Artist statement:
When I began this project, I knew I wanted to highlight the work of students and professors that have done creative work in CERA. As I began the interview process, I realized all the artists I have chosen for these interviews were women. I spent a great deal of time thinking about how to present their work while recognizing my own male privilege. How can I ensure the voices of women artists would be empowered and recognized? I decided against adding my own verbal comments and critiques of their works, and instead I put my energy into coding the interview transcript through a thematic lens. My goal was to categorize their comments into the themes that our class explored.
I originally thought a gallery walk would be one avenue to highlight the artists voice and product. However, I quickly realized the time constraints would make completing such a project difficult. After many conversations with some of the brilliant mentors and colleagues around me, we decided digital story telling might be the next best method. Thus, I compiled their narrative into a digital story. My own theoretical framework came in how I decided to categorize the interview snippets, the background noises I used, and the images shown throughout the video; however, I managed to find a way to keep the women artists’ voices intact in the final product.
This work would not have been possible without the help of:
Professor Celeste Miller
Professor Lesley Delmanico
Professor Abby Aresty (Oberlin College)
Anne Rogers
Charlotte Richardson-Deppe
and all my classmates in THD-310 for constantly pushing my work theoretically and personally.
