of their friends dying. It's complete bullshit that they go through that, and then they go through it when they come home too. That shouldn't be happening. That is just so not right. If anything, they should come home and no longer have to worry about losing people because of the war. But they do. Maurice said how they essentially fight two wars, one lifelong, and not all of them survive both. He fought in Vietnam, and then he had to fight the drugs, and they were both life threatening.

I had Edgar's interview where he talked about suicide, then a couple days later Maurice talked in his first interview about what he'd done and how hard it was, how he was trying to escape with all the drugs and he counts himself lucky he survived that, and then two days later I had Suellen's interview where she broke down and cried and told me how incredibly important art is because we're not getting what's going on. It was just, one after the other. I was so affected by what they'd said. My respect for them is huge. I was deeply affected just by hearing about it, and they're living it. If I can take what I felt when they talked to me, and make the viewer feel something like it when they watch the film, I think I'll have gotten it right.

The reason why this has affected me so much is because I had no idea it'd turn out to be this way. I knew it'd be hard, but not in this sense; I didn't know that what veterans struggle most with sometimes is what they've gone through since they've come home. I'd tell people how the interviews became really hard emotionally, and really overwhelming, and their reactions have been, "That's what you wanted, right?" "That's good though, right? For the film?" "Well you picked a heavy topic to begin with." And I did. I decided to talk to combat veterans. I knew it'd probably end up being really hard, and if I wanted the film to really make an impact, that was the route it'd need to take.

But I didn't have any questions about PTSD or what happened overseas. I didn't ask, "Did you kill anyone?" Which, interestingly, all three veterans brought up. They said as soon as they say they're a veteran, people ask them that. And out of everything you could ask a veteran, that's the worst. I didn't have any questions like that. I didn't want to assume that they have PTSD, many of them don't, or that they had that kind of experience. I didn't bring up the hard things; the veterans brought them up themselves. I wanted to talk about it if they wanted to, but I wasn't going to force it. So going in, I did not assume that this is what we would end up talking about, and because I wasn't assuming, I wasn't expecting it, so I wasn't prepared when it happened. This could've gone two ways: either the veterans would avoid talking about their hardships, or they'd address it on their own terms. And it so happened that they talked about it, without me asking.

When I say it's been hard, I know what people are thinking: they're thinking, oh, the veterans are talking about what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan and Vietnam, and that's what's hard. And that's true. But what has happened afterward has been even harder to hear about. It's been even harder to have Patrick K. ask me what we were talking about during an interview. It's been even harder to have Edgar talk about his friend who died, and how he now wonders who's going to die next, harder to witness the pain Maurice still feels. That's what's been hardest with this whole thing. And what makes it even more difficult is that so many people are unaware of it.

It reflects my previous conception of the military and veterans, which I think is representative of society's conception of it: That it's hard overseas, not here at home. Veterans have PTSD but they get help and they get over it. You go and do your service and you come back home and thirty years later you're fine. We need to realize it's not fine. It's impossible to just get over it. That's what these veterans are saying, that's why they participated in the project; we need to do something about it. Edgar and Suellen were both stressing how incredibly important it is to know what's going on. And no one knows what goes on better than the veterans themselves. It's not like, don't listen to the government, the government is evil, they're not necessarily saying that. We just need to hear all sides of the story, hear the whole. A lot of times, we get just a part of it, and the part that's left out is too often the veterans'.

The project has also really affected me because this is the first time I've actually sat down and talked to veterans. We all hear about war and the terrible things that happen, but it's different when you talk to someone who experienced it. It's like homelessness; we all know it exists and we see it on the streets and know the terrible stories, but if you go to a shelter and volunteer, and you sit and talk with a homeless man for five hours, that's incredibly different. There's something about this that has made it seem more real to me, made it come alive. I guess because now, it's part of my life too, part of my own experience. It was real, it was right there, I was seeing and dealing with the aftermath of warfare directly.

I don't know. When I left the interviews, I was really upset. And I'd go back to class (which I'd always be late for because I'd let the interviews go for as long as they needed to) and I couldn't stop thinking about what they said. Some of the things they told me, I'll never forget. The whole thing, is just really upsetting. And it's like the CPS school system; the facts themselves are upsetting enough, but the realization of your ignorance is in a way even more upsetting. I just think, why didn't I know about this? Why don't more people know more about this?

It's also hard to have someone talk about your country this way. And it's not like, hey, I love America, how dare you talk about it that way. But it's like, I'm part of the problem. I was ignorant, like so many people are. And whose fault is that? You can't really blame civilians. There are a lot of things we are not aware of in this country, but it's not necessarily our fault, there will always be things you don't know and that's just how it works out. I just think, with Vietnam, veterans for a long time were not given such public spaces to communicate about their experiences, and now with the recent wars, we're becoming more aware than ever before.

I can't even begin to describe how glad I am that I made a film. Because people need to hear this, people need to know. I've learned all this and it's been overwhelming, and I need to share it with other people.

The next step is unclear. Where do we go from here? I don't know. How do you prevent twenty-two veterans from committing suicide each day? We're still in the learning stage. It's sad that more people will die before we get our act together, but I think it's starting to happen. I think it's starting to really come to light, what's happening, the suicide and the lifelong trauma and injuries, and how badly veterans need to be understood. I think their stories of what it's been like coming back has been heard more than before. We're still at that edge of realization, and beginning to do something about it, but there's still an uncertainty to it. I asked each veteran what we can do to help, and they said to support places like the art museum, and to listen, to accept the stories even if you might not agree with them. For now what we can do is try to understand. And, like with CPS, share that knowledge with other people. That's what veterans have been doing for years, trying to share their knowledge. More people are starting to listen. Hopefully my film will help that along, bad-quality, school-project feel and all.

Yeah, this was super long. Writing it down is how I understand things, and I really needed to just write all this out. I know a lot of people can't be bothered to read all this and kudos to you if you did. This project has just been my life for the past month, everything has been so overwhelming and now I have the responsibility of fitting it into a specific format to share with others. I've been really needing to talk about it all and get it all out and this was a place I could do it. I want to do one more post about the end of the semester and everything, so I wanted to just get it all out at once. I guess ultimately what I'll be trying to do with the film in the end is to share the veteran's stories, and raise awareness, and hopefully inspire people to at least start thinking about it and to have more converstations with it. And to do something, even if it's just listening to a veteran talk or going to NVAM, for now. Sometimes just paying attention is all we can do, but it means so much to the people who need to be heard.

I love Chicago, and I'm so glad I'm coming away with something that I created here, something that involves the people and issues here. I feel like I did something with my time, and I'm walking away with something to show for it. Something that will hopefully open people's eyes like mine have been, something that will make people learn about an issue they weren't aware of, and will make the 826CHI students who have military families realize that all the arms we need are for hugging.

- Laura

[Doyi's Blog] Independent Study Project #1: Group ISP.

2014-11-19T14:44:00.005-06:00

After the first blog post, I don't think I ever talked about my Independent Study Project (ISP). In that previous post, I wrote about our ISP class attending a 10 minute film at the Museum of Contemporary Arts in preparation for one of the two huge projects we were assigned.

Yep, not one but two!

Today I'm going to talk about the first one, which was a collaborative ISP.

Since it's a group project, everyone participated in it from beginning to end. We, the students, also had nearly complete control. Aside from the general prompt to create a video piece of any kind (e.g. live TV, film, whatever), everything was up to us: content, structure, editing--everything. It was tough at first. Having no particular plan or passion, the entire class initially struggled to create something out of nothing. We also had conflicting ideas as to what our video should be about. Some people wanted to tell a story, with characters and words, while others--including myself--wanted a more abstract, aesthetically focused product. Some wanted to portray a bloody Western cowboy duel; some, a psychedelic masterpiece. Some wanted to film in the CTA train. Others had no preference. However, finally, after several sessions of group brainstorming and whiteboard doodling, and we figured that we wanted to make a fantasy/mystery/thriller short.

Or, at least that's how I'd describe it. I think.

Why don't you watch it and determine for yourself?

As you can see, we're still in the final stages of the editing process. We've yet to title our film, and we're waiting on Christian to implement the audio. However, we're hoping the audience is still able to read the message/narrative that we're trying to deliver even at its foundational structure.

So...did you get it?!

Basically, the film's about a guy in an elevator, who experiences different, unusual situations at each floor of a building. He may be hallucinating, but he may be not.

On the first floor, the man enters a room full of black and white photos on the walls. At a closer view, you can tell they're all selfies. Coincidentally, four girls stand around taking selfies as well. After a few seconds of narcissistic self-indulgence, they notice the intruder and slowly approach him by taking his picture. Freaking out, the guy runs back to the elevator.

In the second floor, he is shown running in the middle of some empty warehouse. While uneasily observing the space, a seemingly female figure in black appears. Startled, the man reacts by looking away, only to find another behind him. These series of uncanny people popping up continues a few more times. Finally realizing they're gone, he runs the hell out of there.

On the third floor, the man walks into a long path, in the middle of two subways. Although he his walking, the short, rapid time jumps make it seem he is forced into the walkway's end. It stretches continuously, until we see a woman blocking his way. She, too, creepily and rigidly advances toward him. Stopping right in front, the woman suddenly laughs, cries, and stares. The scene ends by her opening her mouth.

Now it might become a little clearer on as to why I can't categorize our film.
Actually, no one really can.

One of our discussions during the scenario planning included the topic of "genre-breaking." Having virtually no bounds to what or how the film should be in terms of genre or concept, we had the freedom to add more ideas and try out anything we wanted. So, it's hard to say where it belongs. It's a narrative without words, horror without blood or death. It's even harder because there's too much ambiguity in the time and setting. Is each floor in the present, past, or future? Are they other worlds? Are these situations really happening for the protagonist, or are they not? These questions help complicate the film and its genre (or no genre), which is why we love our work.

I can't wait 'til Christian is finished with the music and sound effects! I really want to see the final result and how it would differ from our current, original version.

When he's done, I'll upload the finished film. I hope it turns out well!

Until then,

Doyi

Eyes Wide Open

2014-11-15T00:44:00.003-06:00

When you know a thing,
to know that you know it;
and when you do not know a thing,
to allow that you do not know it;
this is true knowledge.

Okay. This post is basically all about how much I don't know.

Awesome kids at 826 continued: this week, in-school tutoring was akwardly canceled because it was report card day and they didn't have any school, which we didn't know until we went there. But last week, I helped a girl with her fictional narrative, and it was great, she basically had the idea for the next best-selling YA series. They were supposed to do a short story, but hers was more like a series of chapter books. We spent a long time just talking about it and sorting out her ideas, and then we talked about her characters. She had three female characters and one male, and she wanted to add two more male characters so the numbers would be even. I said, "gotta have equality," and she said, "yes indeed."

Yesterday, I made beef! With peppers! And cheese. I don't know what it was, it was supposed to be a skillet thing. I was looking at recipes and I was like, I could totally make a philly cheesesteak minus the bread, so I bought little steak cubes and cooked them (after dropping about half of them on the kitchen floor) in a skillet. Then I added the bell peppers, then the cheese. I used some teriyaki sauce from the fridge (borrowed from an unsuspecting roommate, sorry not sorry), which actually was a good idea. So yeah. I'm not sure what it is, but it was good. Behold, the snazziest thing I've made yet:

It was great.

