The Daily talks to sophomore Nora Chovanec about working on her Tisch scholar project with a Somerville school and community-based art.
Tufts Daily: Is there any particular medium or purpose that you've been focusing on in your recent art?
Nora Chovanec: I've been doing photography for about eight years. What I've mostly focused on throughout is black and white analog darkroom photography, but just recently I've gotten into doing digital color. I still shoot film, but then I scan it in and clean it up, and work on it in Photoshop.
I mostly shoot with my 33mm camera, and recently I use Holga, cheap toy cameras. They're interesting because each one has a different kind of light leak, so you get these interesting photographs. I also shoot a lot of Polaroid film. I have a special place in my heart for Polaroid, because I think it's the purest form of photography since it's just a captured moment in time, it's not something you can bring to a darkroom and work with.
I also do mixed media work, which ranges from flat pieces like collage or putting together found objects and making them into sculptures. With my mixed media work I use found images and incorporate text.
I'm also a Tisch scholar with the Tisch College of Citizenship and Active Service, and for my Scholars project I've been working with an organization called Groundwork Somerville. I've been going into schools and teaching nutrition classes and gardening, and also going after school to do art projects with kids. This semester I'm working with the Healey School and working on a garden mural with six middle schoolers. The mural's 30 feet long and 7 feet high, and incorporates different aspects of the garden, and ideas of healthy eating.
It's a really international school, so it has the idea of an international garden and I've been looking for ways for them to express feelings about their natural community. I'm really interested in community-based artwork as well because I think it's important for our generation of artists to make art more accessible to people and help people tap into their creative artistic aspects, no matter how much experience they have.
TD: Are you looking to pursue an artistic career?
NC: I don't really know what I want to do, but for a while I've thought about being a photo documentarian, and for a while I wanted to be a photojournalist, but I've become really involved with community-based artwork and I've become more interested in providing people with a different perspective on their situation. I think that while reading an article about something can be really moving and informative, having a visual component when learning about an issue is really vital in understanding the magnitude of a situation.
TD: Is there a particular political issue you are most concerned with?
NC: My other major is Women's Studies, so I'm really focused on women's issues in terms of domestic violence and abuse and just creating equal rights for everyone.
TD: What's it been like working with kids? Has it changed your perspective on ways to do community art?
NC: Yeah, before this year I hadn't really worked with kids at all; I really had no idea what to expect, and at the first after-school activity that I taught, the kids were really intense and had their own ideas. I had planned all of these grandiose ideas and I just had to adapt to what you can actually do in an after-school class. It's great to work with kids and see their unabashed enthusiasm for things and not the jaded point of view that you sometimes get with college students. It makes me think more about how important it is to have an impact on your surrounding community, and that while it's important to see what you can do on a global level, it's also important to see what you can do on a local level.
-by Sarah Cowan
