Documentation Day
We took a break on Monday after our SFPC Showcase weekend and resumed on Tuesday with a documentation day. Filip Wolak photographed each of our showcase projects. Filip progressed through each project in a methodical order and worked with the students to understand how to best represent the projects in a photograph. Students also collaborated to help each other take additional photos and videos of our projects. Throughout the day, we continued to socialize and talk about our experience talking with showcase attendees about our projects.
Critique Day
Wednesday opened with a casual conversation about the logistics of running a school like SFPC. Taeyoon Choi and Lauren Gardner answered questions that students had about how SFPC began, how it operates, and how it will change in the future. This casual discussion about SFPC gave us insight into how we might go about starting similar communities when we return to our hometowns after the session ends.
At 11AM, we started our official critique of showcase projects. The critique of each project followed a specific structure: Lauren read the placard descriptions of the project, other students and teachers shared their opinions for 7 minutes, and then the student who created the project shared their thoughts and responses for 3 minutes. We followed this structure for each of the projects. This was my first time involved in an art critique, and I found the critique to be quite incisive and useful. It was a great way to show support for each other while also providing feedback so that we can move our art practices forward.
Later that night, we had our final Wednesday family dinner!
Project Documentation Workshop
On Thursday, April Soeterman led a workshop on documenting projects. April shared a wide variety of information about how to best communicate about our project for different audiences and in diverse settings. The workshop began with an exercise. Students paired up and each student explained the other’s project. Hearing another person talk about my piece in their own words helped me to verbalize my idea and add new vocabulary to my explanation of the work. Later, April talked about how to pitch our projects to galleries and museums for other showings. She showed the decks that she used for her project Museum of Almost Realities, which she initially created for an SFPC showcase. April instructed us to write a three-sentence quick description (that could be used as an elevator pitch for the work) and a 1–2 paragraph description for our websites. Afterwards, we each spent a few minutes with April one-on-one to choose photos of our project and edit our descriptions.
Graduation Lunch
Friday marked our last day of the Spring 2019 session. To celebrate, students, teachers, and TAs came together for lunch at SFPC. During the lunch, we shared our favorite memories from the session and discussed our week-by-week feedback of the SFPC experience, but we spent most of our time talking and laughing. We laughed at Snapchat baby filters, talked about our next steps, and planned to see museums and galleries together before many people in the cohort return to their homes outside of New York. Luckily, we will still have access to the SFPC space during the ‘residency’ week.
I’m sad that it’s over, but grateful for the amazing privilege that it’s been to be a student at SFPC this Spring!
