Before class last Tuesday, I had jotted down some possible ideas and topics that I wanted to know more about. The more I thought about each topic, the more I was drawn to certain concepts. I am a history and anthropology major with an interest in African-American history, and I am attracted to Baroque and Renaissance art pieces. As a result, my interest were all over the place at first. I had created a list of artists that I wanted to look into and then I began exploring their art on Artsy.net, Artstor, and Google Images to try to get a sense of what I wanted out of them– I wanted to see a pattern. Artstor proved to be more helpful when I was first starting in my research and was trying to narrow down artists and styles I wanted to examine. As I became more firm in what topics were worth exploring, WorldCat and Galileo were more useful with finding academic perspectives. Although the visual elements interest me, the deeper context and impact of a work excites me more.
Some of the artists I looked into I was introduced to in the Making Africa exhibition at the High Museum last year. Other have just stuck with me through time, and some I encountered in my research of the artists that I knew. At first I was really interested in the Ikire Jones brand and the use of black bodies in classical scenes, in particular the idea of wearable art. Casey helped me tremendously with finding a book on WorldCat and ILLing a book entitled Dandy Lion by Shantrelle P. Lewis. Although looking into black dandyism was interesting, it was not what I was looking for. I liked the concept presented through black dandyism, of using elements that are historically Western in nature and mixing it with an Afrocentric motif or narrative. The idea of subverting an image or using a style deliberately to inserting the black body and narrative into the mainstream narrative through the use of certain medium and aesthetic.
During my research process, I mostly bookmarked pages with information on them that I found relevant and started a bookmark folder for them. When I started reading Dandy Lion, I relied mostly on notes that I will probably transcribe into my word document of ideas. I also inserted images into my word document or saved them in Google images and Artstor. My research style is a bit more interesting. I tend to do a brain dump in the beginning of to just get some sense of where my interests are and where to begin looking. Truthfully, I have not really figured out what elevates one idea over the other. It seems that the ideas that made me ask questions or linked to another field of thought stood out and promoted more research. The intertwining of race, representation, and art became a big one for me. Then it became a game of narrowing it down, which I am still in the process of.
List of possible artists to explore:
I know that I tend to think in sporadic bursts that prompt me to rapidly scribble down ideas on paper or online before they disappear. My research becomes more methodical once I have found something I wanted to explore and I am asking specific questions. That can become one of my weaknesses and strengths. The strength is generating ideas and making connections between subjects and academic fields whereas the weakness comes from trying jumping from idea to idea. I jump from one idea to another, and sometimes I forget where I was going with the original idea.
Has one comment to “Strategic Research with Casey Long”
Nell Ruby - October 15, 2018
This is such a detailed and well illustrated account of this class day and your research approach! It’s also an excellent use of the web based media. Using an animation is brilliant–worth a thousand words.