The kNOw Youth Media- Jewel Yang
Once on a hot summer day, my friend asked me a certain question that I found myself pondering. She’d recently gone to a museum and came across a certain art work that bothered her. “It was just a piece of metal square!” Yoaly gestured, confused about why such a thing was carefully secured behind a transparent barrier in a museum. She continued to rant on about how people would even go as far as to buy the art for thousands of dollars. Thus, a question was formed to summarize her frustration: What exactly is art?
To begin being able to understand the concepts and definition of art, I began by analyzing an article by Soren Petersen called “What is Art?”. The article provided the thoughts of art critics to define a precise piece of artwork. “To appreciate an art piece, one has to be able to understand and share the vocabulary applied.” It states. “Thoughts and ideas are worthless unless shared– without impact they have no relevance.” Petersen’s claim is fairly accurate. I would have to agree that the art piece has to not only appeal to each of the people in the audience, but also include the relevance of their opinion on it to be able to understand what it is.
Afterwards, I then proceeded to form my own simplified questions: What would art mean to others? To people, what do they think of a metallic square being considered a piece of work? I started off by interviewing a fellow art student from Edison High School. ” Art is an expression that can be formed into an idea.” Kayla responded. ” If it represents something or goes against something, then it is considered art.” In other words, having a purpose is what matters. I also asked my art teacher, Carol Sanders, to try and compare their answers. “It’s a way to share and it can be spiritual and soulful and it can be public, but for a lot of people it’s just personal.” I then asked her about that famous metallic square. She paused before answering. ” Something like a metallic square or a metallic circle could be symbolic; purity, cleanness, things like that or it could mean almost anything else.” Aside from a teacher or student related to art, I decided to also include the opinion of a regular student who has not taken an art class in highschool so far. Andrew says, ” Art to me shows a story of struggle of thought, actions, and words. The artist created a piece for you to visualize what that means for you, not him.”
Art can be defined in so many ways that it can even form arguments between one another. I believe that art really just depends on one individually. Different people have different interpretations, which is totally acceptable. It doesn’t matter what others think of art unless you agree with them, but if your opinion differs, let it be it’s own definition for art. A piece that one works so hard on and contributed all their time to deserves to be considered art, whether it be a simple shape of an object or a complex model.
In 2006, over 25 youth began participating in weekly after-school writing workshops where they congregated in the hallway of a two-story building in West Fresno and learned the essentials of creating media and telling their stories. The group evolved over the next five years and is now proudly recognized as The kNOw Youth Media.
Through our program, we create opportunities for our youth participants, who in turn create long-term positive change in their communities. Our approach weaves youth development and youth media innovation to produce our biannual youth publication, multimedia projects, and community forums.
The kNOw began as a project of New America Media, which was the country’s first and largest national collaboration and advocate of 2000 ethnic news organizations. In 2018 The kNOw became a project of Youth Leadership Institute.
