5-16 Photos

Artist Statement

The most important thing that I got from my time spent learning about JPNA was how hard the members work to enrich their communities. Early on in the semester when I would tell my friends that I had to go to the Johnsons Park area, they would act shocked that I would have any business going over there. I remember one of my friends saying, “Wow, you're going all the way out there? You're not going by yourself are you?” Now when I talk to people about my Service Learning with JPNA, I have to explain how nice the neighborhood actually is. Without this project I would have never had gone to the neighborhood and I would have never even known about how the area is being rebuilt and how there are so many new homes there.

One of the challenges that I encountered for this project was the actual act of blogging. I've never had a blog before and working with Google blogger was difficult at certain times. I know a little bit about computers and if I had to, I can figure out html for really simple things but other than that I'm pretty bad at setting stuff. I kept my blog as simple as I could so that the finished product could look uniform and the same throughout. Also, I'm generally not the kind of person that works on a project a little at a time until its done. Usually, I wait until the last minute and then work on it all at once. This was a difficult strategy for this project because I would have to keep updated with my blog entries and I would have to keep up with my work.

Another one of the difficulties that I found with this project was the topic that I picked. Initially I wanted to do a project about the early history of Johnson's Park and its involvement in the Underground Railroad. However, after working with my group and from doing research, I found that to would be too difficult for me to incorporate that aspect of the area into the project. I went to the Milwaukee Historical Society but was informed that there was little information on that specific neighborhood. Not only that, but even if there were photos and texts that I would have wanted to use for my project, it would cost me around $100 per image. That would be too much for me to afford for that topic. The topic ended up being a general overview of what the community is all about.

Working on the video was also an interesting experience for me. Last time I used iMovie was when I was in middle school so everything that I did know about it, I forgot. I'm grateful that Josh was in our group and knew had to make the video look great. There were several times were we all got together just so we could edit the video. My suggestions mainly dealt with making sure that the necessary information made it into the video and that it flowed nicely.

Overall, the entire final project for me was all about new experiences. Both with learning about JPNA and with working with iMovie. Before this project, I didn't really know how neighborhoods functioned on a whole and how they evolve over time. I knew that neighborhoods could change but I didn't know where that change comes from. I learned that it comes from people like Tony Gibson who want to make a change in their community. Also I learned a thing or two about working in the blog-o-sphere and editing videos so that I can become more and more advance with my technological skills.

Peer Review

From looking at other people's blogs, it made me think about how I could improve my own and make it more visually appealing and more of a reflection of myself. The blog that I had to peer review was Josh's. Josh's blog looks great, and I think most of this is credited due to the fact the he is proficient with his Macbook and because of his skill at editing images and being able to post them in a very creative way. Because we were both working on the same project, I already knew about the same information but he did attend some different service learning meetings than I did so I did learn some new stuff from his experiences. Most of the comments that I had for his blog were mostly just simple typos and spelling errors. I would usually leave comments about the errors that I found or I would just let him know in person. From looking at other blogs, I was influenced how to make my blog look more uniformed. I made sure that I used the same font throughout all of my posts and I made sure that I posted pictures the same way each time. I also altered the format of my blog so that it looked simpler and focused more on each post. I made sure to keep my blog simple because I don't know that much about Google Blogger, so the simpler I can keep it, the better it will end up looking.

Service Learning

This was my second experience with Service Learning. My first class with Service Learning was with Linguistic Anthropology 105. When I signed up for the class I had no idea what service learning was or that the class required it. I had to take the class because it was a requirement for my Anthropology major. There were a couple different options for service learning in that class, the one that I picked was working with the Milwaukee Literacy Services. For that I would go to the Milwaukee Literacy Services Center and I would tutor people who were learning English. I tutored people who spoke English fluently and were just illiterate and people who were illiterate and non-English speakers. At first I was very uncomfortable with tutoring people because I wasn't sure how well I would be able to teach them and how willing they were to learn. All of the students at MLS were there voluntarily and they all really wanted to learn how to read and write. Also, because more of the people there have a reading level below a 3rd Grade average, having a high school diploma is way more than necessary to teach someone how to get through basic English exercises.