It's been really interesting working with 826CHI. Because we help students from Chicago Public Schools, I'm getting exposed to an aspect of the educational system that's sort of been a supplement to a big project we're working on in Core Course. We started the project last week, when we were first introduced to CPS and Chicago's tangled mess of an education system. We watched Waiting For Superman and talked with Jackson Potter, who's the staff coordinator for the Chicago Teachers Union. The assignment we have that's taking over several weeks of core course is called Education Navigation. Basically, we pretend we're the parent of an eighth grade student in Chicago, and we have to choose the best high school for them to go to.

Which is actually a lot, lot more complicated than it sounds. Not only are there a wide range of choices, from neighborhood schools to selective enrollment and charter schools (which yes are completely different), but a ton of factors come into play, and they're not just about your kid's ACT score but about where you live and the socioeconomical issues of your elementary school.

Chicago is a very segregated city, and its schools reflect that. A lot of minorities attend schools that are underfunded and have inadequate resources. There have been a lot of attempts to even out demographics, from the tier system to shutting down schools and reopening them as charters, but those things haven't helped much. The contrast in schools is incredible- some I've looked into for the assignment have little more than a quarter of their kids meeting or exceeding state standards in tests for reading or math, while some have almost 80%. Some schools' ACT average is 29; others' is 16. The type of school you go to has a big impact on the type of education you get, as well as your chances of graduating and going on to college. There is a lot of competition to get into the higher performing schools, while the lower performing schools continue to be underresourced and closed down.

Basically, the type of school you go to can determine the rest of your life. There are some kids who wake up at five in the morning and take a train and two buses to get to a school that will help them get to where they want in life, rather than attending their low-performing, lower-level neighborhood school. Parents drive their kids, and bypass handfuls of schools that were closer but didn't meet their standards. To get into the top-performing ones, there's an application process, and then the rest of the available spaces are given away according to a lottery. A lot of students hoping like crazy to get into an amazing school receive a number and sit in an auditorium with hundreds of other students who are hoping like crazy, and wait for a computerized system to randomly pick their number. In Waiting for Superman, for one school, there were 40 slots that 700 families applied for. A lot of students pin their future on a good school, and then don't get in.

It's crazy complicated. Basically, it comes down to this: is education a right or a privledge? How do we create equal access to it and make sure everyone has an equal opportunity and ability to attend good schools and get a good education? The current system is failing a lot of students, and denying them the futures they deserve to have.

I've never really thought of myself as a privledged person. I don't think anyone does, until they get older and start experiencing enough of the world to be able to compare themselves to others and understand that they way it is for them, isn't true for everyone. But I never realized that there were places where people had to go through this for high school, where you have to look at dozens of options and worry about where exactly you live, and what are you going to do if you don't get into the school that will give you the best opportunity to have a better future. I never went through that. I was ignorant of anything like it. When I was in eighth grade, I knew I was going to Golden High School, the public school in my hometown that my older sister, my friends, and all my neighbors were going to. There was never much of a question about it, let alone of getting in. The only other option was Lakewood High School, which is farther away and offers an IB program, which draws in a lot of top-performing students. But I never really considered that an option. I never asked what the average ACT score was at Golden, what the demographics were, what the dropout rate was. I still don't know those statistics and I don't even know what website they're readily available on, or what resources there are to access them. I never asked, will I get a good education at Golden?

It's not that my parents didn't care about my siblings and I getting a decent education. It's that we never had to worry about it.

Where we live is not a rough neighborhood. Golden has its issues, but overall it's your typical white middle-class community, a community where education is valued and you have access to it and if you want to go a step higher you might go to a place like Lakewood, or to a private school like Mullen, but otherwise you're completely fine.

I had no idea it was like this, that it even could be like this for students. And it's terrible. In Waiting for Superman, one of the young students, a little girl, talked about her first choice for school and said, "If I get in, it gives me a better chance at life." The last thing a student in elementary school needs is to be worrying about is her future. If she wants to be a doctor, she should be able to be a doctor. The fact that that she lives in a certain neighborhood or went to a certain school, should not keep her from doing what she wants. Families pin their whole hopes, and kids their whole futures, on the lottery, on the chance that a ball with their number on it is called. It's devastating to the paretns, because they understand the implications of not getting into a certain school. They understand that because luck wasn't on their side, their kid is now more likely to drop out, have a lower ACT score, or not go to college.

The whole situation makes me feel just helpless. It's a huge mess, which is a huge understatement. I don't think we'll ever get to the point where we completely level the field and every student has the exact same privledges and opportunities. That's just not how life works. There will always be someone who has more or less than you. We can try, the big question is how, and it seems like a lot of what has been tried has just failed the people it needs to save. And it's a huge injustice that the people who it affects, who suffer, are the elementary school kids with tiny backpacks and hands and pencils, who want to become doctors, who are the students I work with at 826CHI. It's hard to think that the students I've tutored won't go on to be something, just because their number wasn't called, or their parents who struggle with English don't understand the application process. It's also hard to think that I had a better chance, because of where I lived. And I was never even aware of how lucky I was.

Everyone at Golden complains about the food and the classes and the teachers. We ditch and cheat on tests and live for the weekend. And we never realize, we get our books the first week of class; there are enough seats for everyone; our teachers care about our ACT scores. We never realize that what we have is something that an eighth grader in Chicago would love to get.

This CPS assignment has really opened my eyes to the way things are for other people, to the injustice that plagues an entire city's education system. Like I said, I never considered myself a privledged person. Privledged people were the kids who lived in the Estates on Green Mountain, whose parents bought them cars for their sixteenth birthdays and traveled to Africa for spring break. Those were the privledged. And my family, who didn't have a lot of money but years' worth of hand-me-downs and vacations comprised of driving sixteen hours to Wisconsin in a packed van, were not. But there are different levels of privilege, and I was privledged to grow up in a safe town where a good education was something that was so assured it was never even questioned. It took coming to Chicago to make me realize that.

I just look at the kids who come through 826CHI, at the incredibly intelligent and creative students who I tutor, and hope that the educational system will put them on a track to accomplish the dreams they tell me about. But the hard thing is, for a lot of them, it won't. And I have no idea what to do about it. I think the first step is just having awareness, which is what this assignment is creating.

Here's a picture from the Sullivan Gallery at the School of The Art Institute, which the Arts Seminar went to and which right now is showcasing undergraduate work. It's from a room modeled like an old gymnasium, complete with creepy old pictures of the weird shoulder and jumping exercises people used to do. The quote is kind of relevant, and true:

"The educator shall free the powers of each man and connect him with the rest of his life."

Awareness has been a big thing for me lately. A lot has happened with my ISP. Last Thursday, I awkwardly carried Patrick K.'s military photos (which were in a huge binder that would not fit in my backpack) through the city to the National Veterans Art Museum, where I hung out for four hours in Patrick's office and scanned them to my computer, then tried and failed to figure out how to view the videos I've taken on my laptop. I went to a little bakery in Pilsen beforehand and grabbed a bunch of different things and brought them for Patrick, just to kind of thank him for all the help he's given me. He was excited about the free food and he'd pick something out and be like, "What's this? It looks good" and I had no idea what I got. The reason why I like that bakery is because you take a tray and tongs and pick out what you want, instead of pointing and telling someone, which means that I don't have to fail hard at trying to pronounce the Mexican words for heart-shaped cookies, other squarish cookies, donut-type things, and pastry-looking things. So I had no idea what was in the bag. But apparently it was all really good.

I had a meeting with Jason, my ISP instructor, and I completely missed it because Patrick and I spent forever trying to figure out how to get my videos to play on my laptop and everything we tried didn't work. I felt so bad because the museum was preparing for a new exhibit that was opening on Veterans Day, and Patrick was crazy busy and he was already saying how he'd be there past midnight, and he helped me for two hours. He was asking me all these questions about my laptop and the software it has, for editing and viewing videos and in general, and I didn't know anything. While we were working he was playing punk rock music and kept asking me who the singer/band was and as always I had no idea. He was like, "ok, guess who sings this, if you can't guess the whole project's off, I can't help you anymore" and of course I couldn't name anyone to save my life. In the end, I had to leave with punk rock music in my head and still unable to watch my videos. Hopefully, at some point I'll figure it out. I kind of have to. The good thing was I scanned all of Patrick K.'s photographs, and I now have all of them on my laptop, which feels a little creepy, but I guess if anything ever happens to his binders or his house, someone will have copies of them.

After that, Arts Seminar had a lecture at the School of the Art Institute at 6 and I left the museum at 5:20, so I got there late and had to find my way into the auditorium by myself. I got to the building and it took forever to get in. I was with two foreign guys who also said they were there for the lecture, but apparently there were two lectures that night so they left me and when a security guard confronted me, I couldn't even remember the name of the man who was speaking, and I was saved by another student.

I had no idea what I was doing. That's actually been my attitude throughout this whole project (or, really, this whole semester). Everything, from interviewing people to the microphone to the sound recorder to editing, is completely new, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing, I'm just kind of riding on faith and figuring it out and having Patrick come to my rescue. Basically, I'm this meme:

Minus the coolio scarf.

Lesson of the day Thursday: I know nothing about Mexican baked goods, cameras, computers, editing software, 90's punk rock music, the military, photo scanners, film, and how to get into the School of the Art Institute.

But I've been a little successful! On Sunday, I did an interview on my own for the first time. I talked with Edgar, who was a supply sergeant with the 19th Psychological Operations Battalion from 1999-2006. We met at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he was studying Art Education while he was in the reserves. He was in his last year and really close to graduating in 2003, when he was deployed to Baghdad. It was really nice to be on a college campus again. I got there early and walked around to get footage of the campus/buildings for the film, and tried to get used to the weird looks I got from people passing by.

There was a lot of awkwardness with the beginning of the interview. It's always super awkward when you first meet the person, and you're trying to figure out a good spot to talk. Setting it up is the weirdest part, you're still strangers and the person is most self conscious then, and setting up a shot is not something I'm used to. You have to take direction and ask them to move and sit a certain way and position the camera. It was made especially awkward because the ACM gave me a tripod, and it was missing the base plate, which is the part of the tripod the camera attaches to. I didn't realize it until that morning, when I went to practice so I didn't look like an idiot with Edgar. It's partially my fault, I'd had it for several days and hadn't looked closely at it yet. So I had to do the interview without it. It was okay, we were in a cafeteria so there were tables and I brought a bunch of books I set the camera on, but there's something a little sad about that and I was awkwardly like "I don't have a tripod."
Then, we got all set up and I tried to turn on the sound recorder, and it was completely dead. So we had to totally relocate near an outlet and Edgar was so nice about it but I was like, great. Great. And it slowly got dark throughout the interview, and there was no way to turn the lights on in the room we were in. It looks completely fine on film, but you can tell.

So. It wasn't completely smooth. Afterwards, I texted Patrick and freaked out a little over the audio, I was like, I tried all these different ways to charge it and it didn't work and is it broken and it died when I was with Edgar and that was really embarrassing, and he was like, you just need to change the batteries.
I'm pretty sure Patrick thinks I live under a rock. Or that I'm incompetent.

Making mistakes is completely ok, though. Part of doing this whole thing is so that I learn, and once you make a mistake, you'll never make it again. Now I know all the parts a tripod should have, and I won't go to another interview without extra AA batteries in my backpack. And you kind of have to mess up to learn those things.
At the end of this, I will be a lot snazzier with cameras and editing and interviewing. And that's part of the goal.

