1. Practice
2. Finish website
3. Coordinate costumes
4. Write written report

Sam, Cristina, Nick and Lauren- Practice
Cristina- finish graphics
Sam- find corny music
Lauren- add more to written report
Nick- look for corny music and figure out whether to switch slides or have them side by side

Proposal:
Lauren: Hi and thank you for joining us in celebrating the launch of Onondaga Lake’s new fun filled attraction, Lights on the Lake.

Sam: This family orientated project highlights the history of one of Onondaga county’s most famous landmarks.

Cristina: By combining history and beauty, the 2 mile long sparkling display attracts audiences of all ages.

Nick: Lights on the lake is all year round. Viewers are able to take night time drives through the festive atmosphere or relaxing strolls along the shoreline. The scenic walk is a great way shed those extra holiday pounds.

Lauren: As our fabulous website points out, it only costs $8 per car or $6 on Monday and Tuesday with a Wegmen’s shopping card. This show cannot be missed. You can even have your companies name be part of the unique experience.

Sam: That’s right, Lauren. Companies such as Allied Signal and Solvay Process Company have jumped on board to help share Onondaga Lake’s history with all of Syracuse. There is so much fun to be had that you must experience it for yourselves.

Cristina: The Towering light displays, animals, amazing animations, flying fish, beautiful beach displays and breath taking architecture can only be enjoyed by those willing to fully immerse themselves in the lake’s culture.

Nick: If you visit our website, www.lightsonthelake.org, you are able to view pieces of the multi faceted, stunning production. Here (point to fish) we have two deceased fish that have entirely absorbed all that Onondaga Lake has to offer.

Lauren: Look how gorgeous they appear. Almost breath-taking. The beautiful beaches are represented by the 12 foot “no swimming” and “no fishing” signs that flash in different colors as you pass. When you can do everything on a play station who actually goes out and swims nowadays?

Sam: Very True. And speaking of fun toys like play station, Lights on the lake gift certificates make great presents for the holidays and you don’t want to miss the virtual tours that are now available to view on the website.

Cristina: We hope that you all come out to experience the sheer brilliance of all that Onondaga Lake has to offer. During the holidays Santa is known to stop by and give out gifts to the young children. These gifts include packets with safety warnings and precautions for the kiddies to take when playing near the lake. Safety is always our number one concern.

Nick: Thank you all for coming out and listening to our presentation. We hope that you attend the show. It is mounds of fun and should not be missed!

The Inconvenient Truth Light Show

Onondaga Lake Parkway is the site of annual "Lights on a Lake" festival. For our final project in CAS 100 our group was thinking of creating another lights on the lake but not with a Christmas theme. Instead we want to create a show of lights with the symbols of pollution like dead fish and smokestacks from the surrounding industries because of the serious contamination of Onondaga Lake. Also our light show would be year round because pollution is a problem all year not just during one time of season. The show should serve as a kind of public awareness and how it is not going to get better if we do not do anything. This light show will be open to the public for a minimal fee because the money we do make out of it will go into the clean up of the lake.

The "Inconvenient Truth Light Show " would be set up on a street or what ever open land there is next to the lake because the project is featuring the lake so it would be the appropriate location. This project is an integration of the community because we would want the community to give us ideas and help us set it up. As long as we get enough community members to participate in the development of the project, then getting permission should be no problem because we are only trying to raise awareness and raise money for clean ups. This project will not disrupt the daily life of people though it may spark some controversy with the companies who pollute. This project has inspiration from Damali Ayo's reparation project because in her dialogue she tries to raise awareness of the suffering of African American people back in the slave trading days. Likewise this project is also intended to raise awareness of the dangers of pollution in the clean looking lake.



http://onondagacountyparks.com/parks/olp/#

Click on this link to see the enlargement of the above map. Also Google Maps is a good site to see the location of Lights on the Lake in Syracuse.

The Battle of Orgreave

The Battle of Orgreave was threatening to be one of the most violent confrontations between riot police and pickets in British history yet the government, notably Margaret Thatcher’s classification of the strike as “mob violence” and her branding of the miners as “the enemy within” (Correia: 95), did not help to defuse the situation. Instead they provoked the miners to come at them by placing an enormous amount of authority in the way of them.

