WP3 Pre-Write: Experience with Art-Objects

This year has been my first true "exposure" to art. Between Chancellor's Leadership Class and English 151 I have been exposed to different forms of art and asked to analyze/reflect on them. In Chancellor’s Leadership Class we were simply asked to just reflect on paintings within the Sheldon. I mainly just reflected on the content of the pictures and what I felt they were meant to say. I feel that, while this was not a real deep “analysis” of these paintings, this experience helped lead into English 151. English 151 presented a whole new world of how to analyze art. Instead of just performing a cursory analysis of the art, I can now recognize technical and rhetorical elements that support the argument.

While I have been exposed to some forms of art, sculptures have not been included in this exposure... yet. I have stopped and looked at some of the sculptures around the Sheldon Art Museum throughout my first year here at UNL, but have never formally analyzed them. I feel that, even though I lack experience with dealing with this kind of art form, that I can combine my experiences with other art forms such as painting, photographs, and comics to accomplish this analysis.

I feel that I have kind of "built" myself up to analyzing such an art form. At first, I had no idea what to look at or think when looking at a photograph or painting. After being in English 151 for a while, I feel very comfortable giving my thoughts on an argument of an art form and backing it up with support. Abstract art is the one thing that would worry me in analysis. I do not think in a very abstract way, so analyzing these art forms is very hard for me! Also, while I have painted before or doodled little comics, I have never built a “sculpture” of my own. Therefore, knowing the techniques that go into making a sculpture is something that I will have to read up on before analysis.

I hope to make WP3 my best project yet. I aim to work on developing a good argument thesis and building up clear, straight forward elements of support. I definitely am excited to start this project.