Fall 2004 – Konno

Vibrant colors, large in proportion, and having several scenes are just a few general things the two paintings I chose to review have in common. The first is Fall 2004 by Tomomi Konno. The medium Konno used was oil on wood.
The colors are bright and catchy first grabbing hold of the viewer, and then drawing them in with all of the different scenes going on. It is located in MacCollin taking up a large part of a wall near the sculpture room and design classroom. People walk by it several times a day, but if one of those times you were to just stop and stare at this massive painting for a little while, you would be able to take your eyes off of it.
There are so many different interpretations of what is happening here. An ever prevalent

Portion of Fall 2004

theme seems to be abstract symbols of humans, in a duo or individually. In one portion of the painting there seems to be a little person sitting on a ledge under a tree, looking like this individual could quite possibly fall right off the edge into what appears to be a sunrise (sunset?). It’s a kind of beautiful catastrophe, as if this artist was experiencing every single emotion while creating this large painting, lonely and not. To the far right of the painting is another depiction of a person, but this time with another human being, one sitting and one lying on a park bench under a light. These are just two of several scenes that appear.

Untitled – Sergeant & Bowitz

The other painting/sculpture I observed was an untitled piece, or so it appeared because I couldn’t find a tag for the life of me. It was done by an adjunct to Morningside College, Shannon Sargeant, and the Chairman of the Art department and Professor, John Bowitz.
I say it’s a painting and a sculpture because it appears to be paint on many wood panels that wrap around into an oval shape with an opening at one end so that the viewer can enter the piece and be surrounded by the paintings. It’s in a sense interactive.
Like Fall of 2004 this untitled piece also draws the audience in with it’s vibrant colors, and then at a close glance, by everything going on within the colors. Each panel is something different, and sometimes there are several different sections going on in a single panel. The panels contained many depictions of people, and some emotion. However, unlike Fall of 2004, this emotion more so comes from the words, phrases, and sentences that also appear on the panels.
The question of whether or not either of these have a deeper meaning than what than just

Portion of Untitled

paint or oil on wood pieces is debatable. Oscar Wild once said, “It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.” Meaning art is whatever the spectator makes of it. If the viewer can connect and relate to the art, then they can understand the art. What one piece means to one person, may not mean the same thing to another, or even how the artist originally meant it at all in the first place. But that’s just art.
I really enjoyed both pieces, and found myself getting lost in all that was going on in both. It made me think about my life, and I took my own go at guessing what the originators intentions were of both pieces, but one can never know for sure. The artist may not even know, it’s all relative.

A portion of writing on Untitled by Sergeant and Bowitz.

