An Aesthetic Walk with Humor

I have been torn to do three approaches with my approach to completing my VPA Capstone. My first part was teaching an art curriculum project at Gavilan Community College with Professor Arturo Rosette. The projects consisted of students getting into groups of 4-7 students and create a political cartoon. I taught these students how to see humor other than what is originally seen as a laugh. I briefly showed three videos of how other cultures portrayed humor in their society. After these short videos, I gave students a chance to express their concerns toward what they had seen. After the discussion, the students quickly got into their groups and did an activity. I had them quietly discuss how “Humor can be used as a weapon?” Each group was given a chance to discuss their point of view of what their opinion was on the topic. Soon after, I introduced the project of political cartooning as a weapon. The students working with-in groups helped them understand the background diversity of other students, depending on one another to solve a problem quickly to get a task done, and helped them focus on making decisions quickly with the short time given to them.

The second approach was introducing the project. With the help of Johanna Poething, the two of us decided on a unique approach. We both thought that I should do a blown up comic of my experiences at Gavilan Community College. Before I began the “Political Cartoon” project, I thought of some stereotypes that had might happen with the students when I taught at Gavilan College. I wrote those ideas down being, bored, not listening to what I was saying, and misinterpreting examples. Next, I wrote down situations that arose from teaching at this institution. There were examples of frustration, misinterpreting, and humor in their own work. I blended the two ideas together to come up with a comic called “The World is Rigged @ Gavilan College.” This was a piece about me teaching an art course to students. In the comic, I introduced a term called “transdoodling” (a term humorously made up by Arturo Rosette). The comic had a couple of students confused by this term, which made me frustrated having to tell the students examples of the term. After creating this 8x11.5 in comic, I scanned it into the computer, with the help of Gilbert Neri, blown up the comic to about 3ftx 4ft. The bottom of the Sunday Comic invites people to go to the website I created that explains the capstone, comics, and personal artwork I’ve done in the past to present at www.xdragunn.com.

The third part of the capstone was to put everything together in a form of a website. As stated above the website address is www.xdragunn.com. I created the website for educators, employers, students and artists to view art no matter where they are at in the world. Since portfolios are becoming more digitized in the form of websites, I felt that I could benefit from having one for the future. Here, at this website, not only can you find my personal artwork, you can find my personal bio, artist/ teacher’s statement, cover letter, and my resume. I have placed a guestbook on the website for visitors to leave comments, thoughts, and personal opinions about anything regarding the website. You can also find how I came up with the idea for the website by clicking on “About Me” in the homepage for a better description.