These past couple of years have seen the commendable growth of the amount of women in the rap industry. I really began to take notice when Nicki Manaj started showing up on several of Young Money’s more popular tracks such as “Bed Rock” and Lil Wayne’s “Knockout.” This was a lot of talent and exposure for someone who hadn’t even released her own album yet. Not long after Nicki’s fame began to spread followed a handful of other young women who, little by little, started venturing into this male dominated music genre. Up until this point, the category of female rap had been a mostly one woman at a time kind of thing. Lil Kim and Missy Elliott were sort of the household names in female rap when I was coming into appreciation of the genre, and even then I mostly heard them on other (male) artist’s tracks.

When Nicki Manaj came along, there was a glimmer of hope that the exclusivity of the male rap world was opening up a door to women. Unfortunately, Nicki Manaj has had to forfeit a lot of her natural talent in order to fit into the pop world (the genre where women are allowed to flourish). Her gritty, risqué, and clever verses of her earlier days had to be sacrificed to mould her into the sexy, colorful, ideal of femininity that pop culture constantly produces and reproduces. Though the lure of pop fame is hard to resist, this did not hush the other female rappers out there searching to get their name out into the rap world. Not much later, Kreayshawn dropped her “Gucci Gucci,” Azealia Banks’ “212” blew up, and now we finally have Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” playing on top 40 radio. I’m not saying I love all of these songs, I don’t, but it’s about time women were allowed to break the stigma that the genre of pop is the only place for female artists to find success. This means more than just rap. Blues, alternative, and punk/hardcore are all traditionally male dominated music genres. I commend all the women who have broken into the boys club that is subculture musical genres, such as “Queen of the Blues,” Koko Taylor and pop-punk lead vocalist of Tonight Alive, Jenna McDougall.

Unfortunately, it’s still hard for society to except more than one female and the media is pitting these artists against one another as if there can be only one, for example, female rapper. It’s that kind of logic that keeps carbon copies of the same girl circulating through the mass media. So, I task you this Summer to get out there and support female artists. Not one, not two, not as a feature in some male artist’s song, but as talented and diverse wealth of untapped talent.

In writing, a common complaint is suffering from writers block or the inability to write something meaningful or even to find a topic which inspires deeper thought. Since writing involves the creation of something from nothing often when writers block occurs nothing is created because there is nothing to be said.

In the world of performance art there are many times when a performance is done but nothing is said. Since the performers are provided with lines, music and blocking it is easy to simply go through the motions of the piece without looking into the greater meaning. Often in musicals and operas this ignorance is permissible as much of modern performance practice relies on spectacle rather than creating a connection between the written work, the performers and the audience.

For big budget venues their reliance on spectacle results in high quality performances which fill the houses because of the awe which million dollar sets, choruses of a hundred or more voices, dancers and technically brilliant singers inspires in the audience. Yet, for smaller companies who lack donors with deep pockets to supplement ticket revenue relying on spectacle is impossible due to monetary restrictions. It is these companies who are forced to say something with their performances or serve the stereotype that these “High Art Forms” are unrelatable to the masses.

To relate to the masses and make “High Art” relevant to modern audiences without big budgets and the crutch of spectacle, companies must find the meaning behind the words and notes on the page. It is only by finding this meaning that the audience will be moved, and will begin to develop a relationship of understanding with these smaller budget companies. Their productions will be just as, if not more powerful than those of the big budget theaters where spectacle fills their houses supported by interpretation. However, if these companies do not find something to say they will find that shortly there will not be an audience there to listen.

At least five times out of ten when I tell people I am an art history major, I would get the confused face from them and the recurring question:” So do you draw?” The confusion between art history and fine art is a plausible one because there seems to exist an assumption that art lovers are passionate about both the practice of making art and the theories/concepts in the history of art, and there are, indeed, many student who are more talented than me and can pursue a dual-degree in art&design and art history. However, for me, the studio art class, instead of the three-hour seminars and honor thesis class, appears to be the most intimidating class I need to take in order to fulfill the concentration requirements in art history, and that’s why I was too reluctant to worry about it and have been avoiding taking it until the last year before graduation.

