Over the course of a single school week, the Catlin Gabel community hosted the visual artist Lucinda Parker, the screenwriter Gil Dennis, and the Jean Vollum Distinguished Writer Samiya Bashir.
Parker visited the school on February 4, and met with members of Ginia King?s Creative Writing class and student artists invited by Dale Rawls. In her presentation, Parker pointed out the several ways she combines text and image in her artwork. She has used her teaching experienced to take a leading role in the Word and Hand project, which is a collaboration between Wilsonville High School and Catlin Gabel. In this project, one visual artist from either school exchanges work with a student poet at the partnering school. This partnership will continue throughout the year, with each artist responding to his or her partner?s work.
Saymia Bashir leading a workshop in the journalism room (Photo: Kitty Katz)
Parker also described her personal experience as an artist. She focused on the later part of her career, including her commissioned paintings for government buildings and private businesses. She tends to create abstract landscapes that highlight the contrast between natural and manmade elements. Her paintings are often large scale with an element of technical movement on the site of the installation.
After her slideshow, Parker volunteered more of her time to take individual questions from students. In this Q&A session, she discussed how to handle the long distance and atypical relationship between the poet and the artist in the Word and Hand project.
As a piece of general advice to all artists, she noted that, ?it?s a free country ? you can do anything you want when you paint ? you can take inspiration from all parts of your life.?
On February 5, Dennis (a screenwriter for Walk The Line) visited Ginia King?s Creative Writing classes. Dennis reflected on how his personal creative process fit within the conventions of screenwriting. He related this to how he created the ?character? of June Carter-Cash and Johnny Cash. He also spoke about how he interviewed Johnny Cash as he was working on the script.
In his interviews, he focused on five questions: 1) What was the angriest someone got at you? 2) What was your most terrifying moment? 3) What was your moment of the greatest shame? 4) What is your saddest moment? 5) What is your proudest moment? These questions helped Dennis create the backstory for all of the characters in the script, both historical and fictional.
Dennis also showed some of his own work and spoke to how it fit the commercial creative process. He showed how a single script went through the revision process as executives gave him advice to make it more marketable. This sometimes called for total rewrites.
Gil Dennis after workshopping with a Creative Writing class (Photo: Kenneth Woods)
He also discussed his creation of characters based on autofiction (changing elements of one?s real life and appropriating them to a fictional scenario). Dennis wrote down moments from his own life on flashcards. Next, he assigned them to different characters to create their backstory. Dennis returned to Catlin on February 26 to help students with their individual screenwriting projects.
On February 7, Distinguished Writer Samiya Bashir visited Ginia King?s 6th Block Creative Writing class.
Upon entering, Bashir made an effort to learn the name of everyone in the classroom. Using her skills as a professor of creative writing at Reed College, she then facilitated a workshop that explored how beauty is depicted in poetry.
The class began with an exercise where the students wrote about what they thought the phrase ?she is beautiful? meant. After hearing what we had to say, she concluded, ?beauty is about opposites.?
The class then transitioned into groups and worked on a piece together. Bashir encouraged the groups to ?write as if your life depended on it ? [a poem] can change your life simply by helping you reconsider life.? Her prompts, such as writing a poem in which every line begins with the word ?yes,? challenged the students. Bashir even offered to help workshop these poems after she left the school.
Bashir gave a reading to the entire Upper School during assembly. She reflected on how each poem that she read mirrored aspects of her own life, such as learning physics from her father, or her love of Star Trek. Bashir used her ?theatrical background? to read her poems, and used Shatner-esque dramatic pauses and vocal expressiveness.
During the Q&A session she spoke about her creative process. With three minutes remaining, Valerie Ding ?15 asked about the meaning of life. Bashir first answered 42 (a reference to Douglas?s Hitchhiker?s Guide To The Galaxy), which was met with by applause and laughter from students and faculty. She concluded with the statement that one should live for themselves and be happy.
Between Parker, Dennis, and Bashir, the student body received enlightening tutoring on the creation of art as well as valuable life advice.
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