During fourth week, we finished writing our catalogue essays for the Strange Beauty exhibition—a project that we were working on for essentially the full block. Writing the catalogue essay was a kind of cathartic exercise for me, the chance to articulate all the ideas, insights, and research of the last few weeks into a final paper. In addition to creating the catalogue for the exhibition, our class got the opportunity to write the label text for the contemporary pieces. The process was more challenging than I expected, as by the time you are writing a label for a piece you really just want to share all the interesting insights and layers that you’ve discovered, but you can’t create a label that is too lengthy and didactic. I think as a class we were successful in this endeavor, writing labels that are informative, thought provoking, and short enough to retain a visitor’s interest. Our final project was preparing for the Strange Beauty opening Cabaret, a multi-media program in which we interact with visitors to stimulate conversation about the works. I think it is going to be an exciting event, and a great chance to share what we’ve been working on this block with CC students, staff, faculty, and the general public.
Since Strange Beauty doesn’t open until December 6th, well into fourth block, our class isn’t actually over as third block comes to a close. Yet as blocks seem to continuously build upon and play off one another, I feel like a class at CC isn’t ever really over. Learning doesn’t begin on Monday of first week and end on Wednesday of fourth week; it is truly a life-long process.
