Keith Haring

Keith Haring was born May 4th, 1958 and is widely known for his graffiti art, and paintings relating to social issues in and around the New York City area. Starting his career in subways with only chalk as his medium, Haring's artwork had become more and more popular, being featured in public murals and museums around the world. Haring was intensely interested in the cartoon art of Walt Disney and Charles Schultz, inspiring him to create the cartoon-like art that he is known for today. After high school, Haring attended the Ivy School of Professional Art in Pittsburgh, and later, the School of Visual Arts in New York City, 1978. Once in New York, Haring turned to graffiti art, adding small figures to where ever he would see fit; he would often draw small dancing figures, barking dogs,  large hearts, and figures with televisions for heads along the subway station walls with white chalk.

Haring's art had many key ideas behind them, including, life, death, love, social harmony, and social awareness. He was a social activist for AIDS awareness, a disease that later led to his death on February 16th, 1990 at age 31.

What really interests me about Haring's work is that with some of his more simpler works, it gives people an idea of "I could have done that" or "They're just human figures". To me, its what he used his art work for, to promote his opinions and raise social awareness for topics like AIDS. It was the activism and perseverance of Keith Haring through his diagnosis of AIDS that interests me the most. Even in the last few years of his life, Haring was still inspired to make more and more art and raise more awareness for the things that he was actively a part of. 

Rotunda Project Blog

The rotunda project that I found most interesting and memorable was Cassy's "We're All Human" project. She displayed it very well by making it interactive. Instead of just putting people's responses under their picture, I like how you had to lift up the photograph to see what they had to say- kind of like you were seeing the inside of them. The idea that "we're all human" is very important for everybody to understand. It doesn't matter your age, race, town, we are all human beings with similar goals and struggles.
Her project reminded me of a story I heard about a man who originally planned to just take 10,000 pictures of New Yorkers and put them on a map of NYC. He started to ask the strangers he was photographing questions about their life and then starting pairing captions with the portraits. Now he has published a book and has a blog, "Humans of New York", where he continues to take pictures and get a glimpse into the life of each stranger.
I think that Cassy's project had an important message that everyone can take away from. We are all human beings and we all have goals and struggles and losses and regrets. You don't know who someone is just by looking at them.

Rotunda review blog 11

   

I was amazed to find out that 90 percent of Americas media comes from 5 corporations, to me this just proves that the majority of our country is only seeing what 5 corporations want us to see. This emphasizes how badly people need to find their own reliable source of information instead of simply trusting what is fed to us. The suspicion that is rapidly spreading across the nation is why and who, who owns these corporations and why do they want people to see the same information that is often inaccurate? It is intrinsic for people to get their own source of trustworthy information in order for them to form their own judgement based on complete data that they sought out, not unreliable information that can leave a misleading impression.

rotunda blog

          I am doing my rotunda blog on the project about isis.  I agree with the group that did the isis project as it was very informative and gave you some information that I wouldn't have gotten form the news.  I think ISIS is a huge problem and the media honestly hasn't been covering it enough.  We are using missile strikes on these people and the media is more concerned with the kardashians or something else stupid.  This is a serious problem for the United States and should have more light shined upon it.  I personally have to look into it everyday or every other day just to stay up to par with it and I think its ridiculous and I think everyone else should keep tabs on this because it could snowball into something much bigger then it is right now.

