Semester 2 in Review
Black Joy, Freedom Dreams
"Black Joy is to embrace your full humanity, as the world tells you that you are disposable and that you do not matter. Black joy is a celebration of taking back your identity as a person of color and signaling to the world that your darkness is what makes you strong and beautiful. Black joy is finding your homeplace and creating homplaces for others. Black joy is understanding and recognizing that as a dark person you come with grit and zest because you come from survivors who pushed their bodies and minds to the limits for you to one day thrive."
-Bettina L. Love
Selective Development at Chippewa
There are various ways that you can apply developers to the paper. Dabbing or dribbling developer over the exposed paper instead of the even development of the image in a tray is the most common method. The developer, which can either be used concentrated or diluted, as recommended, can be applied with a range of simple tools. Brushes, bottle spray or a sponge are the more obvious applicators, although there are no set rules for this technique and you are only limited by your imagination.
Self Worth in Self Portraits
Contemporary culture has specific views about what a body should look like and quite often this version does not include people outside of a certain body type. With a culture that is based on Eurocentric ideas of what beauty looks like it is important to show my black and brown students that these ideals are not universal. It is vital for them to understand that healthy looks different for each person and the subjectivity of weight and beauty is based on unattainable colonialist ideas. This lesson aims to help students increase their self-worth by examining what parts of our contemporary culture influence their understanding of their body image. Through the use of data research collected by the class, students will be able to visualize how prevalent negative discussions of weight and beauty are and how it’s affecting their peers. This connection between each other's similar struggles allows students to feel seen and heard in their personal challenges with their body image. Allowing students to express their frustrations and triumphs of their inner selves through art gives them a unique outlet to visually explore their identities.
