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.