Half Drag... A Different Kind of Beauty

Out of all of the routunda projects that the Humanities classes did this one caught my eye. This topic was so unique and differen't from all the other ones, which is one of the reasons why I loved this project. This project is pretty much showing us waht a true drag queen is and why guys dress up like girls. I personally agree with Nicole and everything she says in her project. I absolutley believe that men dress up like girls to feel confident and discover a different kind of beauty. If some men like dressing up in make up and women's clothes because it makes them feel good about themelf and just love making people smile, then why not let them do what they love to do right? I do enjoy drag queens and support them because every one of them has a different story tell and a different look. No one is the same as the other. If you love to dress up and act like a girl by singing and dancing on stage then so be it; it shouldn't matter to you what anybody else says because as long as you're happy with what you're doing thats all that matters. But, unfortunately some men are againist drag queens because its like your changing your gender and they think that dressing up and wearing make up is gay. Let me tell you this the only thats guy is your opinions because no one asked you for them, so you dont have anything nice to say then dont say anything. Guys may feel insecure about themselves and when they wear that makeup they feel confident, so why try to knock someone's confidence down? To me that is just plain rude and disrepectful because everyone should be treated the same in this world no matter what gender they are or what actions they decide to make. It disgusts me to see that our society still picks on people who are living their life, just having fun, and most importantly just being themselves. Overall I think this was such a interesting topic that Nicole picked and I was very glad to learn more about drag queens because they dont do anything to anyone, they just are themselves and you should never change for nobody no matter what they say. You're unique and special in your own way and dont forget. Theres only one of you... nobody else is like you and life is too precious to waste on stupid things like people making fun of you. If guys want to be drag queens and entertain people then let them be it. It's their decision not yours. In conclusion, I support drag queens 100% and think they are fabulous, fierce and most importantly confident and don't care what anyone thinks.

Quote blog

"Wisdom begins in wonder." -Socrates

I agree with this quote because if you have no desire to learn something you never will. If you begin to wonder about something, you will want to know more about it and research it. After learning something new you'll gain more wisdom. I personally believe that this quote is 100% true.

Rotunda project

I really liked the rotunda project on domestic violence. It gave a lot of facts and statistics about the topic and really opened my eyes about how common this issue is, it could even be in our community. The poster included pictures of disney characters after abuse with cuts and bruises on their face. I thought this project was very powerful and it stood out to me.

Rotunda Response Blog

My rotunda project response is to the Forced Child Marriage project. It caught my eye because of the visual representation they had. Once I read it, I was shocked to know of the amount of children subjected to this. Girls that are merely 12, 15, etc. are not mentally ready for marriage with a much more older man. The odds of them getting abused is high and just apalling. 

The girls are also not physically ready for this kind of thing. You cannot physically have a child that young. The statistics of childbirth death is so much higher than for women. If a women cannot handle that much pain, how is a child going to deal with that? 

I was glad to see that there are organizations trying to abolish this. I feel like it'll never really go away because so many people are stuck in their ways and they pass those values down to their children and that continues. You can never really kill an idea. I really do hope that they take care of those girls and do end it by decade 2030. 

Rotunda Response Blog

  The blog post that I found the most interesting was done by Laura Kesnig and was called, "Get the facts: Common Misconceptions among ESM High School Honor Students". This project was not only well done, and well presented but the information provided was intriguing. The questions asked in this project can be considered general knowledge because of the connection that the media has with our lives. If we do not see this information on the news it is likely that we will see it on Facebook or twitter. When these topics come up on social media sights what we take as facts are sometimes based on invalid information and opinions. Now that you've seen this information you see it as true, even though it is false, and now you begin to speak about this topic but you have false information.
  Moral of the story, and the project, is that you can not aways base your own opinion on things you see on social media or just the media in general because things tend to be exaggerated and may not be 100% correct. Laura concluded her project with something very true. She mentioned that you should not trust everything you hear, and that you need to do research for yourself to completely understand the topic and what is happening. I truly believe the best knowledge is knowledge from yourself. Knowledge that you have gone out and searched for yourself. There is something more satisfying about discovering something on your own than just being told.
  I believe the goal of this project was to encourage others to think and research for themselves and this is something that I believe in completely.

Blog 11

My response is towards the poster The Water Problem. This poster shows countries that have trouble getting clean water. Clearly the U.S. Doesn't really have this problem to a large degree, we always have a constant supply of it. I first became aware of the water crisis our world is suffering earlier this year through the charity The Thirst Project. I just find it jaw dropping that it's 2015 and this is still a problem.