Working With People Who Have Actual Artistic Talent

I'm no artist. Composing concepts is one thing, but execution? Not so much. Give me three hours and no distractions, and I can just barely sketch a leaf halfway-decently from life, though the shading will probably be way off. Drawing from imagination is utterly pointless, because proportions are hard and perspective is out to get me. And finally, I don't have the dedication to work hard and learn those skills; unlike artists, I give up instead of practicing.

UMBC's IRC Fellows, on the other hand, know enough about visuals and how to produce them to base their studies and future careers on them. The Visual Arts IRC Fellowships are designed for people with outstanding computer graphics skills. Sometimes, that means that they create things like the visual effects in this 2009 theater performance, "The Crystal Egg":

We, of course, need them for a more prosaic purpose. As this urbantells.net blog post by Prof. Steve Bradley shows, the IRC Fellows will be working with us on creating a cohesive visual aesthetic and specific images to associate with and represent this project. (Yeah, I think that sounds much nicer than "branding".) Some of the t-shirt concepts they've worked up so far are in that blog post. They're all really lovely and worth checking out; it's just cool for me to see them in progress.

Logo and image design, I think, is slightly sexier than copy editing, but still an aspect of professional life many tend to overlook. The importance of projecting a clean, coherent image, like having copy that is correct and tonally appropriate, can make a huge difference in reception. That's not to say that people are shallow, or that you can't begin to operate without workers trained in those skills--rather, I mean that the public at large is just more likely to trust their time and money to operations that look interesting and "legit". Finding a way to create that gestalt, those icons and logos that can make up our project's conceptual visual identity, is a very strong step forward in our presentation to the public.

Working Towards an Understanding of Place

While working on this project, it looks like I will be doing a lot of what I do best: editing and proofreading. Those aren't very glamorous parts of the work of getting a cause off the ground, but I do believe that they are important. Truly professional-grade documents (advertisements, press releases, etc.) should be easy to read and appear legitimate and trustworthy to the public. In my experience, a proofread document gets very different reactions from readers than a casually thrown-together one. We may "just" be students, but that's no reason not to approach this as a job and commit to doing absolutely all we can to get professional results.

That's why I'm taking AMST-680 in the first place, after all: to build skills I need for my career. Specifically, I want to learn to interview people and collect their oral histories. I study English, and my thesis focus is on the texts produced by fan composers (the sort of work that The Organization for Transformative Works does). While not directly connected to that, this course is at its core about speaking to and working with members of a community to document their histories and understand their goals, and that's exactly what I need.

The history of the Fairfield/Bethlehem shipyards back during World War II might be a good place for me to start.

(Picture via Wikipedia)

My paternal grandparents were Polish immigrants who came to live and work in a New York steel town before the War. They spent their whole remaining lives there, and my father also worked in the mill for a few years before he moved down here, so I feel something of a personal connection to the stories of the place. (Cursory Googling coupled with fuzzy memories indicates it might even have been Lackawanna, a Bethlehem affiliate, but I'm not certain at this time.) I'm also curious: what was the wartime industry like? Did many women take jobs, Rosie the Riveter-style, back then while the men shipped out? And if so, what happened to them when the war ended? The changing role of women in the 1940s and 1950s is just fascinating, and it would be amazing to be able to hear from and preserve the stories of women who lived it. Time is, after all, running out for us to do so.

Furthermore, what are community members' feelings regarding the industry's effects on the local environment? It's a complex issue, with many stakeholders involved. Entire communities rose and fell with the dual influences of available work and devastating pollution. As William Cronon observed in his essay "The Trouble With Wilderness," the position of wanting to get back to a "pure, unspoiled" form of nature is an inherently privileged on, held by people who can afford to be tourists of wilderness. Cronon argues that we need not only protect these sublime vistas, but also to find ways to integrate nature into the fabric of our own, human environments. The Filbert Street Garden is an example of this concept, a little oasis of plants in the middle of BayBrook's vast industrial development, and I wonder whether I can find out more about similar efforts in the area's past; Dr. King mentioned that the vanished steelworkers' community of Fairfield had a well-known garden. How have the people in these places modified them to suit their own needs, and how are they still doing it today?

More questions than answers, perhaps, but that's a good thing at the very beginning of research.

Gearing Up for BayBrook

I'm looking forward to my new American Studies course, but also nervous. It's not like anything I've done before, and I just hope I can contribute. You see, we're supposed to try and really engage with the BayBrook (portmanteau of Curtis Bay + Brooklyn) area with a project involving environmental and social justice. They're giving us seed money and everything. No pressure, right?

We're supposed to be defining our social mission, but the thing is, I think a mission statement might be the one thing I've never written before! While I'm sure those better qualified than myself will trump me--and that's a good thing--maybe it's something along the lines of, "To work with members of the BayBrook and greater Maryland community to help ensure the continuation of a program which provides enrichment in the form of healthy food and environmental education..."? I don't want to sound like we're swooping in and taking charge--how could we?--but neutral language sounds so wishy-washy, wordy, and corporate to me. Dilemma.

It reminds me of the reading Dr. King assigned about Placemaking. In it, Lynda Schneekloth and Robert Shibley argued that places in which we live need to be designed, created, and modified by or in concert with the people who are ultimately going to inhabit them; that coming in from outside, you can't automatically know the details that determine the best way for a place to function. As someone who's been living in apartments for far too long, that struck a chord with me. Working with residents and users makes so much sense.

Ideally, we're hoping to fulfill this mission by helping raise enough money to enable the hiring of someone to work as the manager of the Filbert Street Garden, a community garden in the area. They teach classes about plants to schoolchildren and such. My Professor, Dr. King, has had classes work with the garden in the past, and it seems like a really nice place based on this video:



I really want to go and see it in person soon, whenever the class goes in groups. I miss gardening in the little patch my mom kept, not to mention when I did landscaping professionally, and it's great for any kid to get that experience. Heck, like I said, I'd like to remember that experience!

Here's crossing my fingers that my (admittedly nerdy) skills come in handy for those I'll be working with.