My experiences with Film 150 and JPNA were considerably different. For one, I knew before taking the class that I would have to do service learning. I took the class in order to get my Cultures and Communities Certificate. Working with JPNA was a lot different than working with MLS. When I was working with MLS, I was the one tutoring the students and I was firsthand making the changes in people's lives. With JPNA, there were other people making changes in people's lives but I was just observing that happening. I'm sure there were opportunities for me to make direct changes in people's lives, but either they were irrelevant to my project or I wouldn't be able to attend those opportunities. My JPNA experience was more of an learning experience of how community organizations work while my MLS experience was more of what it is like actually being part of a community organization.

First picture is from http://image.volunteersolutions.org/images/cache/000/010/233/893/10233893698.jpg
Second picture is from http://sub.resilientcities.org/content/Portals/0/Johnsons%20Park/Sketch.%20JP%20Entrance%20Bright.JPG

David Boucher and the Amaranth Cafe and Bakery

Last Tuesday I went to a meeting about urban gardening that was supposed to be about Alice's Garden. The meeting was held at the Amaranth Bakery and Cafe on W. Lisbon. The cafe was on the corner of 34th and Lisbon, which is farther west than I have ever been in Milwaukee without being in Wauwatosa. Service Learning has gotten me to explore areas of the city where I would definitely think twice about going to. I was happy to find out that I wasn't the only person from the class there since Josh, Jackie and Kirsten were also there. The person that was supposed to be conducting the meeting wasn't able to make it that night so the urban gardening meeting was pretty much canceled. However, the owner of the cafe, David Boucher was more than willing to talk and answer questions about the neighborhood and the history of Milwaukee in general. David had lived in Milwaukee for the last 15 years. He was attending UWM to get his doctors in the Urban Studies program but became dissatisfied with the program and left UWM. He instead bought a pre-Civil War house on N. 34th Street with the intent to rehabilitating it. He also bought a bar on Lisbon which he fixed up and turned into the Amaranth Bakery and Cafe. The cafe and bakery offers healthier options for the diets of the community's residents than the average fast food restaurant would. Also on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the cafe offers soup at “pay what you can.” David has been an active member of the community since moving into the area. He told us about the history of the neighborhoods in Milwaukee and about how originally the area that the cafe was in was primarily a Polish and German neighborhood. Over time, people moved around and the demographics of the area changed dramatically. David also talked about how the city is crippled by its bureaucracy. At times, people have suggested that streets like Lisbon should be turned into a boulevard which would mean that the city would have to buy people's property in order to make the street wider. This idea is absolutely absurd and was made by people who knew nothing of the area and who knew nothing of the people that it would effect. Fortunately that initiative did not go into effect. David also discussed the area and how it has changed over the last 15 years. Much like JPNA in the Johnsons Park area, David is working to dissolve the crime in the area and keep it out. He has helped buy up properties that were known drug houses and houses that were linked to crime and violence. He was also dealing with much of the same problems that the JPNA deals with certain properties. The building right across the street from the bakery has been vacant for sometime. The community and the owner cannot come to terms of how the building would best serve the community.
Overall my experience at the cafe was very valuable to me mainly because I live in Milwaukee but have little knowledge of its history and especially the histories of the neighborhoods on the west side.

Photo taken from http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/imgs/hed/art2912nar.jpg

Johnson's Park Photos

These are the rest of the photos from my first photo shoot at Johnsons Park.

JPNA Neighborhood Meeting April 20, 2009

Last Monday I went to a meeting for the Johnsons Park Neighborhood. The meeting was held at the JOY Center on Walnut St which creates the southern border for the area. I had to take the bus to the meeting which caused some anxiety for myself because I thought that I was going to be late. It was pretty cold on Monday and it was raining, so that made me forget some of the streets and I got kind of lost before I got to the actual meeting. When I got to the JOY Center I found that Erica and Jackie were there already which made me feel a bit better about being there because I would have felt a little uncomfortable about being the only one from our class there.

The meeting started with Tony Gibson announcing that the Johnsons Park neighborhood was being featured on 88.9 Milwaukee in a feature about lesser-known neighborhoods in Milwaukee. A lot of neighborhoods in Milwaukee, especially on the west side, aren't getting the kind of recognition that they deserve and end up getting a lot negative connotations from the local media. Eighty-eight Nine's objective is to remove some of the stereotypes of these neighborhoods by showing how the neighborhoods are improving and evolving. Before the meeting, the representative from 88.9 interviewed Tony and recorded the beginning part of the meeting.

