Week of Feb. 25

Chen and Mariya: Minimum
-8 women in attendance, all excited to start the new semester
-Began with free write on portraits and the meaning of portraiture (ie: one person depicting another)
-Presented color images from artist Kehinde Wiley and everyone shared responses to his art, discussed the implications of his art
-2 women dominated the conversation; C + M unsure of how to mediate it
-Writing: Pick 5 words from your free write that describe his work, and 5 words that do not describe his work
-Visual art: collages covered in pastels
-People did interesting things, and they tended to choose pictures that had meaning to them
-Chen and Mariya collected the work at the end

Katie and Britt
-Katie was mysteriously deleted from the DOC system, so they couldn't go in.

Anna and Molly: Medium
-10-12 women, big group, unwieldy
-Prompt: write a story, or draw something, or both, from the perspective of your feet
-Began workshop by playing the song "Red Right Ankle" (Decemberists), and the women overwhelmingly hated it. Many commented that it was "a song for 8-year-olds". This set the tone for the workshop.
-major issues with the women acting childish: one woman was clearly loopy and randomly danced, another jumped up and down in the corner...
-One woman took most of the tissue paper to do her own stuff, and others copied. Anna was particularly frustrated with this, and the woman eventually bargained with Anna so she could get more tissue paper. In our SPACE meeting later, Anna raised the issue of wasting materials.
-Anna and Molly didn't try to go around and share at the end.

Nina and Courtney: Minimum
-6 women, first workshop, focused on acting
-prompt: think about one day in your life, write about it, then walk around the room and interact with people as if it were that day.
-people got into it, and the vibe was positive, funny, and silly

Becky and Ariel: Medium
-about 8 women in attendance
-prompt: Write and illustrate a mini children's book. After looking at an example of an illustrated kids' book, we brainstormed characters, topics, plots, then wrote. After writing, we separated the lines page by page and added illustrations. We had pre-cut string for binding.
-Most people made books, and some worked in pairs. In particular, one woman did not do a book and distracted another woman from making a more detailed book of her own.
-All around, it was moderate, and no one was especially enthused or challenged by the workshop.