This has been a thoughtful and robust mentorship over the last 5 sessions. Throughout the first few sessions, I worked with Student to carve out a potential website/blog that would center art and artists to address several social justice issues that are important to Student, in particular climate justice, through a combination of reviews, "spotlights," and interviews. Through our sessions, conversations, readings and lectures, we explored important topics that we then worked to flesh out. This included language around "transnational identity," "intersectionality," and "ecofeminism." To support these topics, Student researched and presented on several artists whose work engaged some of these ideas with the potential of turning them into blog posts. Alongside this thoughtful research, Student worked on organizing the components of her website through careful research on branding identity, organization, and mission. Student produced a great framework to work with, however she decided to pause on this in order to concentrate on producing an online exhibition that will center much of her research under the umbrella theme of "home." This is a recent shift, and I am really glad that Student acknowledged her needs in order to balance the heavy responsibilities of her upcoming school year. I see this new direction and exhibition as an achievable goal over the second half of our mentorship, which will also support a possible website in the future. In addition to the Home exhibition, we will work towards building a framework for another collaborative exhibition that Student will pursue with classmates in school next year. Student is a thoughtful, rigorous and empathetic person and student and it has been wonderful to work with her again. She is always prepared, engaged and curious. Student brings a range of ideas, interests, and skills to each session. Her curatorial eye has really sharpened and it is clear that she is looking at the full range of creative contemporary culture as she continues to articulate her focus and passion for/within social justice. I can't wait to see how the final exhibition shapes up and look forward to working closely with her as she articulates, curates and conceptualizes.
Student has really challenged herself as a student, curator and artist in this mentorship and it has been wonderful to see her meet her ambitious goals. Student's dedication to art and social justice is an inspiring commitment and one that she is creatively exploring through a curatorial lens. Throughout the last 5 sessions, Student has brought a critical rigor to all assigned readings, exploring and engaging in urgent topics ranging from transnational identities to feminism; sustainability to new genres of art making. These are not always easy topics to engage with or even connect to one another, but Student has found innovative ways of connecting these topics, artists, and processes in both creative and hopeful approaches. When we were working on the website, Student produced a very well thought out plan of action from design innovation to content. She worked diligently to build an identity and a system to support viewer engagement and potential collaboration. This is a huge endeavor and I am glad that Student has decided to step back and consider the many different ways she might utilize the platform at different points in her student/career. Student's clarity around exhibition making has grown since last summer and it was exciting to hear her identify the different aspects of producing a curatorial statement during today's most recent session. I am certain that she will approach this new exhibition goal with a knowledgeable ambition, which will bring her interests into focus and bring new legibility to a larger audience, especially if she uses her website to host.
As mentioned above, the revised deliverable is an online exhibition complete with press release, didactics, and online visibility. I see this as being doable at this juncture in our mentorship.