The other part of the goal is just learning more about the military in general, which is definitely happening too. I know zero about it. I'm like, what does it mean to be in reserve? What's the difference between a batallion and a company? I don't know what a SAW gunner is. What does E-5 mean? How/when do you know you're coming home to stay? (Edgar got home on Mother's Day in 2006. He said it was the best mother's day gift he's ever given to his mom :) ) A lot of what I'm asking in the interviews probably won't be in the film, sometimes it's more for my own understanding. I still don't know a lot, but I've also learned a ton, considering where I was at a month ago. All I can say is so far it's been really great getting to know these veterans, and to just hear their stories and learn about their art, and get a glimpse into a culture I'm not a part of. I just hope the final film turns out okay. I'm nervous about the editing because I've never edited anything in my life. I mentioned this once, and Patrick said he has the utmost faith in me, which was really great. I just really appreciate the fact that people have been willing to talk to me and be part of my project, and the least they deserve is a good end product.

On Veterans Day, I went to NVAM and attended the opening exhibit of 100 Faces of War Experience. All the art they had before was replaced with 100 painted portraits of men and women who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, who were picked to statistically represent the American experience. They were all created by one artist. Besides the museum's permanent exhibit of The Things They Carried, which portrays the Vietnam war, the entire place was converted to a gallery and you can almost get lost among all the portraits. Each subject had the chance to provide a written statement, and a lot of them talked about being a veteran and the type of questions society asks, and how they address those questions. There were some poems, and one guy said, "I have nothing to say." And that was it. The amazing thing about it is there was such a wide variety of people and experiences; there were officers, medics, administrative workers, combat infantrymen, and a few soldiers who had died. It captured the range of experiences that veterans have gone through, and it didn't focus on just those who were in combat or the important officers, but portrayed everything.

Okay. So I'd known about the reception for a while, and I'd been really dreading it. It's like the art reception at the alderman's office all over again. Patrick invited me to come and I really wanted to go, but I knew that there would be a lot of people there and I am so bad at talking to people (which has already been established). The artist was there and was going to speak, as well as some of the subjects, so I was like, okay, I'll just try to make it til then and I'll be good. I spent the first hour there walking around and looking at all the portraits. I'm glad I did that, because some of the written statements the subjects provided were really insightful, but looking back, I wish I'd made more of an effort to talk to some of the museum's staff, who were also milling around. I also probably could've talked to some of the people whose portraits had been painted and were there. I think Patrick expected me to do that. But of course I chickened out. They all brought their families and their cute little kids and were busy talking to each other. Was there room for me to wedge between them and their wife and be like hey, I don't know you and you don't know me, but can I creep on your experiences? Nope. I timed getting there so I'd have a decent amount of time before the artist spoke, but not so much time I'd die. I figured I could survive an hour, somehow float from getting there and saying hi to Patrick, to the speakers.

I did survive. Everyone gathered after 5 in a room, and the director of the museum talked a little bit about the new exhibition and the museum, then introduced the artist, who basically thanked everyone, and that was it. It took about ten minutes. I was like, wait wait wait, whatever happened to the keynote speakers that were supposed to talk for a while and be my saviours? I was back to the awkwardness. But Edgar was there! And he was standing alone, so I went and talked to him. I saw him earlier but didn't go over to him because he was with other people. Maybe that's my problem. It's the group thing. I can approach one person, even if they're a complete stranger, but if they have other people with them I'm like nope. Because I know when they're with a group, I'll probably stand there awkwardly not saying anything, with their friends/family giving me looks like who are you, until they reach a pause in their conversation and are polite enough to notice me. But when they're alone, and you approach them, they have to acknowledge you immediately. It's way easier to be like "Hey Edgar" than be like "Hey Edgar and your two random friends, let me barge in on your conversation."
So, lesson of that day: groups are scary.

Anyways. A big reason why I went is because Patrick emailed a veteran who was in Vietnam, and by some miracle he was interested in my project. His name is Maurice, and we agreed to meet at the reception when he mentioned he'd be there. After the not-so-talkative speakers and hanging out with Edgar, I realized I should probably try to find Maurice but I had no idea what he looked like. So I just wandered around until Patrick showed up with him, and introduced us. I liked Maurice a lot, and I'm really happy he's going to do the project. It'll also be really great to get a different perspective; both Edgar and Patrick came home in 2006, and their experiences have been relatively recent, whereas Maurice's was decades before I was even born. What Edgar and Patrick have been living with, Maurice has for years and years. He told me how he came back from Vietnam and literally didn't talk about it for thirty years. He just kept it inside, for longer than I've been alive.

Edgar joined us at one point, and he and I had a bonding moment when he brought up the Avengers, and I mentioned the Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer and how I'm going to die when that movie comes out because I'm so excited about it. We talked about the trailer and Joss Whedon, then we were both fangirling over the Avengers and Marvel in general. Poor Maurice had to stand there and listen while Edgar and I talked about awesomeness.

Eventually one of the staff members of the museum came over and talked to us, and then she introduced me to the woman she was with, and told this woman about my documentary. They were on one side of me, and Edgar and Maurice were on the other, and we were all standing in a little circle just hanging out and talking. And it was really great. I felt like I was a part of something. I was like, look at me Patrick, I'm talking to people on my own. Yeah. In end, the night turned out pretty well.

Some pictures from the museum:

The poster for the exhibit:

I finally figured out how to rotate the picture so it's rightside up! Look at me go. Patrick would be proud.

I'm interviewing Edgar again on Saturday at NVAM, and hopefully it will not be as technically deficient. I have more interviews next Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Basically, I've gotten two done, and I have five more to go before Thanksgiving break. Five interviews in a week and a half, that are almost two hours each? On top of my internship and the huge CPS project and another big project for seminar, both due within that week and a half? Sure I'll survive.

Between my independent study project and the CPS project, I have learned about so many things, been introduced to different cultures and different ways of life that I had assumptions of before but no real knowledge of. The whole semester has been like this, showing us the aspects of Chicago that are hidden behind the shine of the Bean and the skyline and the lakefront. My eyes have been opened to how lucky I've been and how, in so many ways, my life has been easy, or at least, easier. Should I feel bad about it? A lot of people would say, you shouldn't feel bad about the good things that were handed to you. Your responsibility is just to recognize that others weren't given those things, and then do something about it. But no one tells you what exactly to do. I'm realizing how lucky I've been that I haven't had to go through some of the things Patrick K. and Edgar have experienced, that I haven't had to live somewhere where I got so used to the fact that I could die at any moment it no longer bothered me. And I've been lucky to live in a place where I didn't need to worry about getting a good education. But then I'm not sure what to do with this knowledge, except share it. Maybe the more people who know, the more people whose eyes are also opened, the better a solution we can come up with. For now, I feel like all I can do is acknowledge that I don't know anything about it, and then learn.

- Laura

Until We Grow Up

2014-11-04T01:36:00.002-06:00

Until we grow up,
we'll be here,
swinging in the air,
laughing at the skies.

This post's quote is from a poem that a student wrote at a workshop for 826CHI, that was put on an 826 postcard. They were giving out postcards at an event I went to awhile ago, and I picked up this one because I liked the quote. It doesn't have much to do with this post, but whatever. I loved swinging when I was younger (and I still do, and I get so mad when I babysit and we go to the park and I have to push the kids and they yell at me when I try to swing myself) and I feel like the words just remind you what it's like to be a kid again, how you used to look at the world, when stuff like swinging was the best thing in the world and everything was just… free and new.

Now that 826CHI has officially moved into their new space, stuff is happening! Like in-school and after-school tutoring. I've had some great and weird and not-so-great experiences with the students. Every kid I ineract with is in elementary school, and I feel like adults really underestimate young kids' concept of the world. They say things that are so funny, or so deep.

I do in-school tutoring once a week, and it's great because we work with the same group of kids, and they're starting to recognize us and become familiar and comfortable with us. Last week I had a student see me, skip over, say "see you next week!" at the end and skip away. I'd get into conversations with the students about Halloween and fall and school. One girl was telling me about a field trip that's in the spring that she's already excited about because there's a spring dance that goes with it, but it's at night and she was saying her mom probably won't let her go, and when I asked why, she said, "My mom doesn't trust me."

Another fourth-grade student's personal narrative involved a bad decision where he decided to cut his own hair at his friend's house (we've all been there) and his mom yelled at him. We were talking about it, and he had a really good line about wishing he could go back and fix it. I said, "Yeah, a lot of people wish that they could go back and change things." And he said, "A lot of people in jail- I mean, I'm not saying that I'll end up in jail- but a lot of people who are in jail wish they could go back and change things."

That was so deep. And so perceptive. I couldn't even say anything for a couple of seconds. I think kids understand a lot more of this world than we give them credit for.

I also had a pretty sassy girl and her younger brother last week for after-school tutoring. She kept trying to make me do her homework for her, constantly complained, refused to follow the rules, and was one of those annoying kids who, when you play games with them, keep making subtle rule changes so they win, and when you try to apply those changes to other players, they say, "That's against the rules." Her brother was the exact opposite: sweet, a good listener. They kept fighting like siblings do, I totally should've sat in between them, and at one point the girl was bugging her brother and teasing him, and he said, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." It was great. I bet his mom told him to say that.

Also last week at 826, I had to drive my boss's car to in-school tutoring. The staff member who usually takes another intern and I to the elementary school we go to each week was gone, and we asked our boss about it. She said she'd either give us a ride or let us take her car. And of course since she's the boss, she neded up being busy and handed me the keys.
If you have never had to drive your boss's car through the streets of a big city, you've never known true fear.
The other intern kept telling me what a great job I did when we got back, but I'm pretty sure we almost died, especially when I tried to turn into the alleyway behind 826 and there was another car coming right towards us, and to keep from crashing into them I pulled back out into the street and ended up on the wrong side of the road facing the wrong way. But we survived. And I managed not to crash in the alley.

Anyways. Food. Cooking. I'm still cooking a lot of pasta, and I'm starting to get sick of it, something I didn't realize until about a week ago. My goal for November is to actually do some of the recipes I look at that I always think I should totally do that and then never do. But I'm starting to incorporate veggies more, and last weekend I felt fancy when I cooked asparagus (and then I left the rest of it in the fridge, and when I pulled it out today there was brown juice at the bottom of the bag. Of course my fanciness couldn't last). I still haven't found my ground meat, but I have chicken nuggets that are the best thing in the world because I just put like eight of them in the microwave when I'm really hungry, and I don't have to put much effort into making something that's filling.

Also, two Fridays ago (obviously I've been putting this off) for core course, we spent the day in Pilsen. We all went to Simone's, a bar/restaurant, and met the owner. It was really great, he gave us free coffee and talked about what it was like to be the owner, and what impact the bar has had on the neighborhood. The cool thing about the restaurant is that everything's recylced material; the stools are partially made from old door frames, the backs of the booths are made from seat belts, there are old pinball machines that decorate the walls, and there are chandeliers that look like art pieces. If you want to go to an awesome place in Pilsen for lunch or for a weekend night, go there.

In the afternoon, we went to Blue 1647, which is a local technology innovation center. I was kind of confused when I was there, and still kind of confused when I left, but I think basically, it's a space for several entrepreneurships and businesses, as well as a space that's open 24/7 to members to come and hang out, learn, and work on their projects. It has a 3D printer and offers workshops and classes on technology, such as programming and creating apps. It was a really cool place overall, but what really struck me was the artwork that was there. Here are some coolio pictures:

An art piece that was there

Another art piece

The walls in the main room were painted! It was beautiful.

These are tiny robots (that don't actually move on their own but were still cool) that were created from the 3D printer that Blue 1647 had. They came out looking exactly like that; no assembly required.

After that, we went to the Chicago Art Department, which was also in Pilsen, and which is an art gallery and residency for artists. We were given a tour of this too, and shown some of the work spaces upstairs. Some photos of that:

Real bananas were part of one piece, just sitting on the floor. It was kind of weird.