The police did not need to deploy in such big numbers at Orgreave during the picketing because it was relatively peaceful at the time. The authorities being there with their helmets, truncheons, shields, dogs, and horses was the cause for this violent battle. Of course at the time, it seemed as though the authorities, including the government, wanted this to happen so as to make it seem as though miners’ are all outcasts from the majority population with their “vicious” act. This picket line and the yearlong strike against the digging pits was the beginning of the end for the already diminishing coal industry in the United Kingdom.

The pickets knew that eight thousand plus police officers (East, Power, and Thomas 1985: 309) would not have been deployed to one picket line if a battle were not to happen. The loud battle cries they chanted in unison while banging their shields also confirmed it. Miners’ recalled driving over to Orgreave’s from all over the country, Scotland and Wales included, to join the strike expecting to be detoured somewhere else or be pulled over and get sent back. Nothing of the sort happened but instead police waved them on and helped park their cars. It seemed that the police intended that Orgreave would be a “battle”, and would not end until the pickets were “defeated” (East, Power, and Thomas 1985: 310). The determination and preparedness of the police force resulted in a kind of mini-war instead of the defusing the situation.

The government got what they wanted on June 18th, 1984. Who started the battle, no one knows for sure but once it started there was no turning back. The pickets’ threw bricks and stones and charged at the long shielded front line of officers. While the coppers on horses came out from behind the line and ran over people while hitting and bashing miners’ who were running away. There was an incident where a man climbed up a wall to let the horses pass by then one of the coppers knocked him straight across the legs with his truncheon and broke his two legs. There was another incident in which a man of about fifty sitting on a wall catching his breath was knocked across the forehead by a mounted copper, for no reason at all (East, Power, and Thomas 1985: 310). These incidents show the consequences of governmental intervention in a dispute such as the mining strikes.

On June 18th 1984, Jeremy Deller was watching a news broadcast of this event on TV with people, horses, and dogs running around chasing each other while punching and beating one another. He saw mounted coppers hitting people with their truncheons and coppers with shields hording off an attack by the street clothed people. This historical moment in English history in which state power was enforcing itself, would stay in Deller’s mind for years to come. Not until he undertook research of the event years later did he find out the historical perspective and significance of the confrontation. He found out that it was a day in which had been anticipated and planned for by the government (Deller, 2002: 7). With this discovery, he came up with an idea, a project to re-enact this event so as to brand this into the history books for the future generations to know about.

Mac McLoughlin, a former police officer during the mayhem, is from a family of miners’ so he understands the pain and hard work the pickets must have gone through to make a living. He remembers seeing an incident in which a police officer from Manchester, a non-mining town, had a picket in a headlock. McLoughlin did not know why because the picket was not fighting back or anything. Just then the officer calls over a buddy and tells him to hit the picket, which is followed by a nasty whack to the forehead of the seemingly cooperative kid. Many incidents related to ones like these shows the consequences of a state trying to assert its hegemonic power over its people. It also shows how determined each side were to make a statement to one another.

Jeremy Deller’s re-enactment of this historic battle at Orgreave on June 18th, 2001 was to serve as a historical and political piece of dialogical art. It took him and others a year to collect all the information needed for the re-enactment. They interviewed the ex-miners’ that were involved in the incident and also the police officers who were there. He got over eight hundred ex-miners’ to participate in his project and some former police officers as well (Deller 2002: 7). He wanted to make it as real as possible so he hired historical re-enactment expert Howard Giles, and riot police training officers to train the volunteers. He decided to shoot the film in the same vicinity of the actual battle because that would give it that much more significance. Jeremy asked most of the ex-miners’ to play the role of officers and former officers the role of pickets to make them see through a different perspective. The re-enactment was for historical and memorbilia purposes but the people involved were “at times veered towards real violence” (Correia, 2006: 100), insisting on a remaining edginess between ex-miners’ and former officers.

The media portrayed the battle as though the miners started the whole medley and should be looked upon as though they are the outcasts of society. This is a reminder of Roland Barthes
“The Blue Guide” and how people only focus on one aspect of place or event and forget about the rest. Thinking of Spain as only as a place of classical ballet and old monuments is like thinking the officers were all innocent and did not do anything to provoke the Battle of Orgreave. This re-enactment gave many of the ex-miners’ that took part in it to reassert the truth of what really happened on that day. In this sense the project gave a voice to the miners’ who were not given a chance to tell their side of the story. They could express their “criticism” and their “deep distrust” of official truth through this project, letting the anger out so the process of healing and cooperation can begin between the mining and policing communities.

