Devin Cogger

About Me

I'm a Junior attending Evergreen to earn the equivalency of a Visual Arts degree.

Interests

I enjoy 2D art of various forms, specifically pen and ink based mediums. I am also interested in diversifying my areas of study and to explore new and unfamiliar fields, hence my enrollment in this course. Outside of class I enjoy creating audio files, running, making self-notes to aid in memory recall, and playing the E- Dorian scale on my acoustic guitar.

Thoughts on Learning Objectives

It would appear that I have my work cut out for me, seeing as how I am quite unfamiliar with a lot of the terms we've already discussed as well as the ideas behind the program theme as well. From what I gathered of Wednesday's introduction, it seems we are investigating John Dewey's suggestions for how to solve problems first on an individual level, and then to take a process of reflective inquiry along with methods of scientific reasoning/systematic analysis, and to ultimately implement these methods/procedures on a greater scale to find solutions to problems effecting members of a community. I recognize that my interpretation of our objectives is likely crude and patchy at this point, but I plan to make efforts to more clearly understand our goals as a class.

Issues I'm interested in

If it is advisable for each student to try to direct what they learn in this class to contribute to their academic interests, I would like to see what I can learn about the connection between civic engagement/intelligence and the issues of public art. I suppose the community of Olympia would be a good start, as there seems to be a very distinct division of civil action artistic participation between east and west Olympia. An issue I've been thinking about that I think might generally inhibit social change is a lack of interest or unwillingness for members of the public to engage in social action or awareness events. If this is indeed an actual issue then I think there are a lot of different factors that play a role to contribute to this behavior, and it will take some more thought to ponder the causes and effects of these social gaps.

Contributions

I do hope to be able to contribute some helpful ideas and suggestions, but at this point I'll need a bit of time to sort through the material and gather my thoughts about our coursework, especially since I am still in the process of becoming comfortable/acquainted with this subject.