Something that I felt was a little unfortunate about the meeting was the low attendance, there were only about 6 or 7 people there with 3 of them being from Film 150. Because of this, Tony singled us out and asked us to introduce ourselves and talk about why we were at the meeting in the first place.

The topics that were covered in the meeting were about some key properties that were of interest and block safety. There is a corner store in the neighborhood that was shut down a couple years ago due to some illegal activities that were associated with the property. Since being shut down, nothing has happened with the store and the building has remained vacant. Tony had a long discussion with the owner of the building of what could be done with the building, but the ideas that Tony suggested where shut down and the ideas that the owner suggested seemed kind of random and illogical. If the building became another corner-store, it would probably bring crime back to the neighborhood. I found this pretty interesting because I never thought of corner stores as being linked to drugs and crime. Another property that was discussed at the meeting was a rental property that was still in the process of being rehabilitated. Something that was brought up about rental properties and apartment buildings was that they had a higher chance of being associated with crime but as I thought about it and I thought of some of the “sketchy” neighbors that I've had so far and it made more sense.

The meeting ended with some discussion about future meetings and events in the neighborhood included a summer bike camp and a neighborhood cleanup in May. What I mostly got out of the meeting was how hard Tony and other members of the community work to help their neighborhood. I find myself feeling guilty because I'm more active in the Johnson's Park neighborhood than Riverwest where I actually live. Every time I get a flyer for a block meeting, I usually just throw it away instead of actually taking part and trying to make changes to in my neighborhood for the better.

*Photo is from Frank's blog.

Photo Essay Artist Statement

The photos used in my photo essay were from my first visit to the Johnsons Park area of Milwaukee. Want I wanted to convey through the pictures were my first reactions of the neighborhood and also what I was also feeling at the time. For this trip I was limited to using a disposable camera and my photos rely heavily on the weather.
I took these pictures in the Johnsons park area on a Thursday morning. I took the bus from North Avenue and was surprised at what I found when I finally got to Johnsons park. The park itself is just a big open field with some trees around it and some hills at the north and south ends of it. There is also a playground at the south end. For some reason I was expecting more. I thought that it would be more like Gordon Park or Kern Park which are bigger and have more trees and vegetation. I was also surprised at how much garbage was in Alice's Garden. I know that it couldn't be kept up during the winter, but the neighborhood overall had a lot of litter in it. I captured that in one of my pictures for the essay because even though I don't live in one of the cleanest neighborhoods, things like that still leave an impression on me.
Another first reaction that I got from the area were the houses. The degree in difference between the houses in the neighborhood left such an impression on me that I choose to do my photo essay on that topic. First of all, I knew that they were rebuilding houses in the neighborhood but I had no idea that they were going to be that many, and that nice looking. Those houses looked like they would be in a suburb and not an urban neighborhood. I found that very interesting. Also, even though there were so many nice houses, the neighborhood was still what it was, there was still litter in the vacant lots and there were still boarded up businesses. The older houses left an impression on me as well. Because there are so many newer houses in the area, the older houses and buildings really stick out. The older houses are decrepit and are falling apart. Paint is chipping everywhere, there are support beams missing, fences are falling down, boards are broken...etc. I wanted to focus more on these older houses but I didn't want to take too much time in case the inhabitants of the houses caught me being too nosy. I also wanted to capture the change of “out with the old and in the the new.” I found a sign that advertises lots of sell in the neighborhood. I was able to take a picture of some men working on a house which directly represents the change of new life and livelihood added to the neighborhood.
When I took these pictures, I was cold and tired and hungry and hoped that somehow this would be reflected in my pictures. I think the weather played an important part in the feeling that these pictures give off. It wasn't very cold, but it wasn't too warm until I left the neighborhood. The sky is a very pale color, at the time it would go from cloudy to more clear. There are also a lot of pictures of empty lots also reflected what I was feeling at the time. I was there alone and I was tired and hungry.
This project is a visual interpretation of my first reactions to the Johnsons Park area. My ideas and opinions of the area may change over time, but this stands as what I was thinking and feeling at the time that I was introduced to the area. I felt that there were a lot of really nice houses, so I tried to capture them on film. I thought that older, run down houses really stood out so I tried to juxtapose them against the new houses. I thought that there was more trash in the neighborhood than I am used to so I got that on film as well. Also I was alone and hungry and tired and tried to capture that with pictures of barren lots and the pale sky.

