Residency- Venice Arts- Issa Sharpe- 4 Hours
Week four of the internship and week three of classes was another success. This was our first field trip day, which will happen twice more in the semester. This trip was to the Watts Towers, a large architectural sculpture created by Simon Rodia. It took close to a half hour drive both ways, and since the class is only in for two hours, that took up a large portion of the class. That was actually one of the best parts, which I'll come back to. We spent about an hour at the Towers. There was an indoor art center where a really enthusiastic tour guide took the kids into the gallery that they had up. The show was a series of collages highlighting black artists. The class had some time to walk around and talk about the art before another tour guide came and brought us around the towers. This is where the students got to practice their photography. They were much more interested in getting pictures than hearing about the history of the Towers. I do the same thing when I'm on tours, so I took this as a promising sign for a group of emerging photographers! We, teachers and mentors, have yet to have a dedicated time to go over camera settings with the students. Therefore, while they were shooting we stayed in circulation, checking in on any technical questions that may have come up. I helped one student switch from auto to manual focusing, which was a fun challenge for both of us.
Now, back to the car-ride. There were two vehicles that went on the trip. We have about fourteen students and four mentors, and a van that carries twelve. I went with one of the Teaching Artists, Angela, in her car with three students. On the ride home, simple ice-breaker questions in the "would you rather..." or "either-or" formula turned into some profound discussions on happiness and success. One of the questions a student, Vivian, brought up was, "would you rather be completely happy or have all the money you could imagine?". Most of answered with happiness, but one student, Stephanie, said that she would prefer the money so that she could use it to make other people happy. My heart swelled. It's so impressive to me that these ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen-year-olds are having these profound and morally just ideas.