Genealogical Comic

In a slightly out-of-the-ordinary post, I am sharing some artwork that I created for my Policy and History Perspectives on Art Education class. I have yet to post images of drawings on this blog, partially because I draw with less frequency then I paint, and partially because my drawings tend to be a bit more aimless than my paintings. That said, I love drawing. I love how it feels, I love the kind of precision it enables, and I love the challenge of translating color imagery into a gray-scale. So I jumped at the opportunity to create a comic for an open-ended class assignment to share my "academic genealogy." The term genealogy is taken from Foucault, and can be understood as the process of troubling textbook versions of history. Conducting a genealogy means going backwards in time, imagining different pathways, and considering the way that supposedly "true" structures are in their own way constructs. This process of troubling is, according to Foucault, the best way to avoid falling utterly under the sway of the powers that be in the present. I apologize; this is an oversimplification of a complicated idea, but I think it gives some sense of the basis of the assignment, which was designed to help us understand the term better by applying it to our own histories.

The below images were accompanied a presentation, so I was able to explain much of the symbolism. I'll give a brief explanation here, so that they are a bit more decipherable. I divided my genealogy into three categories: thought, lived, and imagined. "Thought" includes the philosophical and artistic influences that have guided my academic and career choices, and in many cases, helped me wade through bigger questions about identity. "Lived," encompasses the jobs, actions, and tangible decisions that have directed my life, and "Imagined" includes the discarded possibilities (including college majors in set design and art, plans for immediately after college [boat building or studying textiles], and applying to architecture programs). I chose botanical/natural imagery to symbolize this discard because the process of setting aside possibilities played an important role in my intellectual and emotional growth. And because, as more casual interests, the discarded choices continue to nourish my life. Finally, the tangles on the 2nd and 3rd pages symbolize periods of confusion and hazy direction. I know this all sounds a little hippy-dippy, but this turned out to be an interesting and thought-provoking project, and it was a nice reprieve from the more technical assignments that I have for my Public Finance and Nonprofit Management classes.