PHASE 3: Your Own Creative Response

When describing the creative process (on teams or individually) Roger von Oech defines the artist role as taking the
raw material of exploration and creating something new, to pose what if? questions.
Art can ask us to think about the world as it is, why it is, or as it could/should be. Materials for creation are not only
the physical medium, but includes things like close observation, research, or what is stewing in your mind after an
experience.
For this phase of our class art project, your raw materials are your observations in the Portland Art Museum
(PAM), the characters in A Mercy, and influences you find in our course studies; your creation will be creative art
piece that takes inspiration from your experience at the art museum to express the dynamics of power and status of
the one character in A Mercy that you wrote about in Part 2. This portion of the assignment you can do individually,
or in groups of up to three peers in our class.
You (or your group) are to create a creative response based on one of the characters in the novel, showing your
interpretation of the characters status in short, a representation of the characters power (and/or lack of power) in
relation to their community. Write a brief artists statement that explains your idea and how your art piece
represents it.
Your work can be in any medium (painting, sculpture, photography, computer art, video, poetry, music, dance,
puppetry, theater, and any combination of these); the only limitation is that it must be in a format that we can view in
class during our art salon on March 12.
Ideas to explore: You can recreate an image you studied in the art museum, or choose to riff on a specific iconic
symbol you identified and analyzed in your observation journal, but in either case, you are to create a version that is
appropriate to the character you chose.
Your accompanying written artists statement should be a 1-page, single-spaced formal piece that:
a)
Titles your art piece
b)
Identifies the original PAM piece (or if working in a group, the art pieces) that influenced your art work:
what specifically inspired your work (identify the title, artist, and date of the art piece), or that you are responding
to?
c)
Explain what the image(s), symbolism, and other important aspects in your visual piece are saying about
your chosen character from A Mercy: his/her experience of status, domination, subordination.
Note on creating the artwork: you do not need to recreate the PAM piece, or even create your art piece in the same
medium. Think of the artwork as inspiration. So if youre responding to an oil painting, you dont need to make an
oil painting yourselfyou can do a photograph, or a sculpture, or a song, or an interpretive dance. One request for
visual mediums--you can incorporate a found image, but please no collages.
Think of your creation being along the lines of the way street art transforms our relationship to an original image
(perhaps the kind of commentary that Banksy and others utilize in Exit Through the Gift Shop, or as Berger notes on
p. 25, how reproduction transforms the experience of an image).
Note on assessment: I will not be assessing your creativity or artistic talent. I will assess your written artist
statement essay based on the criteria above, and the effort evident in your art piece. (That is, if it looks like you
slapped it together right before class without much thought, it will be noticed and reflected in the final grade).

Make your artists statement a strong example of your writing (be specific in explaining your ideas, quote to support
your ideas, use clear written conventions, double spaced in MLA format, etc.).

Mother and Daughter

My reaction and thoughts regarding the artwork I chose are what had the most influence on my
artistic response, and the work gave me a lens with which to look at A Mercy through. Gertrand van den
Eeckhouts Volumnia and Coriolanus contains different family power dynamics, and so I chose to
examine the novel with the idea of the power of families in mind. Throughout the book, Morrison seeks to
create an interesting family of misfits with all different types of people present: indentured servants,
slaves, and white property owners in the Vaarks. There are various different family dynamics present in
this family but the one that I am looking to explore is that of a mother and her child. It's not necessarily
what I chose to write about in regards to A Mercy, however it is a very prominent aspect of van den
Eeckhouts artwork. This is where the two works actively connect and overlap, and have similar dynamics
present.
I was impressed by the use of the powers of family in the piece of art. The power that comes from
the sharing of blood is one of the strongest and most universal things in the world. In this artwork,
mother-child familial ties are present, demonstrated by Volumnia and her son Cariolanus. Their
interaction represents the unprecedented power that family can have over each other. The idea that this
woman could have any sort of power over her son-who has an entire army at his disposal-is amazing. The
power of blood is present in almost everyone's life, and it can be seen in Florens life, thoughts, and
actions. Although most of the novel the girl doesn't refer much to her mother, her acknowledgment to her
at the end of the novel suggest that her mother plays a bigger role in her life than it may seem. Even when
her mother isn't a big part of her life, she still has a large impact on who her daughter ends up developing
into. The bond with is mother is something never forgotten, as it was they who created the life in the first
place. Florens will always carry the burden of the separation of her mother and this will always have a
strong effect on her life. In addition to that, there is also the mother to consider in this relationship. She
went through the grieving task of giving up her child, so that the child may lead a better life. This
obviously is not a reality that the mother will soon forget, something she will carry with her until she dies.
I was looking to explore this mother daughter relationship with my piece of music. It is loosely
based on the specific relationship of Florens and her mother, but some of the ideas can be applied to any
mother-daughter type relationships. With my song I wanted to create the back and forth between a mother
and child, and also the harmony and unity that is present. At the same time I wanted to represent the idea
that there is never one without the other, even when they're separated completely. The drums can be seen
as representing that, as they are often considered the backbone of music, they can be now used as the
backbone of the relationship. Something that is ever-present no matter how loud or quiet, how prominent
or how feeble.The strings represent the mother, Florens mother. The strings to me seem more aged and
wise than the horns, whose purpose is to represent the child, in this case Florens. The horns jubilant
nature represent youth and adolescence. All of these other instruments that I included in the worksheets
represent different trials, people, and any other things that come up life. The end result wasn't quite what I
had playing in my head, but I did the best to get my point across.