Week 10 - Reflection

Looking back at my experience in this art course, I have garnered many positive mental mementos, and not a single negative one. Professor Gaspar de Alba and her astonishingly interesting course have aided me in exploring a creative aspect of myself that had yet to reach its full potential. I enhanced my drawing, painting, and presentation skills throughout the course, and for that, I am tremendously appreciative. Although I centralized a substantial amount of my focus on one artist for my presentation, Pola Lopez, there were so many other equally intriguing artists that I learned about. Each artist brought forward new art forms, methods, influences, inspirations, and stories to the roundtable for discussion. Despite only meeting once every week, we covered so much material. I was able to delve into the personal lives of many of the artists I researched, compiling newfound understandings of the life experiences which heavily shaped their artistic preferences. This class reinforced the idea that there is no such thing as someone who is "bad" at art. Professor Gaspar de Alba lead me to master a level of comfortability with art that I, frankly, did not think I was going to reach as soon as I did.

Overall, despite being a Political Science major, I am very happy I decided to take the opportunity to become involved with this course. The skills I was able to practice as the course moved along, are skills I knew I had, yet never bothered to fully develop. I took a spot in the class in hopes of leaving my comfort zone, as well as balancing my courseload out with a fairly leisurely subject matter. Both of these goals were accomplished. Chicana Art and Artists was not only a nice contrast to the rather work-heavy political science courses I had, but it also pushed the boundaries of my interests and introduced me to a new perspective on art. Moving forward, I will be far more open to trying my hand at different academic disciplines other than law and politics. Not only did I develop a more efficient manner of practicing art, I also realized, to a larger extent, the importance of wholehearted open-mindedness and versatility. Many thank yous to all my peers and Professor Gaspar de Alba for making the whole experience all the better. See you all around campus!