This piece was really interesting; the words are spelled out of teeth. Not real teeth, which is what we thought at first, but molds of teeth. Creepy, and ironic, given the sentence. I'm not sure if sanity includes making sentences out of teeth.

A close up of the teeth molds

A painting of the white house on fire

Also, some good advice:

Basically, to sum up the day, Pilsen has a ton of coolio things for everyone, whether you love art, technology, or food. It's just an awesome place to live and has so many hidden resources, and a big part of our Core Course education is learning asset mapping, and how to evaluate a neighborhood based on its assets rather than its issues; rather than looking at Pilsen as a place that still has a lot of cleaning up to do, we're exploring the huge range of things it has to offer.

The next Friday, we came back to Pilsen in the afternoon and learned how to do makeup/paint faces for the upcoming Day of the Dead celebration and parade, which we were volunteering for on November 1st. The woman who taught us explained how the Day of the Dead and a lot of the traditions surrounding it are not only meant to remember the dead and celebrate their lives, but to celebrate death itself too. They treat death as just another step, and believe that dying gives new life to something else. The sugar skulls that people create and decorate are meant to symbolize, when they're eaten, the dead providing nourishment for the living.
Here's an example (taken off the internet because I didn't take any of my own pictures) of what the end result of our painted face-skulls looked like:

Except that ours were a little less coolio and a lot simpler.

Then we went to the National Museum of Mexican Art, which is literally a couple blocks away from where we live, and we were given a tour of their exhibit of Day of the Dead altars, which were incredibly varied and detailed. I thought, in my ignorance of Mexican culture, that they would all basically be the same, but the tour guide explained how, just as each person is unique, each altar is unique. Each one is meant to incoporate who the person was, and showcase their favorite things. Some of the altars had food, some had wine, some had art and flowers. Here are pictures of some of them, as well as some art at the museum:

Sorry, these would look a lot better if they weren't sideways but I don't know how to fix it.

This altar had pictures of people with their faces replaced with skulls.

On November first, we all dragged ourselves out of bed and went to Dvorak Park, where we took the awesome face-smearing skills we learned and painted people's faces for a couple of hours. It was a really interesting experience for me. I was expecting most of the people who came through to be kids, but I painted mostly adult's faces. A lot of them had never done it before but thought it was cool, and were nervous about it. I was like, I'm nervous about painting your face and getting stuff in your hair and smearing your pretty lipstick and having to deal with your beard, but since you're nervous I won't show it. I learned that I could never be a makeup artist; sitting so close to a stranger and touching their face and feeling their breath was really uncomfortable. It was kind of nice though, to sit and talk with people for the two minutes they were in front of me. It was probably evenly split between people from the neighborhood and people from other neighborhoods or tourists. There were so many different people who came through, which I was not expecting. One girl told me she'd heard about it a while ago, and it'd been on her bucket list to do in Chicago. There were a couple of adults who didn't speak English at all, and their teenage children hung around while I painted so they could tell their mom what I was saying. A kid came whose face was still stained green from the zombie makeup he wore for Trick-or-Treating the night before. I thought I'd be pretty okay with the kids, since I've been working with 826CHI, but helping a seven year old with their personal narrative and trying to paint their face while they lean away from you and keep looking at their parents and move their mouths right when you really need them to keep still, are completely different things. But overall, it was fun. The celebration united, not the neighborhood, but the neighborhood with a lot of people who were from other places, which I was not expecting at all, and that was great.

Last week I made pretty good progress on my ISP. I talked to an art therapist, and I'm going to interview her later in November. Patrick showed me how to use his sound equipment, which includes a fancy mini microphone that you can clip to people's shirts, and a fancy recorder, and now I'm terrified of losing any of it. And last Thursday, I interviewed my first veteran! It was Patrick K., the veteran who I met at the art reception where I had to network and talk to people, and whose email I walked away with. He lives out in the suburbs, and instead of having to take three trains and a taxi for three and a half hours to get to him, by some miracle Patrick was willing and able to drive me, which took an hour.
Even though it was only an hour away, the drive was so nice. It was nice to get out of the city, to just take a short break. Patrick K. lives in this awesome house that he received from a program (I completely forgot the name of it) that provides housing for veterans. We talked for two hours, then we all hung out for a little bit and talked some more, off-camera, afterwards.
I'm totally willing to admit that I didn't do a very good job with the beginning of the interview. I was super nervous, for multiple reasons. It's one thing to talk about something, and another thing to actually do it, and I've never done professional interviews like this. Plus I'm pretty bad at talking to people at first. Like, after a while I start to relax, but it often starts off kind of awkwardly. Patrick K. talked about what he did and why he joined the Marines; he was in the infantry in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and he wanted to be in combat partially because of his grandfather, who was in World War II, and it was 9/11 that really made him want to join up. At the beginning, he'd talk and then pause, and I'd just move on to the next question, when I could've asked something about what he said, which would've been better. I just kind of read off my list of questions when I should've been engaged in the conversation more. When he talked about what he did, instead of being like, "Okay. So what did you do that you're most proud of?" I should've asked him to go into more details, that kind of thing. Patrick helped out a little with the very beginning of the interview, and he was so much better at it, so much more casual and relaxed. But I had to remind myself that Patrick did his thesis in grad school on an hour-long documentary, and this was the very first time I'd done this, ever.

I'm so glad Patrick was there. He won't be with me for every interview; most of them I have to do alone, but now that I've seen how it all goes, I'm okay with that. He showed me how to situate the person you're interviewing, how to take the background and lighting into account, and to sit really close to the camera, so when the person's talking to you and they look at you, it seems like they're looking into the camera too, and then on film it seems like they're talking to the audience. He taught me to pause the audio recording and the camera after a couple of questions, then start them up again, so when I go to edit the film, I'll already have it in chunks, rather than face a two-hour long recording. He told me it's best to send the person examples of what I'll be asking so they'll have an idea of how the interview will go, and they'll be more relaxed about it. But I'm also glad he was there because he was kind of a bridge between me and Patrick K. Patrick and Patrick K. were instant bros. I think partly because they share the same name, but also partly because they're both veterans. They were involved in different wars and Patrick was in the air force while Patrick K. was a Marine, but they had a ton of things in common, and they'd talk about the pranks they pulled and all the military acronyms. I think having Patrick there made Patrick K. more relaxed, like hey, here's someone who can totally relate to what I'm saying, and knows where I'm coming from. And then there was me. I had no idea what I was doing, which basically sums up my project.

Patrick K. was so nice. I asked if he had any photographs to show me, and he brought out this year-book type thing as well as a whole album from his deployment. I asked if he wanted to pick some photos out, and he was like, "You can take the whole thing." I'm scanning the photos and then bringing it back, of course. With each veteran I'm asking for a follow-up interview, so at some point I'm going back to his house. But now I have some random guy's personal military photos sitting on my desk, which I'm also really afraid of losing.

The great thing is he liked my questions! He said after the whole thing was over, that he was worried that I'd want to know about "the gritty stuff," and he was all prepared to tell me, "I can't answer that question." He was really glad I'd stayed away from those things. And I was glad he appreciated it. The last thing I wanted was to talk about things that would be hard for him. Since I'm talking to combat veterans, it's basically a given that they have PTSD, and I wanted to be respectful of their experiences. I talked to Patrick about it on the ride over, that it was what I was most nervous about. I didn't want to say or do anything wrong, and he said, "The fact that you're nervous about it says a lot. You're aware of their situation compared to what you want to know. You'll be fine. It's the ignorant people, the people who aren't even aware that there is something they could say that would upset someone in this situation, who ask the wrong thing." It was all good, in the end.

But yeah… I think we're all excited to continue the conversation. I don't know when that'll happen, and I have no idea who my other two veterans are going to be. Which is really stressful. But at least things are happening, and off to a good start. Yay.

This ISP is really opening my eyes to the military and what that's like. It seems like its own world, and I'm totally an outsider, trying to understand, but I never completely will, I can only ever try.
Sometimes I wish I was like the kids I work with at 826, little again, with no sense (hopefully) of the hardships of the world (unless you're the amazing kid who recognizes that jail is full of regrets), in a place where you can believe swinging is flying, where you have an hour of homework at most and go home to your family every day after 3pm. Sometimes I'm glad I've grown up, that now I have the capacity to understand things that are completely beyond me, that I can have a mature conversation with a stranger and try to take their experience and their art and make sense of it. I'm not sure which place is better. But things like learning about Mexican culture, and exploring Pilsen, and talking to Patrick K., has made me feel like a kid again in that way where everything is new and amazing and you just take in wide-eyed the fact that observing it maybe makes you a part of it. That at least, you've become aware of it, and your world has now expanded. Maybe we grow up when we realize our world will always continue to expand, and we come to be not only okay with it, but to love it.

- Laura

[Doyi's Blog] Between Life and Death...and Art.

2014-10-30T13:36:00.003-05:00

Obviously, I started this blog with images first.
I didn't write an opening statement. I couldn't.

Just looking at them, even thinking about them, forced me to shove the words back into my mouth, and my thoughts, into my brain. So much ambivalence and emotion. Unable to write an introductory expression of any kind at the moment, I figured it would be far more efficient if you see for yourself what I have seen. Take a closer look.

What do you see? How do you feel?

We all know they're photographs of people falling. Large ones, too--probably bigger than my own height. Some people fall vertically, heads pointing down, while others fall more on their back, heads facing the sky. One picture shows two figures, most likely friends, couples, or some sort of close acquaintances, holding hands as they dive past buildings. Everything's black and white. Images are framed in the same size and aligned in a long, straight path.

Now, I don't know about you, but the first thing I thought was, 'Are they real?'
Are they, the possibly desperate, dying subjects of each piece, real? And are they--the descending, the capturing, the entire scenario of each photo--real, and not some cruelly staged hoax? Then again, asking these questions would suggest my concern or value over the degree of authenticity and humanity in art. What does that mean? What if they were real-life people in a real-life situation? Or what if they were fake? Why would that matter?

For some reason, the fact that something is/was living and alive automatically attaches us to it. We identify with it, connect with it, and ultimately feel for it. It's even truer when the subject is human. Because we, too, are of the same species breathing and dwelling in the same space they had had, their experiences--comic or tragic--affect us in one way or another. Even the strangest, most unfamiliar people could move us. Ingrained in our first nature, this theory seems like a no-brainer, yet it's a fascinatingly universal one that's often under acknowledged.

Maybe that's why these images of potentially real people jumping off of life-threatening heights bother me a bit. That actual people, no different than I, were captured in such a moment I'd never want to see myself in, makes me feel more than uncomfortable. What's even crazier is that no one knows what happened next. Did they all die? Did anyone survive? The ending is an unanswerable mystery, but we all know that the immediate effect after the falling--the landing--had to be horrific.

Now, this is all under the assumption they're real. If I told you these photographs were a painting, a charcoal sketch, or a Photoshopped masterpiece, would you think or feel the same? I bet not. At least, definitely not for me. I would maybe think, 'WTF, why would you paint that?' or even 'Hmm, I wonder what those figures represent,' but never 'Oh my gosh, I hope no one's hurt.'

Well, it turned out that, yes, they are real.
Both the people and the situation are real--were real.