Where there is the combination of beer, drugs, and sex in the ‘60s in the state of California, there was sure to be a Hell’s Angel, or fifteen. In his first ever non-fiction book titled Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, Hunter S. Thompson describes the gang from an inside perspective that no person had ever gone before.
Thompson spent a little over a year “riding, loafing, and plotting” with the Angels specifically the Oakland Chapter and their President, Sonny Barger, between 1964 and 1966. There were a lot of characters Thompson meant along the way as well: Tiny, Terry the Tramp, Mother Miles, Dirty Ed, Magoo, and Charger Charley the Child Molester to name a few, and their lifestyles were as wild as their nicknames.
The book spans a series of “runs” (trips the Angels would take for celebratory weekends to get away) that Thompson joined in on with the several hundred, if not sometimes thousands, of motorcyclists from all different chapters of the Hell’s Angels in California.
Thompson describes the Hell’s Angels as a brotherhood: one for all, and all for one. When one Angel has a “beef” with someone, all of the Angel’s have an issue with that person as well. What the President, in this case for the Oakland Chapter was Barger, says goes, and is believed to be truth by all other members. Nothing is their own, the Angels share everything. If one doesn’t have a place to stay, the others take turns putting him up in their homes for the time being. The same thing goes for food, booze, and even sometimes women.
Booze is always prevalent and drugs ranged from Pot to LSD. The Angels at one point in the book were looked at for possibly having business selling drugs, however, according to Thompson’s account, this wasn’t really the case. They were more into buying and using, and less into selling. There may have been some of that going on, but not much. And when the Angel’s decided to party, they partied hard. In the section of the book where Thompson describes the “run” to Bass Lake, Angels there were taking handfuls of pills they weren’t even sure of the names or the amount of milligrams being consumed. They did things to the extreme, and never held back.
Women were also seen as common trade. Thompson describes several accounts of rape, gangbangs, and general encounters the Angels had with women on a daily basis. The girls were sometimes as young as fifteen, and could be having sex with approximately 15 or 20 different men in one night. The accounts were repulsive and gut-wrenching, but not all necessarily true.
Actually, a main point Thompson drives throughout the entire book is the thought that maybe the Angels aren’t so different from the “average Joe” of those days and even nowadays. I think one of my favorite parts of the entire book is when Thompson defines “rape” :
But sex is only one aspect of rape’s broader definition. The word derives from the Latin rapere, “to take by force”; and according to Webster, the contemporary translation ranges from (1) “the crime of having sexual intercourse with a woman or girl forcibly and without her consent” to (2) “the act of seizing and carrying away by force” or (3) “to plunder or destroy, as in warfare.” So the Hell’s Angels, by several definitions, including their own, are working rapists… and in this downhill half of our twentieth century they are not so different from the rest of us as they sometimes seem. They are only more obvious. (249)
I know it’s long, but this particular passage is I think a large part of the main idea to this book. It really wrapped it up for me in a nutshell.
Thompson writes in a third person perspective from a lot of his first hand accounts, and rarely brings himself into the story. He also uses several news outlets circulating at the time such as Life, Time, and the New York Times. He takes quotes from poems, movies, books, and everyday people and places these at the beginning of each chapter to set some kind of tone.
I have a ton of admiration for Thompson for being able to live with these goes for as long as he did, even with having a family. He took a risk not many were willing to at the time, and it really paid off. This book was some of Thompson’s greatest work.
His accounts were raw, and I really like how he touched on not just the Angel’s involvement with the party scene (booze, drugs, and rape), but also their involvement with the political party scene with the controversy surrounding the Vietnam War at the time. He depicted the rise of this group of misfits rising to be public figures with somewhat respected opinions on issues that actually mattered. He weaved himself in and out of the story so fluidly that I had a difficult time trying to describe whether this book was written in third person or first person.
I would like to know more about his tactics. How did he recollect all of these events and quotes? Was his recording constantly recording? Hand constantly scrawling down notes? Did he ever get any photographs? How did he get in with them in the first place/How did he get so close? I think that some of this “Pre-Angel’s” would add a lot, or could possibly be another story in itself.
I did really like all of the technical talk about the bikes themselves. I understand how that could be important, but I honestly was in this book for the stories, not the technicalities of what makes a bike faster, flashier, etc.
Overall I would have to give the book a 4 out of 5 stars. I thought they Thompson remained pretty neutral about the whole experience, and gave great insight that people just couldn’t get anywhere else at the time. He was there to see the misfits at their lowest all the way through to their… “success”?

