Jordyn Salow
Arts Scholar
Pentathalon Semester 4
As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of five art events during my first semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.
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Pentathlon 1: Still Woozy Concert
January 31, 2022 at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC
#Music
I was really excited to attend this event because I really missed live performances during the pandemic. Still Woozy is one of my all-time favorite artists, and since I had plans to see him perform in 2020 and couldn't due to COVID-related show cancellations, I was particularly looking forward to this event. The best way I can describe his music is chill psychedelic indie, though I feel as though his work definitely shouldn't be (and isn't) limited to just one category/genre.
I was very surprised upon attending the concert. For starters, as you can see from the picture I have attached, we managed to get very close to the stage, which definitely enhanced the experience. I felt very connected with the performers, and at times even thought they could see me, too! Second of all, I felt very connected with the music. I had never even heard of the opening band before attending this event, but I immediately was drawn to their sound as soon as they started playing the first song. I am excited because I have a new artist to listen to, and I already know and love a lot of their songs! Another thing that surprised me was the personalities of Still Woozy and his band. I did not realize how eccentric and energetic they were, but I absolutely loved it! They were dancing and engaging with the audience nonstop, and I often wondered how they had enough energy to be so upbeat and active for so long! Overall, I was extremely impressed by their stage presence. This is certainly one of the best concerts I have ever been to.
I think this event taught me a lot of things, including the notion that openness is almost never a bad thing, as staying open-minded in this context helped me connect further with the music and even discover a new artist! I felt extremely moved by the performance, and being in a live crowd of individuals also sharing the same enthusiasm was such a powerful experience as well. Additionally, I felt that my takeaways from this event can relate to my Capstone project for Arts Scholars. For my Capstone, I am exploring the effectiveness of art therapy in a non-clinical setting. Though this event was not intended to be art therapy, it is definitely art presented in a non-clinical setting, and it certainly had therapeutic effects for me. I will definitely be citing my experience with this event as inspiration for my Capstone project as I conduct my research throughout this semester.
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Pentathlon 2: Concert in the Quad
February 10, 2022 in the Cambridge Community Center at the University of Maryland
#ArtsScholars #Presentation
For this Pentathlon event, I decided to attend Alina Collins Maldonado's "Concert in the Quad" event. Alina started by introducing her project and giving some background on how it developed. She explained how the pandemic and the resulting necessity of online environments gave her work a very different meaning and created a less familiar, yet newly exciting, process for her to work through. Alina was very engaging and her presentation felt conversational; she really wanted to connect with the audience and understand their thoughts and feedback. I found that to be really valuable and meaningful. After she shared selections from her video product, No Salgas Con El Pelo Mojado, she performed two powerful monologues related to her project. Overall, this was a very moving experience, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to attend.
I learned a lot about the process of videography and how many different parts go into it. I found this to be very captivating, as I have been wanting to get familiar with this discipline for a while. I also learned about the experiences of Alina and those she interviewed growing up with Latino families, cultures, values, expectations, etc. There was a lot of discourse on what it means to be Latino/a/e/x or Hispanic, especially in the context of race and colorism, which Alina found to be a prevalent theme in her community growing up as well as in the experiences of the individuals she interviewed. I thought it was very meaningful that Alina created and shared such personal yet relevant pieces of work with us, and I really appreciated her welcoming and honest nature. This experience taught me that anyone can create art—even with no prior experience; the most important part is to stay open-minded and try to not be discouraged by making mistakes. I am very glad I got to experience this event, it was a great way to connect with fellow Scholars as well as the presenter herself.
Pentathlon 4: Pet Sematary
March 27, 2022 at home
#Film
Last weekend, I sat down to watch a movie that has been on my "watch list" for a while: Pet Sematary. This movie is an adaptation of Stephen King's 1983 novel. I'm a big fan of a lot of King's work, so I was excited that I finally got the chance to see the film version of this book. The plot focuses on a family with two young children that moves into a house near a pet cemetery. This cemetery is supernatural in its own right in that it is revealed that burying animals in a certain part of the cemetery grants them the ability to come back to life. Things start to go very wrong when the family cat dies and Louis, the father, buries the cat so that it will come back to life. This leads to a series of chaotic and negative events, including the family's youngest child passing as well as Louis' attempt at resurrecting the child, which does not play out well at all, either.
The movie was not what I expected, but it was good. The characters behaved a lot more strangely than I anticipated they would, but I appreciated that I still found them likable, particularly in the face of the tragedies they experienced throughout the movie. I think that one of the main themes of this piece was that there is value in cherishing and nurturing the things you have and love before it's too late and you don't get the chance to appreciate them again. This definitely helped put things into perspective for me, and watching this film has inspired me to set certain goals aimed at helping me appreciate the people and things I have in my life that I love and care for.
Engaging with this media helped remind me of a big theme within Arts Scholars: art is everywhere, and it can look like anything. Art mimics life, and vice versa. Art can even be unsettling and puzzling, like this film was for me. Something I've learned in the Arts Scholars program that I find very significant and applicable to this assignment is that a key aspect of all art is that it requires you to consider things in a different way than you had before. This movie forced me to reevaluate certain beliefs I had in a new context, and I really appreciate how I was able to learn something so meaningful and personal from something I had originally decided to do "just for fun."
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Pentathlon 5: Art Therapy Workshop
April 7, 2022 in the Cambridge Community Center at the University of Maryland
#ArtsScholars #VisualArt
This Pentathlon event was a part of a workshop I hosted for my capstone project for Arts Scholars. For my capstone, I decided to combine my passion for arts and psychology into something that would benefit/serve the needs of both myself and other students. This culminated into a workshop in which I shared knowledge and resources for therapeutic artmaking, as well as provided the time and space for students to try out an activity for themselves. The event itself was very successful and I was very happy with how it went, but for this assignment, I will be reflecting on how the activity went when I tried it out on my own. (The first two photos depict the workshop flyer and a snippet from the event itself; the last two display what I created when completing the workshop by myself.)
I went through the workshop with myself in a similar manner to how I did with students who participated in the event: I chose one of two prompt options (meant to either reduce stress or induce happiness, or better yet, both) and drew a picture. I also completed the pre-activity and post-activity surveys that participants filled out, and though there may be bias involved because I created the surveys, I did notice that my results yielded an increase in positive mood.
This experience taught me that therapeutic resources such as artmaking can be accessible and helpful. A theme I explored within my workshop, inspired by discourse within my CPSA courses, was how we define "good" art, and how that differs and is similar to functional art, such as therapeutic art. I learned a lot about myself and the process of creativity in general; I now believe that creativity should not be restricted in definition or in practice to align with an "objective" consensus of whether the product is "good" or "innovative" enough. This project and activity taught me that the creative process is often a lot more about what it does for you (i.e. the creator). I'm really grateful for the things I learned and the community I built through both this project and the Arts Scholars program in general, and I feel lucky that I can take away this (my redefined concept of creativity and subjective art) as one of many skills I developed thanks to the program and curriculum.