Images of the Week #1: A Sad Chicken, a Plastic Tortoise, and an owl in a Xmas tree.
A New Weekly Series about what I'm grateful for
It’s Holiday Break here at the Strong household, people are sleeping in. I write about five things I’m grateful this week. One at a time, with pictures. This is My Illustrated Life.
Lights, Camera, Action!
This was a gift I received from a student yesterday. This student is in my Video Production Class. Video Production, as a program, is dying these days. Maybe its Tik Tok performing a spine-ectomy on the video form itself, or maybe students are drawn more into the narrative of video games than short films. Regardless, This gift from a gifted student, a vinyl 7” that is a plastic record. The student took the plastic record and made a collage on the front then used white paint to draw out the director commands, ‘Lights, Camera Action’ A reminder that teaching continues to fill my bucket in ways that few other pursuits does. Teaching this year has been wonderful.
No Sad Chickens. This is Chester T. Chicken, a stand-in for former class mascot Christopher Pig, who was stolen off of my desk a little over two years ago. I sent this picture to my para-educator Lynne, who has made teaching so much fun for me this year. She was gone one day this past week filling in for another class. This was my response. It’s a sad chicken. If you are wondering why Chester’s mouth is full of tissue paper, its to reduce the ferocity of his cluck. You see, people get irritated at repeated loud chicken clucks, especially from a rubber chicken like Chester, hesitancy must be practiced. The energy was lower that day, but that was only one day the rest of the week was only happy chickens.
Double Exposed Xmas Tree Pictures - Who needs Traditional Xmas tree shots when I can get weird and arty about a classic slice of Americana. The app I use to edit photos, Hipstamatic, has a great Double Exposure settings within the app, that I used to make these pictures. I’m seeing Velvet Goldmine and 2001 in these photos.
Childhood picture of Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker, holding a plastic Tortoise (pronounced Tor-Toys in his unmistakeable Sheffield brogue.) Recently I finished listening to Pulp lead singer Jarvis Cocker’s book, Good Pop, Bad Pop.. The audiobook comes with a pdf, and the picture above is from that booklet. This is Jarvis as a child holding a plastic tortoise. Its so endearing this photograph, it shows his pride of his tortoise, but his pride of being peculiar in general, there’s that bit of humble self-assured nature that is gentle and calming. This photograph calms me in ways I can’t quite describe. Its a mixture of pathos and pride that I see my self in this photograph, the preciousness of youth and how we forget about the importance of objects, especially childhood totems.
The Struggle. These two photos are both from one student. This student spends hours each week touching up photographs. There are always multiple shades of luxurious blue. If I had to assign a color to this student, they would be blue. They have struggled, and they continue to make work that challenges themselves always to keep going, to not give up when things get hard. Then they get paralyzed by life for awhile, then they get up again, they put one foot in front of the other. This is for all of us that are struggling. - “One foot in front of the other, you might not be able to walk today but if you cant today, you will soon, one day be able to.