Charles Bass is like a carefully wrapped present at a 12yr olds’ birthday party. The present that sticks out from all the rest because it’s in a box the size of a refrigerator. The 12yr old obviously saves it for last, but the entire time is just wondering in the back of their head… “What could this large box possibly contain inside of it?” The 12yr old reaches this gift. She peels back the wrapping paper. She opens the box. She FINDS… Another carefully wrapped box.
This is the life of Charles Bass.
Setting up a meeting time to interview Bass was a task within itself. The 20yr old college student is a busy one this semester with a full load of credits, participating in clubs, and having a leadership role in several of the said clubs.
I got the interview however, and after sitting down with Bass to peel back the first essential layers, I realized he wasn’t going to make this easy.
I was the curious 12yr old child, and Bass was an intriguing box I was going to have to work at to get to his core.
He has shorter brown hair, a kept beard that extends to his neck, black framed glasses, and can typically be seen wearing a turtle neck or sweater, especially this time of year. Bass has a “hipster-esque” style, that can lead anyone to be curious to know what is inside this carefully wrapped and visually intriguing human sized box that stands out among his fellow undergraduate classmates.
I liken Bass to this box, but that’s a little misleading. He’s actually not that large at all. Bass is about average height and has a thin frame with little to no muscle mass. He refuses to work out, but still manages somehow to stay rather thin.
However, this is just what a person perceives by looking at him. This is where the curiosity first roots, and from here only builds.
“I don’t like this postmodern attitude that what I broadcast, or even what I assert, is the absolute of my being,” says Bass when asked how he would “like” others to view him. “While I accept the right of someone to assert their identity in this way, I think that it’s limiting to pigeonhole myself in the same way it’s limiting for us to pigeonhole other people. I can learn things from the way other people view me and no matter what they project on to me, it has nothing to do with who I really am.”
Bass responds to my questions with vague generalities that only lead me to more questions. People are so curious to know his thoughts on issues, and to know what is in his core that makes him tick.
“I’m not some special person with a special mission. My goal is the same as the goal of any other randomly selected person. If I’m alright and you’re alright and everyone else I meet is alright, then I guess I’ve done a pretty good job,” says Bass.
If I haven’t already mentioned, Bass is beyond any intelligence I have ever come across. He knows people want to know more about him and the way he thinks, but it’s as if he wants the people questioning him to learn more about themselves at the same time they’re trying to learn more about him. Every word, sentence, dialogue that comes from Bass’s mouth is a carefully coded message made to make a person think more interpersonally. This makes some people uncomfortable.
“Without insulting me, he makes me feel stupid. I understand he’s trying to solely inform me and make me think, but it’s like I don’t know anything about anything after he’s done talking,” says Jacki Peters, a student that had Bass in an Honors class.
“I don’t know what I’m doing. If it looks like I know what I’m doing, it’s a clever façade,” says Bass in his “About” section on Facebook. “I’m going to school to get a degree. If I once knew why I was doing this, I’ve now forgotten. But I’m going to school for free, so I suppose I might as well keep at it. It’s something to do. I did some stuff at one point and it was pretty swell, but now I’m out of that phase. Now I mostly just think about doing stuff. It isn’t exactly as swell, but it’s a lot less work.”
Bass is a triple major in Studio Art, Philosophy, and Relgion, and still graduating in four years from Morningside College. He is also looking into studying abroad in Japan in the Fall of 2013. All of this, like he said, for free. His father, Patrick Bass is a professor at the college, young Bass receiving certain benefits because of this.
When asked what he values, Bass answered, “I value whatever lets us discover value, as cryptic as that is. I value Liberty, and Autonomy, and Truth, and Compassion, and Equality; I value my fellow human beings. I will do whatever I can to uphold other people and help them to discover and synthesize ethical truth.”
After receiving his four year undergraduate degrees from Morningside College, Bass plans on attending graduate school. He hasn’t decided on a particular one just yet, but says “preferably one on either coast of the U.S.” and that has a strong painting curriculum. Bass wants to become a painting professor, but he doesn’t want to just teach the art of painting… No, no. Of course not. Bass wants to be able to also teach “painting theory,” what goes on behind the action of actually painting.
Foreseen long term goals for Bass, “If I can, I would like to find the truth, teach the truth, and through the truth change the world. I don’t have a backup plan.”
What is at the core of Charles Bass’s carefully wrapped package? A heart, that cares so immensely for his fellow human beings that everything he does seems to be– in a way to better everyone else around him. All the while growing himself.

