WEBVTT

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This Spring I decided that it would be good for my students

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to have a challenge that would be meaningful, relevant to

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the things that are going on in our society, and

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specifically the environment, so I gave them an assignment to

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create some of what we call street puppets

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that can go out and parade and march

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in demonstrations if that's where you want to use them, but somehow create

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a visually meaningful image that communicates concerns

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for the environment. That was their assignment, and

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they decided what they wanted to do - what they wanted to come up with -

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and today we saw the outcome of that.

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Today was a practice for a real march that will take place

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in Portland in two days, so they'll adjust their

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sculptures and they'll make them stronger,

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wherever they need to be engineered. They see the problems today,

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and they'll make those alterations.

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Art is an expression of self, and this particular project, since it's a group

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project, is an expression of how we as society can be responsive with art.

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This is our environmental activism sculpture for our

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sculpting studies class. It's a foam head

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of paper mach' and chicken wire. What we've done is a

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gagged environmental scientist. Our agencies, APA, and the National

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Park service can't talk about planet science anymore on their social media sites.

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So this is our protest piece for that. Even though the

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slogan is 'make America great again,' silencing science does not make

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America great. For this project, we have a team of three working on it.

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All of our spare time between classes, we've been here working on this,

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getting it to be effective.

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I'm currently standing next to a part of a three-piece puppet for

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the Climate March coming up in Portland. It's a hazmat suit; he's wearing

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a gas mask, and this is the spray can that is going to be spraying our

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fabricated Earth. Most of my group were really thrilled to bring awareness

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to something that's commonly overlooked. Ours is not necessarily pointed

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towards the bee issue with the pesticides killing our honey bees,

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but it was in that general area. You may have also

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noticed the fish I'm standing next to. This was actually fabricated

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by three of our professors here at WOU, and this shows how much we are

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really working through the community. We actually took this to the science march

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for Earth Day up in Portland last weekend. Just another example

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of us bringing some life into a normal community event.

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Art is an expression of self. It's an expression of how

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we as a society can be responsive with art.

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What I really like about the art program here at WOU is that I'm already

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getting to express my artistic craft in this march and the march last weekend.

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I'm proud of these guys and what they accomplished today, and I'm proud

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of the response that they got from people just in

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the street and the university sidewalks.

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People that saw the work responded. That's what art should always

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do, to make people think.

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music

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music