Neighborhood Photos

Idea for Final Project

For the final project for this class, I would like to cover the history of the Johnsons Park area. I would like to do some more research involving the area of the park that was involved in the Underground Railroad in the first half of the 19th Century. Also I would like to visually show how the Johnsons Park area has changed over time through out the past hundred years. I'd like to contact someone at JPA to see if they have any images or historical information, and maybe I could interview one of the long time residents and get their perspective on how the area has changed. I would also like to cover how the houses have changed and how the businesses have changed over time.

White People and Manifest Destiny

Ever since the beginnings of colonization of America, Europeans and European Americans have held themselves above all other races. The expansion of America by taking land and resources away from Native peoples was justified by Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny was the mentality that God wanted people to travel and urbanize the west so that the United States would stretch from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. This meant that God wanted White people to travel across North America and take away the land from the Native Americans. Through ethnocentrism the White race is usually shown representing basic humanity while all other races are subject to classification.

In the book, America on Film by Benshoff and Griffin, ethnocentrism is defined as, “regarding one's own ethnic group as better than another.” People can't help but compare people against what they already know, but this can lead to negative actions if these comparisons are used as defining features. Ethnocentrism usually is the result of common ignorance to a group of people that are different and appear strange. This can then lead to racism where the judgments against people are turned into actions. Benshoff and Griffin describe racism as being, “the belief that human beings can be meaningfully categorized into racial groups and designated into superior or inferior based on the basis of those characteristics.”

Directly in line with the idea of ethnocentrism, many European Americans usually equate their race as being humanity. According to Richard Dyer, “This assumption that white people are just people, which is not far off saying that whites are people whereas other colors are something else.” Dyer goes on to say that the White race usually is not defined as a race in the same ways thats Blacks and Asians are described and characterized. Because media, and film in particular, are designed for White audiences, European Americans take for granted that they categorize and characterize other minority races while regarding their own as just the human race. Also because so much is targeted at the White audiences, there is little reflection of how this impacts European communities and other racial communities.

These images provide examples of how the white race, humanity, is bringing technology of the modern world to minority groups.

In the first image, Harbelly's Hogan, a white woman is providing medicine to a group of Native Americans. While at first, the image seems to be showing the introduction of modern medicine to an aboriginal type of people, another message is also evident. The image consists of group of Native Americans, one is sick and is lying down, and a white woman who is presumably a doctor or a nurse. The fact that a white person has to be introduced in order to help the Native American community suggests the idea of Manifest Destiny and the assimilation of Native Americans in America. These people need the help of whites in order to survive in modern times. The fact that these people have been self reliant for thousands of years before Columbus came to the western hemisphere is apparently irrelevant. Another theme is this picture is that a white person is giving a Native American medicine when many Native American populations were killed off from diseases from the first waves of European colonization.

The second image, Refrigerator, a white woman is presenting a refrigerator to a couple of Native Americans. This picture is also showing how white people are coming to modernize Native American groups. The woman in the picture has a huge smile on her face and is showing off an ice tray and wonders of a what a refrigerator can do. Obviously, ice cubs are extremely necessary to a group of people who have lived off the land for thousands of years. The Native Americans in this photo are still wearing their traditional clothes showing that they haven't assimilated that much into western European American culture. The smile on the womans face shows how America made so many promises to Native Americans but it is obvious that they were treated disrespect in countless ways.

These images show how Manifest Destiny and ethnocentrism holds the white race above all others. The white race is hardly ever considered a separate racial category because so much is aimed at the white audience that there is little self reflection. These images show how European Americans feel the need that they need to help the unfortunate, but really they are hurting them in the long run.

Works Cited

Benshoff, Harry and Sean Griffin. “What is Race?” America on Film. ed. Blackwell. 2008. 49- 52.

Dyer, Richard. “On the Matter of Whiteness.”

blog

I have a blog now.