In high school, I was encouraged to take dual credit classes through a local community college called DMACC (Des Moines Area Community College). The thought process being, if I could get my general education credits out of the way faster, I could get into my major earlier, and therefore graduate from college to enter the “real world” as soon as possible.
It was in that moment that I realized, maybe I went through this whole learning process a little too fast, and I had definitely been taking it for granted. Maybe I’m not ready to graduate quite yet. What was my driving force anyway? What is really the root of getting through schooling as quickly as possible and out into the real working world? Money.
“We weren’t learning stuff like this when I was your age,” says my father.
It was my first or second year in high school and I was stuck on a math problem. It was one of those pattern ones where you are given a few numbers in a particular order, then a few blanks, and you have to figure out what the pattern is in order to figure out what the other numbers should be in the blanks.
I had honestly been at it for about an hour, and decided to bring in the big guns. Also known as the Parents—the see all, hear all, know alls, as far as I was concerned.
I asked my mother first, but she immediately turned me away and replied, “I don’t remember all of this, Jazmine. Go ask your father.”
Growing up, my parents were constantly making comments about the material I was learning, and how in “their day” they had not learned that material at “my age, that grade,” or claiming to never even learned that material at all.
The bar is being set higher and higher for children to learn more material in school sooner. From age 4 to 18, Preschool through Senior High School, kids are in school for approximately 14 years straight, give or take a few months for summer and winter breaks. Then, after those 14 years are expected to go straight into college for 2 to 4 years. Then possibly after that, graduate school?
The pressure is on for children growing up in the U.S., the rate at which we learn is increasing, and we are feeling it.
“Approximately 90 percent of the fastest-growing jobs will require some postsecondary education,” according to Education.com, and online resource with the goal to help parents prepare their children for schooling from kindergarten to college prep.
The website also mentions 60 percent, possibly higher now, are offering Advanced Placement courses.
I cannot be the only one who feels these pressures. In fact, I know I am not.
“I thought it would be a good idea to graduate early so I could get a job sooner,” says Christine Madsen, a student in her third year at Morningside College.
Madsen was a 2010 graduate from North High School here in Sioux City, where college courses for dual credits were offered from Western Iowa Technical Community College (WITCC).
Bringing in 20 credits to the University of Northern Iowa (UNI) her first year at college, Madsen was already ahead of the game.
“While at UNI, I took 18 credits both semesters,” explains Madsen, “I was planning on graduating early.”
After a year at UNI, Madsen decided return to Sioux City and attend Morningside College where her father is a professor. And it was also here, that after some careful thought Madsen began to rethink her decision to graduate earlier than the expected four years she was told it would take her to complete her major.
“Everyone is different, so it could be a good idea for some and a bad idea for others. College is something that comes around once in a lifetime. I have the rest of my life to work,” says Madsen.
Also, Madsen’s father, being a faculty member at Morningside College, gets Madsen a discount on her tuition. Although that may not be the main reason she chose to transfer to Morningside, it is definitely a nice perk.
On the other hand, there are many students such as Mariah Stauffer, another student at Morningside College, who have made it very clear that money plays a big role. Stauffer is in her third year, but with enough college credits to be considered a senior at Morningside, she plans to graduate an entire year earlier than expected.
“After Morningside College I plan on going onto Medical School. I just wanted to get done with my undergraduate and move on because I knew I had a lot more school left,” explains Stauffer, “Also, I think I enjoyed the challenge of graduating early.”
Being a Biology and Chemistry double major, I’d say Stauffer definitely succeeded in overcoming such a tremendous feat.
These were just a few minor reasons for wanting to graduate earlier, however Stauffer added there was more to graduating early.
“I haven’t taken any loans out yet for school. If I stayed another year, I would be $15,000 in debt—not something I want,” says Stauffer.
A valid point made by Stauffer, the underlying reason to why students are trying to get through upper level education so fast? Money.
Upon asking a few others what their factors were for graduating early, I got similar responses to that of Stauffers.
“I think financial factors played a major role in my motivation for graduating early, and I also just thought it would be a good feat to accomplish if I could make it work,” says Kaitlin Gerber, a student who plans on graduating this spring with a Bachelors Degree in Biology.
“When I realized I could graduate early it was kind of a relief because of the whole financial [aspect], and the fact that I want to go to dental school which is an additional four years,” says Blake Schany, another Biology major and Chemistry Minor at Morningside.
Financial aid and further education are two major factors that should not be overlooked.
According to a story from the Associated Press on increasing student loan debt, “student debt has stretched to record number of U.S. households—nearly 1 in 5.”
The Pew Research Center located in Washington, DC conducted the research and found that 22.4 million households had college debt in 2010, which doubles from the number of households found in 1989.
I asked someone to estimate the average loan debt for the state of Iowa. Their guess: $80,000. Pew found the average loan debt for each state, Iowa’s being $29,598. Possibly not as bad as we all thought, but debt is debt.
I found out this year that I wasn’t going to be able to graduate a semester early like I had planned, and at first I was extremely upset. I cried, and then I called my mom.
“Jazmine, you will be graduating on time,” my mother said laughingly, “There is nothing wrong with that.”

