It’s Election Day, go vote. We pulled the lever on Friday in the early voting period. Here, pulling the lever involves dipping a little plastic card into a voting machine and then making your choices on a touchscreen. When you are done, a thermal receipt appears in a little peepshow window beside the screen. Here you verify your votes. Presumably it is called a thermal receipt because of some hideous batch of chemicals in the machine evaporates the thing.
Actually no. After a quick search I have learned that it is regular old receipt paper. You just can’t tear it off the roll and carry it home like you can at a restaurant or grocery store. You go in with your votes in mind, weary of bad campaign ads and hopeful that your choices can do the job. After you quickly double check your choices you pull that little plastic card out of the machine, return it to the election volunteers, and get your sticker.
I saved my sticker on Friday, and pulled the paper off the back of it today. I’ve been talking about how to vote in this election for weeks and figured I should model the rest of the behavior with a happy little sticker. I don’t tell them how to vote, or ask them how they’re voting, or even talk candidates or issues of the day (unless that’s strictly within the context of the class). I do explain to a room full of young people who might not have voted yet how to do that. I hope they all voted today, or in the early voting period.
When I encouraged them, one last time today, to go get their democracy on I thanked them for indulging that repetitive little speech and promised I wouldn’t talk about it anymore. And I won’t! In class, at least. Unless they ask.
In class today we talked about their social media audit. This is the huge product that takes part in four stages and runs us through the rest of the semester. Each student will audit a digital platform of their choice. Many will pick TikTok or Instagram. One or two people will choose something else. Another person will pick something entirely out of left field, which is usually a welcome change of pace.
Anyway, I’ve been teasing the discussions about the audit all semester long, and in the last week or so we’ve started diving into that. All of this has gone according to plan, even if they didn’t feel like it. And the next part of the plan is that their first installment of the audit is due on Thursday. Today, then, we completed the immersion in the first half of the audit. They don’t know it yet, but they’re already prepared for the rest of it. They’re prepared for it because there is a plan, and everything has proceeded in accordance with that plan.
And what of the statues? We’ve been looking at Seward Johnson works that are right next to campus. First, there was Contact, that sits on the walk between my office and the classroom I was in today. I wrote about it here. Over several weeks I looked at some of the many interesting details of that trompe-l’œil painted bronze statue.
Then we moved on to Photo Shoot. The first few shots are here, and here is last week’s installment. We are wrapping up our quick look today.
This was completed in 1989. The collection’s curator wants you to know that this one was commissioned for the grand opening of the Giorgio Armani building, on Rodeo Drive, in Beverly Hills.
This bag — which, again, is not a bag, but a statue — is a nod to Armani.
Also, once more, look at that sweater. The attention to lifelike detail is rather remarkable.
Earlier (follow the links above) we saw the dad, who is taking photographs of this happy little scene. He’s capturing this moment of the little boy who is playing with his puppy, and his mom who is looking on, perhaps wistfully.
Being from the 1980s, the characters fashions very much figure into the work. It’s no accident that we see the boy wearing a Lacoste shirt. Today a Lacoste polo will run you between $53 and $375, which explains why I am not taking part in the next alligator revolution.
Just look to the right side of this shot. Look at the work done on the textures here. The shirt looks like it is piling. The boy’s belt looks like a real fabric. You can see the threads of hs blue jeans. This is a bronze statue, not a pair of children’s pants. Also, this poor statue dog is getting the Checkers treatment. I hope statue mom and statue dad correct this behavior. A dog’s ears are not toys.
What they are, even in this statue, are incredibly expressive. I’m not sure Johnson nailed it on the eyes — eyes may be hard, and canine eyes could be an even larger challenge — but there is a lot going on in this dog’s face. I think I know what it is.
I think the dog has just realized no one is holding his leash. I think the dog has realized no one is holding his leash, that dad is way over there, mom is wearing heels, and this is his moment to run. Just as soon as this preppy little kid lets go of the ears.
If you stare at these last two photos long enough, you can almost see the dog shifting his weight, just so, waiting to lunge.
I wish I’d noticed that the day I took these photos. That might have changed the way I shot all of this.
The next station of Johnson’s is just a short walk away, we’ll start looking at that next week.
For now, I’m going to start watching election returns.