The dialogical art project clearly depicted the violence that was unlawfully started by the government and was bent in supporting the miners’ action because during the “real” event, the police had all the support from the media. This re-enactment gave the miners’ a chance to tell their side of the story and how it all went down. It also showed the government’s weakness to have to resort to such extreme measures of sending mass amounts of officers to a picket line in which was not doing anything troublesome except protesting. The consequences of sending the coppers most likely provoked the Battle of Orgreave. I mean what would you do if the so called protectors of the streets started provoking you by waving money and calling you names because you were a miner?

The mass strike did not end at Orgreave but most definitely increased the hatred and bitterness between picketing and non-picketing miners alike. Many families were torn apart because of divided loyalties and still are into this day (Corriea 2006: 96) but the re-enactment in a way started the healing of family ties and now is slowly fading into history so people can be as one community again. The main reason that put pit communities into such poverty and
violence after the shutting down of collieries was the fact that jobs were taken away from generations of families. If you take the pit away from the pit communities, what exactly is it there for (Deller 2002: 22)?

The main intention for this project was to make The Battle of Orgreave’s a “part of the lineage of decisive battles in English History” (Deller 2002: 7). In other words he wanted to
show the people, mainly the English people, that events like the one in Orgreave were decisive moments in the rich history of England. “Intrapersonal interactions are really the key to political transformation” (Berger 1999: 97). This was a day in which a bunch of so-called “evil” miners’ defied the all mighty English government by standing up to them. This battle helped the miners’ in the sense of lifting their spirits but as a result lost their jobs when the coalmines closed down. From this film, the mending of relationships between the police and mining communities has began and was one of the main implications of this dialogical art project.

I thought the project was a very interesting one because of the fact that Deller included former miners and police officers. This is "the kind of interactions between the artist and the respective community partner" (Kwon 2002: 117) that needed to be established to be a success. Without this aspect it would not have been accepted by the English community because of the fact that it was a day in which many families were torn apart. By including the formers, the project was a success in the sense that people worked together and created a historical archive for this important event. The miners coming back to the battleground of the infamous battle where their lives were pretty much taken away is interesting and important because to have some closure in life, people must return to the so-called “battleground” and forgive. This is what I think Deller was trying to do by gathering some of the formers and reuniting them under a better situation.

This film is also a very reveling of the English way of life and probably brought to light to the people of the world, and maybe to the English themselves, that England has its problems too. When people think of England they think of old castles, beautiful old houses from the 1500s, red suited soldiers in black hats but just do not know the truth of the matter. “Through the work I try to construct a concrete, immediate and personal relationship with me and the viewer that locates us within the network of political cause and effect” (Berger 1999: 61). This quote gives a good description of what the art project was trying to portray, which was the political and the personal sides, which resulted in the battle.

The Battle of Orgreave

Topics:

1)Describe the battle and its significance
2)The consequences and results
3)How Deller came up with this idea and how it has shaped the way of life in England
4)The participants and the audience
5)Consequences and how the battle was only told from one perspective
6)The Artist's intention for this project

2 Thesis:

1)Why is this project so significant in the way it portrays the miners and officers?

2)How did this project help bring to light the suffering of the miners even years after the battle (Families torn apart and no jobs)?

4 quotes:

1)I wanted to make The Battle of Orgreave"a part of the lineage of decisive battles in English History" (Deller's Book)

2)"People at times were veered towards real violence" in the re-enactment (Journal article)

3)This project is based on "the kind of interactions between the artist and the respective community partner" (Kwon's Book)

4)"I saw one man, about 50, sitting on a wall trying to get his breath. A mounted copper came along and hit him on his forehead right over the wall" (Journal article)

The Battle of Orgreave

Jeremy Deller- The Battle of Orgreave

2 Questions:
1)I want to know how Jeremy Deller came up with the idea to re-enact the battle?
2)Why were the riot police so vicious in attacking men and women miners' alike?


4 Books and Articles:
1)The English Civil War Part II, Personal accounts of the 1984-1985 miners' strike.
Author: Jeremy Deller

2)The Death of Mass Picketing (Journal of Law and Society)
Database: J-STOR.
Author: Robert East, Helen Power, Philip A. Thomas

3)Jeremy Deller (Art Monthly)
Database: Wilson Web
Author: Dave Beech

4)Interpreting Jeremy Deller's The Battle of Orgreave (Visual Culture of Britain)
Database: Wilson Web
Author: Alice Correia

"Culture in Action"

The Haha and Flood network made up of activists and volunteer health care workers came up with a project to grow food for HIV and AIDS patients. They came up with this project so they could have a "communicative sphere" in which the theme of AIDS could be brought up. They did this by filling half a Chicago shop with special plants that do not require soil to grow but require constant attention and made the other half of the room into an AIDS information center. The "Hydroponic" garden was to be seen as a metaphor for social interaction and responsibility for the public.

