Anna Lavery-Gallery Assignment

Anna Lavery
Professor Phrene Hoeksema
PHO 236
14 December 2017

I took the above photo at the Gerald R. Ford Museum, in which there was a special exhibit provided by the Newseum and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that showed the impact of rock and roll (and other music influences) in America's history. The reason that I chose to take a photo of these artifacts (a guitar, note written by a rocker, and handwritten lyrics for "American Idiot") is that the main focus, as far as I could see, was interesting and also rang very true; creativity, many times, is about speaking out about the things in the world that we do not like, and bringing awareness to things that are ugly so that consumers will think. In this way, people could come up with solutions to these problems, as art usually touches a portion of a person's soul that cannot be reached with mere talking.
 This particular part of the exhibit focused on artists' responses to the War on Terror in the early 2000s, and there were many angry, explicit words stated about America's politics, and though I was very young when the War on Terror began, looking at an actual guitar with lyrics scribbled on yellow notebook paper made it seem that there is a connection between me as a creative person and the occurrences of that time. Just as there was upset in the early 2000s, there is still upset now, and now that I am older and can research and understand events around me, I can fully appreciate the fact that I, too, can make a difference. While I didn't take the time to muse over the entire exhibit, I feel that that is the most interesting part of this portion itself, the presentation is not very artistic, so I can't give it merit for being extremely creative in its presentation (except for the choice of lyrics). The feeling that it left me with, however, is what has continued to stick with me.

In this photo, I used the composition of compiling my friend's one-line poems on the floor as she touched the poems with her hands, circling the word "human". This conveys a sense of flowing creativity (and hand-written, spur-of-the-moment writing, as can be seen with the handwritten "American Idiot". There is nothing but handwritten poems, that have the author's literal touch. My friend also writes many times about the shortcomings people may experience when it comes to creativity, or the loss of compassion and critical thinking that people seem to embrace, just as the songwriters had done. The word "human" is the focus, the focal point. That is what all art is or should be about--that no matter what kinds of problems we face, we are all human, and we all have things that make us similar, no matter what period of time we live in.