According to the statement printed on the wall, artist Sarah Charlesworth had built an archive of these photos, originally newspaper prints, for over a decade and then "[blowed] up the prints to a size larger than life." Her first show exhibited in February 1980, thirty years before 9/11. Like my emotionally ambivalent self, Charlesworth took her own art and its process personally. She was not interested in the politics, the objective stance of the artist, the social interpretations. "If you know me," the statement reads, "there is always a personal biographical reading you could do as well: why I chose that particular image, why am I concerned with these issues."

However, you can never escape the politics. I understand her perspective, her intentions, and her desired reading, but you can never escape the politics of art. Of course, she doesn't deny the viewer's potential interpretation of the exhibition as a socially directed statement, or that the work itself isn't at all a socially directed statement. But collecting images of private people, placing it in a public space, and showing their transitional moments between life and death, by definition, is social and political. But that's a whole different story.

Another slightly disturbing thought came to me, while I was pondering the fact that this was art. That these collection of dying and now-dead people, their images manipulated and aesthetically curated, was presented in the Chicago Art Institute as art. Most important, that someone has benefited from showing this art. Now, I'm not trying to discount the artist's good intentions or declaim against the whole exhibition for being evil. In fact, I really appreciate the artist and her photographs for giving me the chance to think deeper about the human experience. Still, profiting from others' death (strongly worded, not as extreme in this case) in any extent could be a troubling issue, even for art.

Now I'm not quite sure how to end this blog. I think I talked about the surface of everything but delve deeper into nothing. Nonetheless, writing helped me organize my initially muddled, clumped up thoughts into communicable paragraphs (but got me stuck in concluding them). Meh, I'll think of a better line next time.

Until then,

Doyi

ISP Adventure

2014-10-24T00:43:00.002-05:00

"Is the war over?"
"No, it's only an armistice."

The above quote is from a really amazing, great book I read a year ago for my World War One class called "The Beauty and The Sorrow." The book takes letters, journals, and official accounts and goes through each year of the war, describing the people who fought in it and what happened to them. This quote was near the end, which is why it had such an impact on me. We agree on treaties and enter times of peace, but really war's never over. It continues on in the people who fought in it. I know that's kind of obvious, but the effect it has never stops. I think of it like an exploding grenade; there's the initial explosion, but then pieces of metal keep flying, flying, flying, always hitting.

I'm starting out with this because I want to finally talk about my independent study project (ISP). I had an idea for my project before I even got here, and it's something I've always wanted to do. I want to interview veterans, and make a short film about it. I've helped make short films before, but I've never done one on my own. The project's now focused on combat veteran artists specifically, people who saw action and are now (or always were) artists. I'm (hopefully) interviewing three veterans who fought in different wars, as well as an expert on art therapy. The project will focus on the veteran's experiences, and their adjustment back to living in the United States, and if/how making art has helped that adjustment. I'm trying to tie in Chicago by talking to people who live here, and some of the interviews take place in their favorite parts of the city, and I'm asking them if Chicago has changed to them.
I didn't mention this before, because it was one of those things were it's a huge hope/dream and you're afraid to talk about it, because it might not happen. But it's actually happening!! For real. And I'm really excited.

A few weeks ago, my ISP class went to visit an artist at MANA, which is a space that used to be a warehouse, and is now used for artists, galleries, and offices. The artist discussed his work, then wanted to know about our individual projects. When I talked about mine, he said, "I have a connection for you." Which is what I was hoping for, someone who'd be like, I know someone. He told me about someone he knew who worked for an art museum, and he'd email this person and get us in contact. I didn't really believe him when he said this. But the next day, he did.

He connected me to Mike Helbing, who works at the National Veterans Art Museum. I sent Mike a long email explaining my project, and the next day Mike replied. All he said was, "Here's my number. Call me tomorrow." And I couldn't tell if that short reply was good or bad, but at least he'd left it up to me as to when to call. I called him the next day, the Friday we met with the Jesus People, during lunch. And he said he liked my project! Which was great. He wanted me to get more specific, and he asked if I had anything I could send to him that had more information. I told him about our ISP proposals, which we had to do for class and which went into a lot of detail about what we wanted to do and how we were going to do it. And he was like, "great, send me your proposal, and I'll send it out to some people and in about a week get back to you." I almost died. (There were several times I almost died throughout this process). When we hung up I was so, so excited.

I sent my proposal to him, and Jason, my ISP instructor, suggested asking Mike if I could come by the museum and talk to him. So I did, and the Saturday I could come Mike couldn't be there, but he forwarded my email to someone else, Patrick Putze, and although Patrick couldn't be there either, he said he'd see who'd be around. He never replied, but I tried to go to the museum that Saturday anyways, and wandered around for two hours trying to find it. I don't have a smart phone, and everyone I asked didn't know what it was. After a while, I gave up and took the train back. I didn't know if Patrick had told anyone I'd be there, but of course I was all anxious about it and I was like what if he did and I didn't show up, and they don't think I'm going to do this and now my project's going to fall apart. I was really upset, actually. Sunday, I thought about it, and I felt like the right thing to do was to email Patrick and Mike and say I hadn't made it, but I'd try again the next Saturday. I didn't think they would reply, but Patrick did, and he said he was sorry about me getting lost (even though it wasn't his fault at all) but he liked my project a lot, and he asked me when I was coming so he could meet up with me. That fixed everything :)
So I went! And Patrick was there! And he showed me around the museum! Which was amazing. We walked around and he talked about every piece, and it wasn't until halfway through that I realized how lucky I was to basically be given a private tour by someone who worked there. Then we sat down and talked about my project for over an hour. It turns out Patrick is the media coordinator for the museum, and he made a documentary for his thesis in grad school, and he makes short videos for the museum all the time. He was like, "yeah, I can't let you borrow my camera, but I can let you borrow my sound equipment and show you how to use it," and he said he'd teach me how to shoot b-roll, which is basically shots of location and objects to help build the story, and we could do a mock interview and go through everything. Basically, he'd teach me everything. Which was so cool and so great that I couldn't even express how cool and great it was. And then he told me about a long documentary he's making next year for the museum, and he said, "If this project works out and you're still around, maybe you could come help me with it." I died.

Patrick told me about a veteran art reception that was going on the next day, and even though I had no time to be there I said I'd be there, because he mentioned how great of an opportunity it would be. So that Sunday, I went to the reception, which was in this small building that was the local alderman's office, and I don't know what I expected. I wasn't nervous going, but I was really nervous as soon as I got there. There were a ton of people there, and the only one I knew was Patrick. I am not the type of person at all to walk into a room full of strangers and go up to some of them and talk to them, especially when they're all adults and they're already talking to people and half of them are veterans, who I have a lot of respect for. Basically, I spent more time looking at the art then actually talking to people. Patrick saw me and he introduced me to his wife, and then he was pointing out veterans and saying, "He'd be a good guy to talk to," and I thought he meant in general for my project, but he meant right then. Apparently, he expected me to go up to these guys and interrupt their conversations and introduce myself. I died again. I am so bad at that. Oh god. It was hard because everyone was talking to each other, I was like, if a veteran was chilling out in the corner by himself, then I could do it. Basically I followed people around thinking, please be in my film.

After a while Patrick came up to me and asked if I'd talked to anyone, and I was like, "No." I told him how bad I was at it. I'm sure from our meeting on Saturday at the museum, he could tell I'm a quiet, reserved person whose worst nightmare is networking. And I had no idea I'd be networking at this reception, giving people my information and getting theirs in turn. Patrick said it was okay, everyone's terrible about it, and he was like, "At least you're here." And that's true. I was terrified, but at least I was there and trying, even if it was kind of a fail because I can't talk to strangers to save my life. Patrick told me it'd help if I thought about what I was going to say. He was like, "you need a thirty-second schpeel, a pitch, something that says who you are, why you're here, what you want to do, and that you need them to help out." And I was like, crap.
I want to be a screenwriter. That's my dream. One of the ways you can get your screenplay made into a film, and that's a process that's necessary at some point for every screenplay, is that you pitch it. You go through a pitch session, where you sit in a room with a bunch of important people who have a lot of money and tell them why they should make your screenplay into a film. Most terrifying thing ever? Yes. I keep telling myself I probably won't ever have to do it because my screenplays will probably never be turned into films. But it's something I have to face at some point, and when Patrick asked me if I could do it, I said yes.

And I'm proud to say I came up with my pitch, and I totally pitched my pitch to a veteran artist whose name was also Patrick (he's Patrick K.), and when he asked how he could help with my project I asked if he was willing to be interviewed, if he had time, and he said all he had was time. Then I awkwardly stuck around until I had a chance to get his email address.

So the reception was successful! And I came away with something! Yay. I felt bad when Patrick was telling me who to talk to, and basically ended up having to introduce me to them because I was too shy to do it myself, so it was nice to be able to tell him later on that I made a contact. I did something myself. Yes.

So yeah… the reception was at an alderman's office, which was weird. The alderman, who looked so much like M. Night Shyamalan Patrick wanted to tell him his new screenplay idea, came, and I have no idea which ward I was in and what his name was, but I was introduced to him. I was part of a small group he talked to, and he explained why they have art in the office. Apparently, they rotate work every few months. He was saying how people come there really angry, and they're ready to just yell at him and his fellow workers about that pothole that hasn't been fixed, or whatever, and the art helps calm them down. Best explanation ever. Then Patrick said, "There's no better way to disarm citizens than with veteran art," which he and another veteran thought was hilarious but the alderman was like what. Then they all walked away, and the alderman turned to me and said, "Nice to meet you" like a good politician, and I was like no Patrick don't leave me.

Before the alderman left for the evening, his aide wanted to get a picture of him with all the veterans whose art was at the office. His aide asked me to take the pictures, which made me super anxious, and I didn't want to but she put the camera in my hand, and I was like oh god I'm going to mess this up and this random alderman will be mad at me. I asked her how many pictures she wanted me to take, I was like, "two or three?" And she said, "Ten or fifteen would be good." And I was like, oh. Crap.
But I survived Sunday. I didn't destroy the camera, and I got Patrick K.'s email address, so I emailed him with my proposal and told him just because we talked, that didn't mean he was committed to the project, but he replied and said he was excited about it, and to let him know when we'll get started. Which was really, really great.

Everyone I've talked to is excited about this project: Mike Helbing, Jason, other students, Patrick, Patrick K. It means a lot to me when I tell someone, and they say they're excited. It means a lot to me that so many people have helped. Patrick is helping me so much with this, and he won't get paid, or anything. I thanked him for his help and he said, "don't worry about it, I like helping." Everyone has been interested and willing to participate. It's amazing.

This is my new goal in life: someday, when I have a lot of contacts and resources, I want to help someone who comes to me asking for it, a student who wants to learn how to make film or someone who wants to know if their newest screenplay is a good idea. I want to give someone what Patrick's given me, which is the help I've needed, for no reason except the fact that he's a really kind person.
It's just crazy to think how coincidental this all is. If we hadn't gone to visit that artist at MANA, this never would've happened. If he hadn't wanted to know about our projects, or if he hadn't had each one of us talk about it and just wanted to know some, this wouldn't have happened. If I hadn't gotten lost that Saturday, it wouldn't be happening either.

The Saturday I was at the museum, Patrick asked me how I felt about it all, and for a couple seconds I couldn't say anything. I was so overwhelmed, but in a good way. I kept saying how excited I was, and I told him how a couple weeks ago, this was just an idea, and now it's happening. It's absolutely crazy. If it hadn't worked out this way, I still probably would've been able to find veterans to interview. But talking with Patrick has made me realize how much I don't know about documentary filmmaking. Deep down that was what I was afraid of going into this: that this project would end up crappy because I didn't know how to do it. I just went into it being like, "oh well, it'll work out" and somehow it has worked out. The right people have come into my life at the right time.