In the 1990's the role of public art has shifted from that of renewing the physical environment to that of improving society, from promoting aesthectic quality to contributing to the quality of life, from enriching lives to saving lives

The HIV/AIDS project is very much related to this quote because it brings up the issue of disease into the publics view, which may save lives. You can create a conversation between this project and the quote by talking about the many diseases in the world and how art can bring them into peoples perspectives. Maybe then people will start caring and start doing something about it. One question I do have is how exactly did the activists/artists come up with this project in the first place because, to me, it is very strange.

Video and Resistance

Photography is embraced more as a scientific tool than a leisure tool because of its importance in today's world. Photographs are used for military reconnaissance and for keeping information from disappearing from our memories. Following the invention of the camera came the film movie camera which led to the making of documentaries. Early documentaries functioned primarily as advertisements, but as time went on the making of documentaries has vastly improved. But in doing so it has blinded our perception to what is considered real history and what is not. In this sense history is created by the movie industries themselves.

The authors of "Video and Resistance" and Sontag have the same kind of view in the sense that photographs and movies are an important aspect in our daily lives. Without photographs in our lives today, families and relatives would not have concrete visual records of their loved ones and militaries could not spy on each other. They also think that because of all the technological advances today, people are having a harder time distinguishing between reality and fantasy. Photos and movies are deceptive in the way they portray different issues and because of it, people are losing their sense of what reality really is.

Onondaga Lake

It has been called the most polluted lake in the nation. Over a 100-year period, many industries around the Syracuse area have dumped untreated wastewater, industrial contaminants, and other environmentally harmful chemicals into the water of a once beautiful lake. Onondaga Lake is a relatively small lake encompassing 4.6 square miles, which means it does not take much to ruin the ecology of the water and destroy the homes of the animals that live in and around it.

In 1884, Ernest Solvay opened a company called the Solvay Process Company, which produced soda ash, an important component in the production of glass, detergents, and paper (Lander 64). This company saw the lake as the perfect location to dump hot wastewater and untreated waste, which ultimately increased the water temperature and increased the amount of phosphorous in the lake. This was the starting point for the destruction and killing of historical Onondaga Lake.

The lake not only has to cope with industrial waste and pollution in its waters, but municipal wastewater discharges as well. “Onondaga Lake receives more of its water on a percentage basis as domestic effluent than any other lake in the United States,” says Steve Effler, the director of research for the Upstate Freshwater Institute (Lander 69). The Metropolitan Syracuse Wastewater Treatment Plant (METRO) has discharged untreated wastewater directly into the lake since the 1920’s. Metro has contributed mainly to the rise of phosphorus and nitrogen levels in the water, which in turn has made the level of rapidly growing algae, which feed on nutrients, to form on the surface. This causes the lake to have a very depleted oxygen level (Lander 69). Low oxygen level means less fish and less plankton in the water, creating a dead ecology.

Since that time many improvements have been made in bringing Onondaga back to life. The project to cover the lake’s bottom with rubber and metal caps is an example, which is expected to keep the mercury and other waste materials from seeping out to surrounding areas and to protect the lake’s organisms from unacceptable levels of contaminants (Landers 67). The Onondaga County, Department of Environmental Conservation, and Honeywell International (a company who was partly responsible for the pollution) have worked together on this project and are working to cover the overflows of waste materials from running into the lake. These upgrades and improvements of the lake’s water and the surrounding industries like Metro is projected to cost about one billion dollars (Landers 66 and 70), some paid by the Superfund program and the Honeywell International Corporation, but mostly by the citizens of the United States.

Who is to pay for the continuation of these projects? Should it be the government because of their irresponsibility to see the dangers of dumping hazardous waste, and not stopping, into bodies of water like Onondaga Lake or should it be the polluters who caused this whole mess in the first place? I think the polluters should pay a huge sum for the damage they caused, but many of the industries and companies who caused these problems are either bankrupt or out of business (Knickerbocker 2). The companies that are left and still operate today, like Honeywell Industries, should and are paying for the damages that they are responsible for causing. I think industries should have known better than to dump waste into a natural site where animals and humans alike live and play. If they were not lazy to decontaminate the waste before dumping it into the lake or if they did not dump at all then this problem would not be as a big of an issue today.