“It can be a song you can’t get out of your head, or that of the more clinical realm,” says Dr. Larry Sensenig.
The girl that is constantly picking apart her reflection in mirrors and windows, another that paints her nails every other day, and yet another who has anything and everything having to do with penguins ranging from stuffed animal penguins to handy dandy penguin decorated duct-tape. What do these three have in common?
Actually, 80 percent of the population admits to having something in common with these three women, intrusive thoughts, and whether male or female, we are all equally at risk.
Obsession is defined as “a thought or image that keeps intruding into a person’s consciousness,” in the 9^th Edition of Abnormal Psychology: Current Perspectives, a standard textbook for psychology professors and students.
“We all have obsessions,” says Dr. Sensenig, a Chair of the Psychology department and Professor at Morningside College since 1974. “Haven’t you ever been driving away from your house and then thought to yourself, “Did I shut the garage door? Did I forget something?”
Little obsessions like these occur everyday, and do not need treatment. It is at the other end of the spectrum, when obsessions become diagnosed as OCD, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.
When an individual has OCD they experience extreme distress from their intrusive thoughts, and deal with these thoughts by having rituals.
TLC television network is a host to the show “My Crazy Obsession,” which takes the viewers into people’s homes and introduces them to these people’s obsessions and how extremity of it.
There is a family that boasts of approximately 5,000 dolls, a woman head-over-heels for the color pink, and a “squeaky clean couple whose idea of a date night is admiring their collection of washing machines,” according to TLC’s description of the show.
What is it that triggers these obsessions?
The girl that is constantly seeking out her reflection may have been made fun of as a child for having food in her teeth, or possibly even a bad haircut. Maybe she didn’t wear “style-ish” clothes one day, or had toilet paper stuck to her shoe.
Whatever it may have been, there was probably an event from which her obsession stems.
Same with the girl who paints her nails every-other day, and the other with her penguins. Who knows exactly where these obsessions stemmed from, but these are their ways of dealing with their “unwanted intrusive thoughts,” a.k.a. obsession.

Right now, if I asked you if you needed something, what would you say?

Would it be a new car? Money? Perhaps you are needing something on a more intellectual basis like inspiration, motivation, or knowledge.

For this assignment, with the only instructions being to hand out 24 individual sodas and to record the experience, I decided to create the illusion of giving people what they “need” with the help of a Coke can, or 24.

I wrote down needs that people would really have to consider, for instance: a second chance, time, faith, courage, etc. Then, upon realizing I was planning to hand these out on a hill to a bunch of young adults who had been tailgating all afternoon in preparation for thefirst Morningside football game of the season, I decided to throw some other “needs” in the mix. These “needs” went along the lines of: chaser, more beer, an athletic bone, sleep, etc.

The reaction of these 18 to 23 year old Morningside College students and their responses to what a “need” meant to them, interested me.

So I walked up the massive hill with my crate of Coke cans, and as I’m trying to keep my footing halfway to the top, I see a woman running towards me.

“Is that beer? Do you have beer?” she asked.

“No, but I have a refreshing Coke,” I responded, trying my best to sound convincing. I found this to be a great opportunity to figure out how the rest of the students would possibly react.

The woman gave a disappointing, or maybe disapproving, sigh and walked away.

