Every now and then I find drawings that I forgot I made. 

Some are stranger than others

Edutopia.org= George Lucas supports education. So why is the website so visually boring? 

Wild Turkey

Timelines

Last week I asked some art students to do some simple math and create a graphed timeline. Here are their results:

Hospitals

They always monitor the patient's heart rate and blood pressure in a hospital. What would happen if they kept track of the visitor's?

Indianapolis Museum of Art: I found the sidebar menus to be a bit overwhelming. Nothing really captivated my attention. I searched for something to catch my eye, the problem may be that there are too many articles and too little images.

After awhile I finally found this article from March 25, 2013:

X-rays are always fascinating whether they're of bones or paintings.

Walker Art Center: This blog is organized like a game. I immediately hoped that the images would flip over to reveal cool things, or match, or do something crazy. They didn't. This website knows how to catch someone's attention. Found a special fascination watching, but not listening, to this piece to be created. 

Doodle from listening to soundscape podcasts the other week

And I found this on ArtsEdge: 

http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/multimedia/Interactives/beethoven-rocks/beethoven-rocks-6th.aspx

This explains why I run and workout to classical music. Pictures for my ears. 

Library Book Sale

I bought at least 30 books. Does that make me a hoarder?

Typographic self-portrait

California Coastline Exploration

It took awhile, but I finally ran into Banksy.

Random picture that keeps making me laugh. I don't know the source or where it came from. 

Website Reviews for the week:

CAPE: Really boring looking website that looks as though it was made from a standard template. However, there are lots of cool resources hidden in it. There's a section devoted to Art Assessment that I'd like to spend more time looking through. There are lots of arts integration resources, articles, books that the site points out that are intriguing me. 

Ingenuity, Inc: Better design, Chicago flag colored theme. I'm really enjoying the ArtLook section. I'm able to check out how many certified art educators are at each school and the partnerships of schools throughout CPS (places like the Lyric Opera, etc.). SAIC is even listed with its partnerships with schools. 

Civil Disobedience

I'm fascinated by bemboszoo.com. Maybe it's my love for typography, but this website is playful, engaging and mesmerizing.

AREA Chicago: http://www.Areachicago.org: Simple design with easy navigation. I appreciate that the website clearly states what it is about on the homepage on the upper right hand side. Very user friendly.

Stockyard Institute: http://stockyardinstitute.org: This website is more design savvy than AREA Chicago. It also seems to have more substance to it. Its organized well, engaging, and has accessible social media links.

Museum 2.0 Blog: museumtwo.blogspot.com: Museum 2.0 is visually unexciting. Its title image is poorly designed and somewhat cheesy. It has interesting content with poor design narrative qualities. Also, for a website that discusses art there are minimal images used.

Took a break from endless homework this weekend for a delicious dim sum excursion and a Terrarium Workshop at the Chicago Cultural Center's Prairie Exhibition.

This exhibit (which can be seen behind the terrarium) fuses art and technology to mimic the sounds of the prairie, i.e. my backyard during summertime. The installation consists of tiny motors attached to rods which protrude from a rather expansive metal grid. They rotate, shake, and mimic cricket sounds at a variety of different speeds and intervals.

Seems to me that it would be best described as a robot prairie.

Website Reviews

This week we looked at the Museum of Contemporary Art website and The Art Teacher's Guide to the Internet.

The MCA website has a clean layout and is very easy to navigate. On the main page, the hours are listed on the left side along with a calendar displaying the date as well as events that are occurring today. There is a slideshow of what is currently going on, as well as thumbnails of current and future happenings. It is user-friendly and simple.

The Art Teacher's Guide "Lies at the crossroads of art, technology and pedagogy" and is rather underwhelming. The blog has a layout similar to that of the MCA; dates on the left side, menu bar at the top, white background with lines separating the body from the menu. Though relatively easy to navigate, it is visually lacking.

Maybe I'm biased, but the MCA seemed like a more engaging and interesting website. There seems to be a lot more to look at.

There's about a foot of snow outside and I watched my neighbor attempt to drive his truck out of a snow bank for what felt like eternity. My sister cancelled her class and Ryan has been stuck driving home from work for about two hours already and is barely halfway home. Right now he wishes his car could transform into a helicopter.

The view out of my window looks something like this:

Just kidding... sort of...

Art Institute Interactives

The new interactive displays at the Art Institute are an interesting experiment. The majority of the problems I had with the experience revolved around visual content. I think they would be better suited placed only right next to or in close proximity to the art they are addressing. They also seem to prevent the viewer from actually looking at the art. If a technique could be devised that causes the viewer to interact between the actual artwork and the iPad technology the displays would be better served.

That being said, the layout of the informational iPad itself is engaging and the content interesting. I enjoyed using them and finding out more about the art. It's mostly their location that does them a disservice. I think they will be better once placed in the painting galleries.

Once again, I find myself hoarding books.

Ghiradelli Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream frosting for my mom's birthday. The frosting portions may have gotten out of hand. 

The best day to be Polish

Paczki day!

Winter Adventureland

Weekend after blizzard adventure

Blu

I'm always fascinated with Blu. 

I'd like to reiterate that the SAIC portal is NOT my favorite website. Here's one that's more fun:

www.mymilktoof.blogspot.com