I met with Patrick this morning for tacos and we went over my first draft of my interview questions. He's been in contact with a teacher at the Art Institute and with a veteran who was in Iraq, and is trying to get in touch with a veteran who was in Vietnam, who (I think?) is having an upcoming show at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Hopefully, it'll all work out. And hopefully I'll be interviewing Patrick K. soon. Once I learn how to hold a mike and film things properly.

Anyways, I have the above quote, because the effects of war never end. Some of the veterans I'll be talking to were deployed recently, and Patrick is trying hard to connect me to a Vietnam veteran, so we can get that aspect of time, how even though it's been decades, it never goes away. The things that happen to you are so hard to forget.

The whole wall of one of the rooms at the National Veterans Art Museum contains a piece by Jim Leedy, a veteran who served in Korea. The piece is called "The Earth Lies Screaming." The whole thing is sort of a sculpture, made of foam, that's made to look like the bottom of a river. The base is mud, and it's covered with objects. On first glance, it seems like all the objects are skeletons, bones and spines and skulls, but the more you look, the more you see; there are children's shoes, birds, animals, helmets, grenades, imprints of faces, all painted the same white. It's a very eerie piece, and it had an even bigger impact on me once Patrick explained the work to me.

While Jim Leedy was fighting, his group (I don't even want to try to attempt to say "his battalion" or "his regiment" because I still have no idea how that classification works, and I don't want to be wrong) was given the rare chance to relax, and they went swimming in a river. It was a cloudy day and they swam for a couple hours, and it wasn't until they were drying off when the sun came out that you could see to the bottom of the river. And along the bottom were hundreds of corpses. Leedy had been swimming with rotting bodies; he'd had fun, essentially, in other men's graves.
This experience is something that impacted Leedy hugely. And it wasn't until he made this piece that his dreams about the river stopped.

A picture, courtesy of NVAM's website, of Leedy's work, which explains more than I can:

The piece in the corner, across from the wall, is a sculpture of skulls, shaped to look like the cloud of an atomic bomb explosion.

This work is just one example of the type of art that is in this museum. It's… incredible. There are no words to even describe it. I can't put it into words, because the artists didn't. You really feel something, looking at it. It's eerie, it's creepy, but it's not creepy for the sake of being creepy, and it doesn't blatantly try to shock the viewer. It's creepy because what you're feeling, is a small part of what the artist felt not only when they made the art, but what they felt when they experienced the event that the art is focused on. You feel what it means. And if you feel scared, or creeped out, or disgusted, or sad, or terrified when you look at the art, it's just a small fraction of what they went through.

The things we go through stay with us. Art is a way to understand it, and to help us heal from it. That's why I want to do this project; to learn myself, and to communicate to other people, how art has helped veterans understand or explain their experiences. Whether they, like Leedy, have solved their nightmares by creating something out of them.

Here are links to Leedy's discussion of his piece, as well as to the museum in general:
http://www.nvam.org/artist-jim-leedy/
http://www.nvam.org

Please, please check it out. The museum is incredible.

- Laura

[Doyi's Blog] Internship Update: Ask and You Shall Receive

2014-10-15T23:54:00.000-05:00

Internship Update!

So, on my last blog I mentioned that I like my work. My boss and co-workers are easy going, I participate in cool events like the Reeling LGBT International Film Festival, and most of all, I've learned productive professional skills.

However, I also mentioned a lot of the work I do is extra work as well--not really related to my field of interest, art and marketing. Despite its educational value, cutting piles of paper, stamping envelopes, counting hundreds of ballots all day, and doing other basic office work aren't the most challenging tasks, let alone appealing. Even while doing marketing work, I didn't get to integrate my artistic graphic design talents--what I had highly looked forward to before the semester even began.

So I asked myself,

"Do I want to continue folding newsletters for most of the day until it's December?
What do I really wish to gain or accomplish?
How can I change the agenda?
Where do I start?"

Finally, I figured it out: speak up! No one was going to ask Brenda, my supervisor, for me to do the real fun stuff but myself. What a simple answer to a seemingly difficult question. Accordingly, last week I promised that I will do exactly that--speaking up, self-promoting my digital-artistic skills, and achieving what I've only thought about. To my luck and success, I did.

It happened this past Monday. Like the usual, I started the day with my routine question: "How can I help you today?" Brenda typically doesn't have a strictly set agenda for me, especially in recent weeks after the biggest event of the year (film festival) was over. Plus, I didn't want to scare her by suddenly barging into her space and demanding for interesting jobs. After asking the opening question, she paused and looked over to Josh, the programming director.

"Well, I don't have any work that's marketing-specific. Josh? Do you have anything for her?"

Josh replied similarly. Right then, I knew that was my queue to bring up the ultimate inquiry of my internship. Half anxious and half excited, I brought up the topic by asking if the spring issue of their schedule was already designed and printed. They said no.

Immediately I spat out,

"Actually, I have been doing some graphic design as an art major with proficiency in Photoshop..."

I told them I was willing and (more than) able to create promotional posters and maybe even design their quarterly schedules, if they were interested. Both seemed surprised--maybe even enthusiastic--about the news, asking me to send a copy of my portfolio. In fact, Josh even gave me a huge list of flyers to make by the end of the week! I wasn't expecting such a rapid response of not only what I had actually aimed for (digital marketing work) but also the underlying trust from Brenda and Josh. I was beyond grateful.

Right away I began with researching for images and sketching out the outline for the membership flyer. I continued my work outside of my internship hours to finish the first project I've proposed by myself. It was a busy two days. As is all work, it was fairly stressful, but in a good way. I usually hate being burdened by loads of to-do lists, but I loved how busy and productive I was with not just any job, but my passion-job, my interest-job, my self-driven job. I have continuously been so overwhelmed yet so zoned in to the flow, that I always forget how much time had passed since I started on a flyer. A few days ago, Brenda referred me to another partner organization for similar tasks that require my graphic design skills. Looking back, I cannot thank my then-self enough; without you (me) and your (my) determination to advance our professional goals, I would not have been here doing the work I do now. Thank you (me)!

When attempting to achieve something we aspire, we ultimately encounter the stage of asking. And sometimes, asking is the hardest part of the process. Whether it's asking for help or asking for what you want directly, the person you're seeking probably holds the shortcut to what would be a long path from a decision to struggle alone. Moreover, I bet that person wants you to ask and speak up. All it takes is a deep breath, a self-promise, and a reminder as to why it's so important for you to ask. That's what I did, and I'm so glad I did it!

-Doyi Lee

Diamonds

2014-10-15T01:27:00.003-05:00

It’s dark there, but full of diamonds.

This is a little cheesy, but Chicago is full of diamonds. It's such a huge, daunting, overwhelming place, but there are really great things and great people contained within it, that you can't find anywhere else.

Last Saturday, my friend Sarah had her birthday celebration and the group went to the Chicago Fire Festival, or at least tried to. The night kind of turned out to be an epic fail. The big event of the festival was supposed to be three paper houses, lit on fire and slowly burning, making their way down the Chicago River towards the lake at 8pm, symbolizing the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and how the city rebuilt itself. We found an okay spot overlooking the river at 7:30 and waited… and waited. Apparently, there were technical difficulties with the houses. The whole thing was delayed forever and it was freezing cold. A bunch of people were chanting “we want fire!” and “where is the fire!” and threatening to make their own fires. The good thing was since a lot of people left, we moved spots and got a really good view, but a view of the houses as they stayed in place, barely lit. Disappointing all around.

But they still set off fireworks! The only upheld promise of the evening. We were right on the river, right in front of the Trump Tower, surrounded by tall buildings. I love cities and I think skylines are beautiful, so to me, to see fireworks like that was absolutely amazing. It was so, so worth sticking around for.

The next morning, Sarah and I went to the Russian Tea Time that’s right on Adams, between the Chicago Program office and the Art Institute. It was a lot more expensive and fancier than I expected, but that was ok because it was also a lot more expensive and fancier than Sarah expected. The first thing on the first page of the menu was instructions on how to drink vodka the proper Russian way, and our waitress was really disappointed when we didn’t want to get vodka or dessert at 11 in the morning. She was probably disappointed in us in general.

Yeah, the best meals I’ve had are the ones when I go out to eat and it really sucks that going out to eat is expensive. But I feel like going and spending a lot of money on one meal is okay every once in a while, and when you’re with friends or family and it’s special it’s worth it.

I really need to go grocery shopping. Yesterday for lunch at my internship, I brought cereal, cheez-its, and crackers. That’s all I have that doesn’t require refridgeration or effort to make. Growing up, from elementary school to senior year of high school, my dad would make sack lunches for me every day to take to school, and I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated that as much as I do now.

Also, I have tasted the glory that is Potbelly’s. And the people who work there are always so friendly and great. I’ve been to two different locations, and they were all so excited about me and my sandwich. Maybe they’re so happy because they work at Potbelly’s.

Anyways. Our independent study projects haven't really started yet; we just turned in our proposals last week, so for the first half of the semester we've had ISP class, in two groups, twice a weeek, until the projects begin. My group has all of the art seminar students and one from the entrepreneurship seminar, and for our group project we’ve been working on an experimental film that'll air at some point on ACRE TV, which is this online livestreaming platform that shows things once and then they're gone.

Our idea was to have this security guard doing his regular closing rounds, and as he goes into the elevator of his building, each floor opens into a weird, creepy world (why? no one knows). I don't know if we'll have time to do all the elevator stuff, but we're filming the floors, and two people from the group have each taken one scene/floor to come up with and take care of. Last Tuesday, for our first floor, we decorated a room at the CP office entirely with bad selfies. The main idea was to have the security guard walk into a room whose wallpaper was made entirely of bad selfies, and there'd be people in the room who are taking bad selfies and slowly start to notice him. The whole thing was weird, but the room ended up actually looking really, really cool! We each printed 50 selfies, and legitimately covered the room. It was great.

Thursday we were supposed to film at these silos near Pilsen, and filmed in this abandoned warehouse instead. I have no idea what the warehouse used to store, but there was white chalk everywhere, and it covered our boots and shoes and clothes, and instead of complaining, because we’re art kids we embraced it and thought it was cool. We were totally trespassing, but we didn’t really care. We filmed a creepy, people-appearing-and-disappearing-stalking-the-main-character scene and it also turned out great. I have no idea what this film will end up being, it might just be three random floors/scenes thrown together, but we're filming it and that's what matters.

When the film's finished, I'll post it on here and hopefully it'll be somewhat coherent.

A week and a half ago, my arts seminar went to a poetry foundation reading at the Harold Washington Library. The sweet, passionate, old man who read, Ko Un, was a political prisoner for years. I’ve never been to a reading where the author spoke another language (he's Korean), and the most interesting thing was having him read his poem, and then a translator read it in English. He spoke with a huge passion, and would make noises and slow down then speed up. You could feel the poems when he read them. Then the English translator would read it in a really flat way, and her tone of voice reminded me of the people who do audiobooks or the CTA announcements. You know, the voices that are so boring and so perfect. So much of Un’s poems were lost in translation. So much is lost in translation, in general.

This man was so cute too! He was incredibly humble. I really admire it when successful writers who have a lot of experience and years and incredible writing behind them, act like they’re grateful to be in the same room as you, not the other way around. He kept saying how beautiful the room was, and after the poems were read he’d turn to the translator and clap for her and grin and it was great. I want to be that kind of successful author, where I’m just so grateful for everyone who’s actually shown up and for the venue and for a chance to read my stuff and share what I know, and be so humble about it. That’s when the material really matters. As a writer, it should be about the material, not you, you should always care the most about what you’re writing. Especially because that’s really what’s left behind.