Government agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency should provide more money to projects and programs like the Superfund because of the fact that we need to clean and maintain our fragile ecosystem. Without it we would be living in an industrial nightmare composed of radioactive lakes and disease-infested lands. Though the EPA has provided a good amount of money into the clean-up project of Onondaga Lake, it will all be for nothing if Congress does not renew the Superfund program. Superfund was once funded by excise taxes on the oil and chemical industries (Knickerbocker 2), but these funds are vastly depleted and may run out anytime soon. This means that the individual taxpayer has to take the job of paying. “We’ve known for a long time that the Superfund trust fund was running out, but unfortunately the president and Congress have continually failed to reinstate Superfund’s “polluter pays” fees, leaving regular taxpayers to foot the bill” (Knickerbocker 2).

The President and Congress have since 1995 continually failed to reinstate Superfund’s “polluter pay” fee, which means more money from American citizens, which also means unhappy people. I think the reason Congress and the president have not reinstated the fee is because they are either scared or they support the oil and gas industry. George W. Bush, being an oil and gas prodigy himself, has always supported oil drilling and is not about to reinstate a fee on companies that support him and his family. Our vice president was also and still is connected to the oil industry. He was the CEO of energy giant Halliburton before becoming our vice president and is also a big supporter of oil drilling. Our government is made up of a bunch of oil “junkies” and this is the main reason they are not reinstating the fee for Superfund. In my opinion, they just do not give a damn about the environment.

The best solution to this problem is for industries, government, and citizens alike to contribute to the funding of clean-ups of hazardous wastelands. Of course the polluters should pay the brunt of the costs but government and citizens can help out to fix this dilemma because it affects all of us. Citizens are partially to blame for the pollution and contamination as well as the government and industries because the citizens are the consumers of the industries products. Unfortunately, the by-product of making products like soda ash and other things creates waste and other hazardous chemicals. It is the government’s wrong doing for not stopping the various industries from dumping where they did because they are supposed to impose laws that prevent these kinds of activities from happening. With all this said, everyone is responsible for the contamination of geographical features like Onondaga Lake because of the “human waste making cycle.” Government does nothing, industries dump because of it, and consumers consume the products that created the waste in the first place.

The industries should have found an alternate way of getting rid of the waste or at least take the time to decontaminate it before dumping it. Being human, we have made many mistakes and have been too lazy, greedy (especially the government) and foolish for our own good. Of course being human means learning from our past mistakes so I’m confident in our ability to clean up our act and start treating the environment the way it should be treated. I’m not saying that the government will change its views on this subject but instead the people will start making their voices heard and make the government do what it needs to do. We need to protect our fragile ecosystem and clean up the parts that we dirtied up even if it means billions or trillions or zillions of dollars.

Superfund

Should tax payers have to pay for the clean-up of toxic and polluted sites that industries created? Isn't it the culprits that should have to pay for the damages that they themselves created. Or should citizens and tax payers pay for the damages along with the industries because it is our environment and is important to our health and our children's and our children's children. We should not leave pollution for the next generation to clean because it wasn't there fault. The industries and numerous companies that caused these environmental hazards should pay for the clean up of these waste lands, but most of the companies that caused them are either bankrupt or out of business.

It's our duty to clean up the remaining nasty sites because if we don't do something about it soon then it's just going to get worse and worse over time. Superfund was created to clean the nations abandoned polluted wastelands and was until fairly recently funded by excise taxes from oil and chemical industries but these fees expired in 1995 and the Congress has failed to renew this deal. For this reason the amount of money taxpayers fund for this program has nearly tripled since that time. Since companies are paying less and taxpayers more, the amount of money going into these program has dropped by half.

