Self-eval for READING/MAKING images

Chris Kawecki 	   Self-Evaluation      Images	December 1992

This semester I have found out a lot about my learning style. Increasingly, I have found that John Dewey's philosophy of education works best for me. To sum it up, Dewey believes that one can not learn the basics by memorizing the basics, nor by using the basics in a work designed to make you learn the basics, but only by using those basics in a bigger project where using them is worthwhile- a bigger project which you have some emotional attatchment to. This really explains to me the effects different parts of this class have had on me.

For example, I don't think I gained much by doing the image journal, first because I was not interested in the idea, and second because it was not a large project which made me use some basics. It was a collection of smaller, to me silly tasks. The final project, on the other hand, was a very effective tool for me to use, and thereby improve my ability to use, a number of things: how to make connections between visual images, and how to develop a relationship between images and the things they ought to communicate.(Being excited about the project certainly helped too) Mostly, I was for once able to make some images in the light of a big picture which was important to me, and so I think I really did that- I made some images then.

My role in that project -the final project- was essentially to make a rough draft. I created the idea of the work, the storyboard, and then drew and shot appropriate pictures for the rest of the group to work with. This role was in a sence thrust upon me by the unexpectedly premature departure of my group, but I think it worked out quite well in the long run, the group coming together to work on my expounded thesis after returning.

It is perhaps a good idea to identify the various analytical aspects I got out of the course and consider quite worthwhile:

• worthwhile, and extrememly interesting information about the Constructivists, as a very different example of idelology-based art
• the enjoyment of watching a number of non-trad films, and the worthwhile-to-ponder ideas they introduced
• now i have at least a beginners idea of what art criticism, modernism, consructivism, (this would go on a long time) are, who Barbara Kruger is, and how different people view art as economic, social, or pretty much anything you can think of. [and a beginners idea is nearly a world beyond what i had before]

In terms of making images, I wish I could have figured out ways (perhaps been encouraged to?) in which I could make images in ways which seemed more suited to my style of learning. Indeed one of the lessons of this class has been that I must consciously sit down and think to myself, "how can I learn this best"- not "how can I complete this assignment best"; perhaps it is still one of the problems of my education, then, that it is part of the teachers job to evaluate and mine to be evaluated.

With all honesty, I thank you for fun, for new insight into photos, and most importantly for a worthwhile opportunity to think- for thinking, I would venture, is indeed wonderful.