Activity
Create an Abstract Dreamscape
In this activity, you will create an art piece inspired by the work of Bernice Bing.
Objective: Create a zine to reflect and critically consider identities and the relationship between identity and context.
After Carlos Villa moved back to the Bay Area from New York, he continued to explore his identity as a Filipino American. In college, he studied Pacific tribal art traditions and incorporated their materials and formats to his art. From his research, he began to understand the complexities of Filipino traditions, as much of Filipino culture is layered with Western, Asian, African, Indian, and Oceanic cultures due to colonialism, war, and imperialism. As a result, he expanded his work to explore what cultural diversity and multiculturalism mean.
In this activity, you will begin to express your identity/identities in a visual format through a zine–a homemade booklet of various images, texts, and messages.
Visual Arts:
1.2.1: Use observation and investigation in preparation for making a work of art.
1.2.2: Make art or design with various art materials and tools to explore personal interests, questions, and curiosity.
1.2.3: Apply knowledge of available resources, tools, and technologies to investigate personal ideas through the art-making process.
1.2.6: Formulate an artistic investigation of personally relevant content for creating art.
2.3.5: Identify, describe, and visually document places and/or objects of personal significance.
2.3.8: Select, organize, and design images and words to make visually clear and compelling presentations.
Historical and Social Sciences (Grade 9-12)
Chronological and Spatial Thinking
HSS.9-12.1: Students compare the present with the past, evaluating the consequences of past events and decisions and determining the lessons that were learned.
Historical Interpretation
HSS.9-12.2: Students recognize the complexity of historical causes and effects, including the limitations on determining cause and effect.
Video, “Carlos Villa and How I became an Artist August 2011”
Video, “How to Make a Zine”
Blank piece of 8.5″ x 11″ paper
Scissors
Writing instruments
Glue or tape
Images to use for a collage
Vocabulary
Intersectionality: the ways that race, gender, sex, sexuality, class, identity, and other factors work together to create someone’s situation in a way that is multiplicative and not additive in its effects of access to power or oppression. A framework to understand how inequality and oppression occur on a multidimensional basis.
Zine: a homemade booklet of various images, texts, and messages that can be circulated among a small audience.
Introduction
Prepare Your Zine Content
Make a Zine
Design Your Zine
For more lessons based on Carlos Villa, visit the artist’s teacher packet.