art/vision/voice - Maryland Institute College of Art

88 art / vision / voice
The first semester of the yearlong project, csumb students pursued
research on political and social justice issues associated with
Proposition 21. But as they worked with the youth in the community,
the university students began to see that the goal of harnessing a
political voice around issues of youth violence and social justice—
which felt like the heart of the project for them—was actually a
missionary, project-shaping approach, in conflict with the authentic
process they were engaging in with the community youth. A few of the
university students had a hard time letting go of their original images.
They were frustrated at having worked so long and having to let them
go for the more personal images the youth preferred.
The digital arts students were not used to collaboration, and they
struggled with the desire to have their own artistic voice expressed in
the project. An important shift occurred as the university students
began to listen to the youth, and let what they learned from listening
guide the process.
When they arrived at the community site, the csumb students were
especially struck by the school’s dark hallways. Counselor Mike Chavez
began to talk about the institutional feel of the school building. The
windowless hallway and small classrooms contributed to a feeling that
this was an incarcerated environment, rather than an educational
environment. Youth complained that they couldn’t even see the weather
outside. The university students were inspired with the idea of creating
windows that could reflect the interior of the students’ hopes and the
watsonville students worked
with students in csumb’s digital
mural class, using equipment
and technical support from the
university’s digital media lab, to
create oversized self-portraits.