My Life As An Artist

When I began drawing as a child, it was my most favorite pass time, and I spent more hours a day drawing than I spent studying, playing outside, and watching television combined. I would sit at my little PLAYSKOOL™ desk and draw to my heart’s content – and I had no care in the world. I loved every single thing I drew, and so did my parents. My teachers thought I was such an advanced child artist that they let me be the leader of every single art project in grade school. In middle school I divided the time I spent on art with playing a tenor saxophone in the school band. I did not really have any classes or projects that would advance my studies with art, but that did not hinder my growth and love of art.

When I got to high school, I was ready to tackle art head on. My high school was a college preparatory school that had different programs for students much like colleges have majors, which were called curriculums. I chose the art curriculum and loved art in ninth and tenth grade, but my junior and senior year made me hate art more than I have ever hated anything in my entire life. The highest grade I could get in my classes was a C-, which was very discouraging for someone who was told how good her art was her entire life, and the one semester when my artwork was featured in a city-wide showcase, I got a D in my fashion class. I was really ready to quit until I had a nice long talk with one of my favorite teachers. I wonder how he’s doing. But after having the teachers I had for art my junior and senior year I was so thoroughly prepared to not become an art major.

So I get to college, and I’m in my second year – as an art major – and I enjoy every bit of it. My animosity towards my teacher from high school vanished after my first semester of college art. I went to college thinking I was not good enough to major in art, and every assignment I got back from my ADR 1050 (drawing I) professor was either an A or an A-. I actually don’t recall getting any grade lower than an A-. It continued over into ADR 1060 (drawing II), until I slacked off on my sketchbook assignments and got an F on my first half of the semester sketchbook review. I bust my butt but I got all of my assignments in, ON TIME, in order to show my professor I was really serious about doing art. She was so impressed with that. I thought I’d end up getting a B- out of her class and I got an A-. I was elated with that grade. In drawing II, I slacked off on my sketchbook and homework, but I did all of my in class assignments and had them in on time. It was not really a good look, and I felt obligated to reverse that because I did not want to end up with a C in art again.


And now, here I am. I am not taking any classes at the moment, but I am trying to expand my portfolio independently of school. I can’t have everything in there being a school assignment. I do like some of my assignments from school, but my favorite works are those which were done in my own spare time. I know that I am better at still life drawing than I am at drawing people. I also know that I am better at drawing people than I am at drawing landscapes and buildings in perspective. There are certain things that I know I need to work on, because I know that the more diverse my portfolio is the better off I will be in the long run. So, that's what I'm pretty much working on right now.

Essay: "Metal Made Me Do It" , by Miah J. Davis -29 February 2008

Many researchers have examined the effects of how music provokes violent behavior. The effects of music on the behavior of people become an important issue because of how much time the average person spends listening to music. Be it on the radio, while watching a music video on television, or while shuffling through one’s personal MP3 player or IPOD. Given that many researchers make it their goal to show the link between violent music and violent behavior. What, exactly, is the nature of violent music? What makes it so violent? Is it the hard music? Or is it the lyrics themselves?

Two of the most popular genres of music as it pertains to invoking violence are Rap and Hard Rock. These two genres have been taken criticism for almost every kind of act of violence in the modern world from gang violence, to sexual assault, and have even been linked to massacres such as the shootings in Columbine and Virginia Tech. What the world must come to understand is that music cannot make a person do anything. Music is solely capable of putting thoughts in one’s head, or perhaps altering his mood, but music can not make someone execute an action.

One of the most despondent of events in American history occurred on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Armed with semiautomatic weapons, seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a shooting rampage killing 13 people and wounding 24 others before finally committing suicide. Being that many of their peers classified the seniors as part of the “Goth” subculture, parents and the media immediately looked to their preferred genre of music to blame, and particularly targeted one artist: Marilyn Manson. Well known for his eerily hellish appearance, Manson was harshly ridiculed for his “satanic” music, and fearing for his own life and career, contributed commanding columns to various magazines, of these being Rolling Stone, where he “denies any culpability in the killings or ties to the assailants,” (Geist 93). As a result of the massacre at Columbine, people have been particularly paying attention to the music industry and its effects on people’s thinking patterns.

There have been many studies done to show the effects of violent music on behavior and aggression. Of these was one done by Eliana Tropeano, an undergraduate psychology student at Western Connecticut State University. In her study, she examined 33 students, each in groups of eleven, a group was showed violent music videos, another showed calm videos, and the other being the control, was showed nothing. The purpose of her research was to show if watching violent music videos would make the subjects answer questions with violent, aggressive responses. In her conclusion, Tropeano did notice that the subjects that had watched the violent music videos did in fact respond to the questions posed more aggressively. “When the angry, violent, aggressive, vulgar videos were shown, participants portrayed a massive amount of hostility; their moods were changing as the video continued, as did their behavior. They also answered the scenario questions with the most violent answers,” (Tropeano 3).

The problem with Eliana Tropeano’s undergraduate study is this: answering a question has nothing to do with one’s actions. A man can say he will kill his wife. That does not mean that he will do it. Yes, her research proved that in certain situations where there is violent music present it can invoke violent and aggressive THOUGHT process, thus giving her violent and aggressive answers to her questions. There is no post study showing that after the subjects finished her survey that they went home and inflicted damage or pain upon something. There were no long term effects of this video she showed. Her results are based on a temporary session between 33 college students that does not exceed the surveillance.

The mainstream media has control over the music industry. Too many people blame the musicians for their music, but they have to put out what sells. In most cases, it is not the music that gets in people’s mind, but rather, the images they see to go along with their favorite song. Roger Bourland says, "Music has to be SEEN nowadays, and not just heard. People more readily click on YouTube video clips than mp3 examples. I find myself discouraged by our increasingly visual culture,” (Sound vs. Sight). Many people in the modern culture do not really listen to the words to a song as much as they take in the images placed before them on a 32 inch high definition screen. Thus, if there is a song with a breathtaking guitar riff, just listening to it will not make the average person think anything violently. But if they make that guitar solo into a shootout scene in an arbitrary bar the entire meaning of that part of the song changes for people.

Now back to the question at hand. What, exactly, is the nature of violent music? Well, “violent” music has many elements. It is defined by its lyrics. It is also defined by the music placed in the company of the lyrics. The main definer of violent music is the image that is instilled in peoples’ minds as a result of the music or a music video. And even though violent music videos can bring forth violent thoughts and aggressive reactions to things, it is not responsible for the actions of people. People control themselves. Music is just something used to make time go by faster.

Work Cited

• “Metal Made Me Do It,” by Brandon Geist. Revolver Magazine, Issue September 2007; Article
• “Does Rap or Rock Music Provoke Violent Behavior?” study by Eliana Tropeano; Journal of Undergraduate Psychological Studies, Vol. 1, 2006. Western Connecticut University
• “Musically Miscellaneous Mayhem: Sound vs. Sight” by http://miscellaneousmayhem.blogspot.com/2007/08/sound-vs-sight.html