That is when I thought, Oh great… These people don’t want refreshing Cokes! They want alcohol, booze, more beer! How are they going to take to this project?

However, I continued my trek up the steep hill, and decided I wasn’t backing down. More so because that was one giant hill, and my apartment seemed forever away.

Curiosity arose as I walked up to the group of hill-goers, or as they like to refer to themselves “Allee-holics,” a student formed group named after our Allee-Verdoorn gym on campus. They have deemed themselves the unofficial, slightly obnoxious, cheerleaders for all the sports games (especially football, basketball, and volleyball).

I hadn’t quite thought through my approach, should I walk up to people and ask them to pick one, or should I just set the crate down and let people respond to it however they want?

I opted for the first approach, at least at first. I went up to a group, two guys and one girl I knew from the soccer team. She wasn’t drinking, so I figured she could use a Coke.

“Whaaat is thisss?” asked the first boy in a suspicious almost criticizing tone.

The girl in the group recognized what I was doing and tried to explain, which I was thankful about.

“Take what you need,” she said, “You have to pick something that you need right now.”

Then, she reached for the can that read “More Beer,” which I found to be pretty fitting since it was known that the women’s soccer team, which she was part of, was having a dry-season (zero alcohol).

In the meantime the second boy in the group had been reading them over. He had selected the can that read “A Second Chance,” but after having read the rest of them he put the can back.

“Time,” he read, and opted for that can instead.

With my cursed inquiring nature, and the fact that this was all an assignment for my News Feature and Writing class, I asked him why he had changed his mind.

“Because with time, I wouldn’t need a second chance. I would just have more time to do things,” he said.

I don’t know if I would have used that choice of words, but I think I understood what he meant.

The first boy had selected during that time the can that had read “Sleep.” With his bloodshot eyes it definitely looked like he could use more. Or, that could have just been the effect of the amount of alcohol he had probably ingested prior, either way.

After the group of the three walked away, I found people just pointing and staring. I’m not one to enjoy being the center of attention, so I thought I would now go for the second approach.

The Allee-holics had been done grilling for sometime, so I sat the crate on a ledge protruding from the grill. Then I placed the sign that read “Take What You Need” above the crate, and walked away.

For a while the crate was ignored, even avoided. However, the more alcohol intake, the snoopier people became.

Sooner or later, a couple girls walked up to the crate, looking it over. There was laughter, one girl trying to tell the other, “Oh no, you definitely need this one.”

They eventually chose and walked away, satisfied with their choices and a free Coca-Cola. One girl even showing their friends which one she had decided on.

Then, as if someone had heard me verbalize my worst nightmare, a crowd of intoxicated guys swarmed the crate. I tried my hardest to remain calm, maybe they were just curious and were just going to take one each and walk away, pondering to themselves what it really was they needed out of this life.

Yeah, who was I kidding?

They read them all, however, and were making jokes trying to give each other the ones they deemed most fitting for each guy in the group. Laughter was radiating from the area surrounding the crate, but the football game was still underway, so not many people noticed them.

I kept glancing over at the group, but at the same time trying to remain invisible to them so I could take a few mental notes on what they were saying and doing. Then, right as I thought I could breathe again, and my project was going to be okay, it took a bit of a turn.

One of the guys grabbed the sign I had made that read, “Take What You Need,” and blew his nose with it. At first I was furious. Then, in the midst of trying to calm myself down and hold myself back from stomping over to the obnoxious bunch to give them a few choice words, I pondered… Maybe that was exactly what he needed, something to blow his nose on.

I let it go, and they eventually all walked away. There was one soda left in the crate, and I was more than ready to be done with it. Besides, there was no longer a sign to explain what was going on anyway.

I thought my efforts to be somewhat successful depending on how you looked at it. It came down to me needing people to take the sodas off my hands so that I could accomplish an assignment, and these parched Morningside students sitting atop a hill on a hot day needed a refreshing drink. Perhaps I got through to them to think about their individual needs, perhaps I did not. Either way I got some kind of a story out of it; I got what I needed.