To fix this problem the government needs to make tougher laws on environmental issues because it's our world and we only have one chance to take care of it, otherwise it's gone forever. The government needs to make an effort to make laws that cut the amount of carbon dioxide being emitted into our fragile atmosphere and stop supporting the big oil companies all the time. The U.S. needs to change the way they treat our beautiful world or else we won't have anywhere to live anymore. Supporting Superfund and renewing the excise tax deal with the various companies will help, but will not clean all the polluted areas. Though it is a great way to start anew.

http://www.epa.gov/superfund/about.htm
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/

Phobia

Why is it that we fear? After the 9/11 attacks the world has became so paranoid that the U.S. and the U.K. attacked Iraq to rid the world of terrorism, sort of like a global "cleansing" of the so called bad guys. When people pack their briefcases for a vacation, they have to put their liquids in a zip lock bag because of the fear that terrorists are going to one day blow up the planes with liquidized bombs. If that is not paranoia, I don't know what is? Now four years into the war in Iraq, terrorism is stronger than ever before because of the spread of Anti-Americanism. Countries cannot go into war with another on false accusations, especially a country that is in an area of an already strong resentment towards America. Fear makes people and even the most powerful countries in the world do stupid and unthinkable things.

Why is it that people like getting scared watching horror movies and reading horror books like "The Shining" and "The Stand" by Stephen King? The answer to this is really simple. People really enjoy being scared out of their wits. Now why is it that the U.S. has to show its fear in a way that means bullying everyone else. Fear is something that made the world go into war against an enormous enemy, terrorists, who will not be defeated until its purpose is done. The U.S. tries to cover up its phobia by making bigger cars, guns, military and showing supremacy toward other countries but what it's really doing is advertising its fear of the world around us.

The presentation was interesting with the lecturer talking about fear in the perspective of different authors who all had the same opinion on fear and its role in today's governments. The people of this country should not be afraid of its government but government should be afraid of its people, like in France for example. The American government on the other hand, uses its power to instill not hope, but fear into the people it governs.

Binh Danh Exhibit

The Binh Danh exhibit was a very different experience than I thought it would be. I thought there would only be a few art pieces but instead there were about 15-20 of them lined up all around the room. I liked the way the faces were drawn on the little leaves and the big faces "photographed" on the strands of grass. I didn't expect the faces of the young soldiers to be photosynthesized onto real leaves and grass. I think the reason Binh Danh used real vegetation is because of the fact that these men died using these kinds of plants to camouflage them from the enemy.

The exhibit is very much a testimony to the disliked Vietnam War because it shows the brave young men as they were before their deaths. The artworks give people of our time the "bigger" picture of how lives can be taken away but can also be captured. The artworks show the reality of life in the past, present, and future, the Iraq War being the present. The leaves and grass, I think, represent how the landscape is scarred and imprinted with these soldiers footprints and faces. The exhibit is a memorial and a reminder of the bravery of a group of men and the seriousness of what war can take away in an instant.

Sontag writes that by taking a picture, people gain control of the image which I don't think Danh is doing. He doesn't want to control the picture, he wants to honor, not only these men, but also the thousands of comrades who were part of the dead. He is not controlling the image he is merely trying to state that the war is something that has happened and will forever happen in this way. Meaning war will always destroy lives and he's trying to do his part by putting it into a different, lighter perspective because we are all affected by it. I do agree with Sontag on the fact that ,"Photographs do more than redefine the stuff of ordinary experience but also adds vast amount of material that we never we see at all.". Like in the exhibit, some of the art pieces had the name, date of birth, and place of birth of soldiers in the actual photograph, which we wouldn't have known by just looking at their faces. It also serves as a kind of memorial for the men who died in a, in basic terms, a useless and costly war.

Art was a proper name

Art is anything that we think it is. I once had to make a clay model of an elephant for my fifth grade class. One day I was working on it and my teacher came up to me and asked if I would like to have my piece shown in the local art show. I was surprised yet honored because only two other people were asked and my piece wasn't that great. Now that I think of it, it was probably the best artwork I had done during that time. I, of course, said yes but I didn't know that I was going to have to stay after school to finish it up in time for the show. Because of this time constraint we had to quickly finish our pieces, in which eventually caused me to accidentally spill black paint all over my nearly finished yellow elephant. My yellow, three tailed, and big eared friend was now covered in black paint, which made me feel like a failure after all that work. My teacher came over and said that she would try to clean some of it off. After about 30 minutes of cleaning, she managed to clean most, but not all of it. I finished painting it that day but there were still black streaks all over it. I still got a honorable mention ribbon at the show though, so I felt good about the whole thing.

I think art is anything we think it is. I think a chair is a piece of art because someone had to design and then build it. Like Duchamp, I think a urinal is a piece of art because of the same reason. Thierry de Duve says that the conception of art is different for everyone because we all have different opinions as human beings. I agree with him because like I said, "Art is anything we think it is."