For core course, a week and a half ago we spent the day in Uptown, and in the afternoon met with a group called Jesus People USA. Yeah… that was their real name. A woman who did the Chicago program in the nineties (she went to Knox! And she's from Colorado too! Knoxies are everywhere) spoke to us about it, and then showed us her housing. She lives in a dorm-style building that used to be a fancy, great hotel in the 1920's. Each person gets their own room, but they all share a kitchen and bathrooms. Her two year old daughter lives in her own room down the hall. It was really interesting to see the housing, and see the different ways people were living. You could do anything you wanted to your room, so people had entirely renovated them and made them their own.
We also found this sign taped to a fridge in one of the kitchens:

I want a freezer just for ice cream. New life goal.

This past Friday, as part of core course the whole group saw Native Son, a play based on the novel by Richard Wright, at the Court Theater. I read the book in high school so I don't remember much, and they cut out about two thirds of the book, skipping over Bigger's trial and leaving out Max's character entirely, but the play was still amazing. They had an actor for the Black Rat, embodying Bigger's dark side and the voices inside his head. The lighting and sound was done so well, and the actors were really talented. They were so passionate with their roles. Even though the theater was an hour and a half away from La Casa, and the play was shorter than the time it took to get back and forth, it was definitely worth it.

As for my internship, I'm interning with 826CHI, a non-profit organization that helps K-12 students with their creative writing skills through in-school and after-school tutoring programs, workshops, and field trips. We finally moved in to our new building! Yay. So for the past five weeks or so I've been with them, we haven't been able to do the official programs, and everyone was so excited to move in. I spent yesterday helping move and unpack boxes and put together tables. Because my lunch was so sad, going and getting something to eat sounded really good. Another intern and I were on our way to Potbelly’s, and one of the board members, John, ran out after us and asked us if we were headed to lunch. We said yes and pointed to Potbelly’s, thinking he wanted us to get him a sandwich, but he handed us each $20 and said, “go buy yourself lunch.” The other intern was immediately like “oh no, you don’t have to do that,” and he said, “I don’t have to. But I want to.” And he headed back inside. It was so sweet. That was one of the nicest things anyone's ever done for me.

On the way back from my internship, it was pouring rain, and I had an umbrella, which I've just gotten in the habit of always having in my backpack, and the guy sitting behind me on the bus asked me how I was prepared for the rain. We ended up getting into a conversation because he asked me where I was coming from, and when I explained my internship we talked about writing and reading. He loves reading, he showed me the book he had and he talked about how much he loves learning, and he reads informational and how-to books like crazy. He’s really into martial arts, and he was telling me how he’s been trying to learn each practice and then make his own, and he started when he was 17, and he’s learned 6. I thought that was a lot until he said there’s 24 different practices.

Since he reads so much he was saying how much he appreciates writers, and he’s always awed at how many different things people can come up with, and how writing is a way to communicate to people across the world and teach them things they would otherwise never know about. It was great to hear that someone appreciates it. He asked me about my writing and when I talked about my novels he asked if they were published, and I said, "Nope. Not at all. I'll try though." And he said, "They will be."

He asked me what my name was, and I said Laura, and then he asked what my last name was. Even though there are a billion girls out there with my name, I still don’t like giving my full name to strangers on the CTA/bus, and he noticed I was being hesitant about it and he said, “Sorry, I don’t want to be creepy, I just want to know your name so I’ll recognize it when it’s in print.” This guy was so smooth, haha.

When I pulled the thingy to get off the bus, he said, “Sorry, I meet a lot of people on the bus and I just like talking to them. I hope you enjoyed our conversation. You take care and have a good day.” And as I was leaving he said, “I look forward to reading your book.”

That meant a lot to me. The guy really made my day. Basically, a complete stranger told me they believed I'll get published without reading a single word of something I've written. They had faith.

There are a lot of people who have told me, "count on having a second job" and "don't depend on being successful." Which I know. I realize the downsides to being a Creative Writing major. If anything tells me that this is what I want to do, it's the fact that I refuse to listen to people who are down on it. If I wanted to do something for the money, I would've done something else. I'm doing it because there's nothing else I can imagine myself doing, because I've never wanted anything else, and the classes I've taken have made me a stronger writer. If I can come home from working at a restaurant and write a better novel than I would've otherwise, that's what really matters to me. I should be proud of spending four years studying something I can't imagine living without.

I get so used to having people look down on my major and my chosen career path, that I forget that there are people who also support it and don't think it's a stupid decision. This guy was a total stranger, and I think he believed in me more than I sometimes believe in myself. I wish I'd told him how much it meant to me.

It’s interesting. Chicago is so known for its danger and its rudeness. People are scared coming here. I was. I was hurt by the way people just went right ahead of me on the CTA or how cold the cashier was at the Dollar General, until I got over it. I was intimidated by neighborhoods, and nervous the whole first couple weeks.

But in Chicago I’ve experienced some of the best expressions of kindness I’ve ever received. All I want is to be able to give back and do the same kind of thing for someone else someday.

Picture time.

The fireworks from the Chicago Fire Festival:

The fancy Russian food from Russian Tea Time:

I awkwardly don't know how to turn the picture right side up.

My fancy Russian tea:

It was so good! I don't need Russian vodka when I've got my Russian tea.

Our coolio selfie room:

The wall paper turned out so cool.

The warehouse:

I have no idea what used to be in there, but the chalk was everywhere.

Creepy stuff I found while moving boxes in the basement of 826CHI:

Just sitting on a table.

I feel like if you turned off the lights,

things would come out of this.

I don't know why a bathroom in the basement is necessary.

And it's a super creepy one.

This pigeon. Wtf. Who would create a giant pigeon? Why would that ever be necessary? And why does 826CHI have it? Or more importantly, why has 826CHI kept it?

Anyways. The beginning quote for this post is from Death of A Salesman, a play by Arthur Miller, which to me is one of the greatest plays ever. There are dark places everywhere that are intimidating and dangerous, but they're full of diamonds, of little pockets that contain acts of kindness, or amazing locations, or incredible people. And it's those things that make the dark place worth living in.

- Laura

[Doyi's Blog] The Internship (aka best part of the program)

2014-10-07T21:07:00.001-05:00

You know what’s most special about the Chicago Program?
You get an internship
and college credits
in Chicago!

As part of the curriculum, each student prepares, interviews, and works for an internship at a company/organization of their choice, in positions of their career interest. Plus, students get academic credit for it! This is honestly what drew me into applying for ACM Chicago in the first place; I had neither internships nor significant volunteer experiences, and as graduation approaches, I needed one. Lucky for me, this abroad program gave me an awesome opportunity to expand not just my resume, but also my professional skills and insights as part of a larger learning experience.

I work for Chicago Filmmakers, a non-profit organization providing artists the opportunity to learn about, distribute, and exhibit films outside the mainstream marketplace. They offer a variety of film classes, too: screenwriting, Final Cut Pro X, and producing, just to name a few. Recently, the Chicago Filmmakers celebrated its 32nd annual Reeling LGBT Film Festival--the second largest of its kind. The festival featured several LGBT movies, directors, and actors, and I was happy to be a part of the staff that created it.

To be more specific, I am the Chicago Filmmakers’ marketing intern. Since I’ve been very interested in pursuing a career in the marketing/ advertising/ PR field, and since I liked the closely knit, laid-back atmosphere of the organization, I applied for this job.

So far, it’s been good.

The Reeling film festival kept me busy, as I’ve been writing and scheduling tweets, shortening URLs, organizing every online article, and sending promotional emails. My marketing director, Gary, has been really helpful and informative about new social media tools and strategies I’ve never heard of. For instance, I learned how to use three tweet-scheduling sites, Hoot Suite, Tweet Deck, and Ad Twitter.
I’ve also done a lot of extra work along the way. Some include maintaining the box office, creating VIP passes, and checking passes for the festival screening. I knew I wasn’t always going to do something marketing-related, but I still value the experiences I’m gaining here.

However, I’m planning to get more marketing-work done. I realized that I have to be more active about my professional objectives in order to achieve them. To make the most out of my internship, I drafted a list of learning goals that includes gaining in-depth knowledge/experiences related to marketing, learning Adobe Illustrator and InDesign, and utilizing my artistic abilities in the marketing field. And to attain these goals, I’m going to talk about it with my supervisor tomorrow. What I’m hoping to gain from the conversation is a chance for me to design and print Chicago Filmmakers’ film/class schedule for next spring. I’ll let you know the results in the next blog.

Until then, wish me luck!

-Doyi

Art Issue

2014-10-01T00:05:00.003-05:00

Art is not truth.
Art is the lie that enables us to recognize truth.

I don't want to do anything. I don't want to deal with my internship or do my ISP proposal (even though I'm crazy excited about my idea) or get on the train and be gone all day, I want to lie in bed and watch The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes on Netflix and read comics and look at BuzzFeed and think about the screenplay I want to write this winter. But I have to be an adult.

I have not been making very adult dinners. I've been making mostly pasta, macaroni and cheese, ramen, and soup, easy things that don't require any prepping, and I'll make a salad or eat bell peppers or carrots and tell myself I'm eating healthy. The most complicated thing I've made is still those tacos. Also, note to self: do not put produce in the fridge and leave it there for two weeks and expect it to be okay when you finally pull it out.

A couple weeks ago, I went and looked at my mural for our Pilsen Exploration mural assignments, which was at the corner of 16th and Ashland. We were all assigned murals in Pilsen that we have to research and take pictures of for a website called Pilsen Portal, which will use our information once it's relaunched. I ended up having the coolest mural I have literally ever seen. I picked it because I thought "Dead Opossum" would be interesting, and it was. It's a mural of an opossum, of course, but it's painted on three sides of a wall, and one of the sides slants, so what you see of the mural all depends on how you look at it. If you look at the mural from the left, you see a whole, cute opossum. But if you look at it from the right, you can see the middle of it has a huge chunk taken out of it. It's creepy and amazing at the same time. Awkwardly, I took these pictures on different days, but that's ok.

From the left

From the right

It's so cool!! So cool. It's brilliant. Even though I saw this a couple weeks ago, I'm still excited about it. In the assignment, we were asked what we thought the mural signifies, and I think it represents how you can look at something, like Pilsen or Chicago, from one angle, and you see a beautiful city or neighborhood with tourist attractions and big parks and art, and then you look at it from another angle, and you see the dirty politics, the crime, the gangs, and the homeless. It all depends on how you look at it, and the negative aspects are often hidden from view. So cool. Apparently, a famous artist from Belgium painted "Dead Opossum" while he was here for Lollapalooza.