It is not that I do not enjoy fine art practices at all. Actually, I always love making art. Fine art classes have been my all-time favorite among all the classes at school. I remember in elementary school, my art teacher would reward students who got five on all art assignments with a drawing of Digimon or Cardcaptor Sakura by her, which seemed to be in huge scale for me back then (actually about the size of a poster). This reward successfully motivated me to get fully engaged in every class and put huge efforts at all my drawing assignments. In middle school, I was fascinated by Japanese anime and manga. I watched so many anime and subscribed to multiple monthly MAG (manga, anime and games) magazines, and the idea of drawing my own comic naturally raised in my mind. I copied anime characters from anime posters and created my own cartoon characters. My dream to be a cartoonist evaporated with the increasing academic pressure as I entered high school. No more spare time to watch anime or read comics or magazines, but I soon realized another interest, graphic design, when I was making the class magazine. I spent hours on photoshop and pagemaker to design the magazine cover and to edit graphic illustrations in the magazine.

I have been wondering about how these passions gradually disappeared as I entered college and how I ended up keeping myself a respectful distance from the world of fine art. Being an art history major and being exposed to masterpieces over the centuries in classes seemed to have raised my standard for art makers in terms of their level of profession, and my hypercritical attitude, in return, also makes me more fastidious about myself when considering me making art. How can I, who is not in the art and design school and has got no artistic training before, be professional enough to make some satisfactory artworks? This logic seems convincing until I realized that the ultimate audience of artworks is actually the artist him/herself. Art historians may judge the aesthetic value of artworks, but the pleasure the artist get from the process of art-making could not be measurable by certain theoretical standards. In retrospective, the time I spent on polishing a drawing assignment, copying my favorite anime protagonist, and designing a magazine cover was really enjoyable and memorable. With this in mind, I finally get the confidence to reenter the world of art making and to start sketching another amateur drawing.  

This weekend was a big deal for all of the seniors in the Penny Stamps School of Art and Design, marking the sporadic openings of a citywide exhibition titled Launch, which showcases the thesis work they’ve been creating all year. Displayed in a variety of locations (the galleries of A&D aka 2000 Bonisteel Blvd., Work Gallery on State St., 325 Braun Ct. between Out Bar and The Bar, and The Yellow Barn/416 W. Huron), the results were across the board: there are eight-foot prints of caves hung from the ceiling, plants potted in concrete geometry, books bound like the Kells, books describing how to teach kids business through screen printing, books with illustrations drawn by hand, life size figure sketches that may as well be sculptures, chairs that change the way you sit, woodcut body contours, prints of fish guts, Minecrafted paintings, paintings of revolutionary leaders, shapes in a sand box, performance, poetry, installation – the variation was nothing short of overwhelming, in the best way. There’s enough to spend days simply looking, touching, listening, smelling, thinking; the most impressive part is that it was all made by students. Sometimes confused, stressed, and scared students, but dedicated students, talented students. Students I should be graduating with.

I switched into A&D from LSA after my freshman year; putting me behind in studio credits and flushing any hopes I had of a four-year undergraduate degree down the drain. Still, I’m friends with large amount of the class of 2014, and consider myself more closely related to them in the art school family tree than the ‘15ers. I was asked a hundred times about my “missing” work that didn’t exist yet. It was strange having spent all year listening to them talk about their ideas, materials, processes, ups and downs, heroic failures and happy accidents, to see it all come together in real concrete space. No more words, hand gestures, quick sketches – real stuff, each project a mirror image of its creator in some way, pieces of my friends hanging on walls or mounted to board, splashed on canvas, lying on the floor – proof of how seriously each artist took their work, a measure of their individual obsessions, priorities, an estimation of how much sleep they’d given up over the past few months. At first, it was really tough to separate the work from the person who made it. I realized this is how I’ll remember, or forget, every one of them. All of the memories, little strings tying together the people I’ve spent the past three years with, now anchored to these objects, images, gestures, staked down to the lattices of my mind.

Does this take away from any aspect of the exhibition? Of course not. The work stands on its own, and is simply augmented by the experiences and memories that have shaped my perception of each individual artist. I was lucky enough to witness the challenges, setbacks, inspirations, epiphanies, and everything in between, from a perspective that is simultaneously personal and detached. I feel as though I’ve taken a free prep course that’s allowed me to make an informed approach to my own project in the fall. I learned what’s possible to make in a year, what falls flat, how viewer interaction is the key to a visible response, how bigger is not always better (but most of the time it is), how to stick to my guns, how to stick it out. It felt strange to tell my peers I was proud of them, like my approval somehow validates their work, but I couldn’t help it. It felt awkward to thank them for making something they would have made anyway, but it had to be said. I’m proud and grateful to have made stuff beside these folks, to have known them and seen them grow into the artists and designers they are today. The majority of them don’t know where they’ll be in a few months, let alone a year from now, but I’m not worried. Each one has ventured into themselves and come out the other side unscathed; what better preparation for real life is there? One thing is for certain: they will be missed.