Last weekend, I went to Chinatown with my roommate, who's been wanting to go since she's from China, and another girl from our apartment. I don't know what I was thinking before we went, I guess that Chinatown would be one street with a couple stores and restaurants and bakeries and grocery stores, and that'd be it. But Chinatown is like a mini country. It's concentrated in a couple of blocks, but everything that's there- the packaging, the signs, the advertisements in the store windows, the food itself- is all in Chinese, and I was so glad Wen was with us, because everyone spoke Chinese and I would've had a hard time ordering or finding my way around. Looking back, I don't know what I was expecting or why I didn't think it would be that way. I've just never experienced something like that, I've never been somewhere where everything was written and spoken in a language I didn't understand, and then you walk a block or two and everyone's speaking English again. You kind of cross over worlds. It was weird, but also really cool, and I didn't say much, I just observed, I was like, whoa.
We went into a candy store, which had some American candy but also had weird (to me) Chinese candy that I was too scared to try because the packaging was beyond me and I had no idea what I was holding, and snacks, like shrimp chips and strips of dried barbecue squid. Then we went to this restaurant called Hot Pot, where you got to pick two broths that were put in the middle of the table, and everyone chose and shared meat and vegetables. Once the broth was boiling you put food in, and it cooked it. It was really cool, and Wen said it's really popular in China. I've never done it before and it was expensive, but really, really worth it. I was okay with the chopsticks at first but by the end of the dinner I think Wen lost her faith in my chopsticking skills.
Some pictures:

One of the things I really love about Chicago is stuff like this. You get to experience food from all over the world by taking the bus for fifteen minutes. You walk down a street and it's like you're in another country. And the whole time you can see the skyscrapers in the distance. I keep hearing how Chicago is "a city of neighborhoods" and about the different kinds of food and culture, but it's completely another thing to actually experience it, and it's really, really cool.

Anyways. I was going to make this post mostly about art. Last Thursday, my arts seminar went to a film screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center. It was a collection of short films by Jennifer Reeder. There were three that had a connecting theme, and were apparently taken from one feature-length screenplay that wasn't working, another short, and a clip from her new film that's being released in 2015. They all centered around women, either teenage girls who were crazy, or grown women who were crazy. You saw the women break down, and they all seemed to be falling apart in their heads. The films were really interesting and they got better as they went on, but they were definitely filmed in a very dark, surreal tone, and reminded me of the kind of things I've studied in class. They're the kind of films that you need to watch a couple times to really understand them and what the director was trying to do.
The one I liked the most was called Tears Cannot Restore Her; Therefore I Weep, and it involved a woman standing in front of a deaf classroom translating what the teacher was saying into ASL. During the lecture, she starts breaking down, and instead of talking about science, she talks about the guy who dumped her and gets really angry and frustrated. At one point the teacher completely stops talking and looks at her and she just keeps going. She talks about the guy's new lover, who listened to some rockstar whose name I forgot's records, and in the end one of the students gets up and goes up to her and says, "I hate that rockstar." It was a cool moment. It was a little cliché, but Reeder made it her own by having the student's nose suddenly start bleeding, which totally broke the mood and gave the film an otherworldy feel again. Reeder was there too, and afterwards she talked about the films and answered questions. It was really cool to go see films that were different and a little weird, and were also made independently, and then to have the person whose vision it was there. The whole thing was seven dollars- less than it costs to go see a movie at a regular theater. There are such cool things to go to in Chicago.

And weird things. Sunday night, my arts seminar went to a concert by Ikue Mori, an audio-visual artist who performs concerts using digitally created soundtracks and visuals that she put together herself. It was at Constellation, a small blackbox theater that had a really shady entrance. I was really weirded out because it was way north of Pilsen, and on the way there we went by the blue line stop I get off at to go to my internship, and I totally thought Wicker Park was in a completely different direction from the Loop and now I feel like my concept of the city was totally wrong. I am completely lost without the Rocky Mountains to tell me which way is west (unless the sun's setting/rising, or I know which way Millennium Park or the lake is).

Anyways. Ikue Mori's performance was kind of… weird. There was a big screen in this theater that showed her visuals, and it was set to the music and kind of like a very abstract music video. It was a live performance; it was kind of like she was a dj, she was adding and mixing the sound. It's hard to explain, you kind of had to be there, but the screen was a blend of colors and shapes, and it reminded me of the Ring, there were flies and bugs and skeletons and these creepy dolls that were moving like puppets. Then there were moving bubbles and shapes that blended and repeated that, as Susannah put it, were like screen savers. The music is hard to describe. I don't think it was instruments. I think all the sounds were created digitally, and they sounded like raindrops, screeching, the crush of a static-y TV screen, drums, and little plops and dinks. Basically.

There's some art I understand, and some I don't. The art I understand I'm like yeah this is beautiful, I could stand here and look at this for a half an hour and I feel awed standing in front of it (like the "Dead Opossum"), and then there's art that I feel like is just weird. People say "that was amazing" and they go into some ad-lib, crazy interpretation and I do not get it at all. This was one of those things I felt was just weird. Some people in our class really liked it, and some people really hated it. I was ok with it. It wasn't something I would've paid for on my own to go see, and when it first started I thought it was going to be two hours long and I thought, we get this for two hours? But it lasted maybe 45 minutes, so it wasn't that bad. Definitely the weirdest concert I've ever been to. And now I have something to compare to, I can think, at least that wasn't as bad/as weird as the Ikue Mori performance.

Another thing that we went to that had weird art, but art I understood a lot more, was the Intuit, a gallery for outsider art/self-taught art, which is just what it sounds like: art created by people outside the mainstream, and people who teach themselves their craft. It's amazing art by invisible people. We got a tour of the gallery, and the stuff here was also pretty weird but I liked it.

Here's a painting of a buff Bill Clinton:

And some clay heads:

A really creepy head whose eyes melted during production:

Also one of the coolest paintings I have ever seen. The picture is awkwardly sideways. But I could study this for hours, and I would totally buy it with my imaginary money for my imaginary apartment:

Again weird, but understandable.

The day after the Intuit gallery, the whole group went to Little Village and had a tour with Kim Wasserman, an amazing activist who organized the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) and was a major voice in shutting down the Crawford coal plant in the neighborhood. For decades, the smokestacks from the plant (which wasn't even producing coal for Chicago or Illinois) emitted toxins and coal dust would settle over the neighborhood. People began to realize the health effects of this; kids were having asthma attacks, thousands were staying home from school and work because they got sick, and eventually it was discovered that the pollution was killing 40 people every year. The community came together to shut the coal plant down. They've done other incredible things like create a brand new park, and have brought environmental issues to politicans' and citizens' attention. And Little Village has had a lot of environmental issues to deal with that have required the whole community's effort to fix. Wasserman explained to us how industrial the neighborhood is, and when they've built things like new schools and new parks, they've had a lot of issues with contaminated soil. For the new park, they literally have to build it eight feet above ground because the soil there is contaminated up to twenty feet underground. Basically, you have to climb a little hill to get to the park.

Wasserman was so passionate and so tough. She really believed in making her community better, and in the power of the people. Robyn also said that she never gives tours for anyone except our group, and I really appreciate the tour, because it was amazing.

At the end, we went to this great ice cream shop, Azucar, where you could get two scoops of two different flavors for $1.75. It was like the Cheesecake Factory, we were overwhelmed by all the choices. Each one looked so good! There were crazy ones too, like corn and rice. Nothing makes me feel like a little kid more than getting excited over ice cream.

It's amazing because Little Village is so close to Pilsen, but it seemed like another world. Like Chinatown, it exists in its own space. Chicago can change so much, within just a few blocks. It's things like this that makes me feel a million miles away from Golden, or Knox.

Anyways. This was going to be about art and I always end up talking about food.

In my classes at Knox, I've studied the theory that art is never the truth and never can be the truth. It's always a reproduction, a copy, never the real thing. I went to the Art Insititute last week with a couple friends, and we went to the René Magritte exhibit, and we actually saw the painting "The Treachery of Images," which I've only ever seen in books and I was so excited and I was actually standing in front of it and looking at the real thing. It's literally a painting of a pipe, and it says, "This is not a pipe." Example:

I saw the real thing! Ahh.

That painting perfectly captures what I'm going to try to say. A painting of a pipe can only be that- a painting of a pipe. We look at the pipe and think, that's a pipe, but really it's not, it's an image of one. The real thing is the object, placed in your hand. And few art pieces can be placed in your hands. Art is a reproduction of what we see and hear, and an attempt to portray what we think and feel. But it's never the real thing, never the truth. It's a lie. But it enables us to recognize the truth, it enables us to see it and feel what the artist felt when they saw it. And all the different art things we've gone to this week- the films, the outsider art gallery, the weird concert, Magritte- they're lies. All they are, is expressions of something the artist can only hope we understand. And it's only through the lie that we get the truth, only through the expression that we understand. Art is one of the few things that allows us to see through and understand other windows.

- Laura

[Doyi's Blog] Pilsen Impressions: Then and Now

2014-09-25T08:35:00.001-05:00

Here's the post that I should have written in the first week: first impressions. Because it's been only a month since my moving into Chicago, the timing is still, nonetheless, appropriate.

So, I live in Pilsen.

I'm not sure how familiar you are with this neighborhood, but until now I sure wasn't. Assuming that you know as little as I did, here's some information: Pilsen lies in the Lower West Side of Chicago, about a 25-30 minute train ride from Downtown. Filled with Latino food, culture, and people, it's a predominantly Mexican area (although for hundreds of years it was an Irish one).
To be honest, Pilsen isn't the richest or safest part of town. At least a decade ago, gangs and drug dealers used to hover street corners. Crime rate has long been an issue. Sidewalks and alleys aren't always clean, and buildings are not the most tall or reconditioned.

In fact, the unfamiliarity scared me a little. I'm not going to lie; at first, I didn't really like Pilsen. Among all the other possible neighborhoods in Chicago, this wasn't the most ideal place for me. I wanted a more urban setting--something more sophisticated, secured, and stylish. However, the worn-out architecture, graffiti walls, and just the entire atmosphere of the community neither appealed to me nor came across as modern. Most of all, I did not feel safe. The neighborhood's (now fairly out-dated) notoriety, as well as the fact that not many Asians and Caucasians live here bothered me a little bit. I might sound racist or offensive, but this was the truth. Pilsen was not the environment I was used to. I felt uncomfortable, and I could not call it home.

To break my walls of prejudice, I had to spend a lot of time with Pilsen. I didn't mean to, but my daily travels and agendas pushed me to experience the area first-hand. From small trips to the Family Dollar to walks to the Damen & 18th bus stop, Pilsen naturally became the setting of my routine. And during those trips, I got to revisit the site everyday and refresh my original impressions of the community.

First of all, it wasn’t as empty as I thought it would be. You could hear music nearby each block, for whatever occasion, from stores attracting customers to groups having a carwash. Street vendors often decorated the streets and sold clothes, accessories, and mexican food. At one point in my Neighborhood Walk assignment, I even unintentionally ended up on a block party--full of mexican flags, food, and people--when we momentarily got lost on our way. There always seemed to be something going on. Even during moments without music, my eyes were constantly kept busy. Colorful murals of people, patterns, and forms filled the walls of buildings. It felt like an art town, full of energy and excitement. Some of the wall paintings were political, strongly asserting equality and acceptance of undocumented workers and residents; they read phrases like, “we are a nation of immigrants,” and “no human being is illegal.” Pilsen’s unique identity, as well as expression of its identity, charmed me.

As I've mentioned earlier, it's only been a month since I lived in Pilsen. That means I'm still not 100% adjusted to or completely comfortable with the neighborhood. However, I am much more open to the community and its culture and characteristics than before. I realized that I've been filtering out all the positive aspects of Pilsen with my fears and assumptions, and that there's more to it the more I explore it. Most of all, I am happy to have come here and try out some authentic quesadillas :). I hope I gain more knowledge and understanding of Pilsen throughout my time in Chicago, and possibly bring 'em back home.

-Doyi-

This is a graphic piece I did for my Art Seminar, capturing my feelings and impressions of Chicago, and specifically, Pilsen. The top consists of a Chicago neighborhood map, and the bottom, the skyline of the city. At the center is Pilsen's mural of famous Mexican women (original photo by Corey Nunn)