The first half of this semester has been a trial and error process for San Jose State faculty members and students in the art department, who have been mitigating the challenges of teaching and displaying hands-on art over Zoom.
“Most of us aren’t used to being fully online and away from our [art department communities] at the college,” said SJSU pictorial arts junior Kalil Mitchell over email.
Some students within the department have had a strange transition from working on large canvases to creating art on their kitchen tables at home.
“I know many [art] students such as myself have this feeling of being in limbo, like normal life is just ‘on hold’ for a while,” Mitchell said.
In-person classes gave instructors the ability to create a comfortable atmosphere to interact with students, which is difficult for some instructors to recreate online.
“That [human connection] is missing in online classes,” Irene Carvajal, an SJSU printmaking instructor and seminar teacher, said over the phone.
Teaching art classes over Zoom challenges instructors because they have a limited view of their students’ artwork, but Carvajal said teachers are getting creative to overcome this hurdle.
Carvajal teaches an art theory course called “Medium and Message,” which she said is actually easier to teach online.
However, her other classes on relief and screen printing require more work.
Carvajal said relief printing is when ink is placed into wood carvings or etchings, which emphasizes the design in the wood. Screen printing, on the other hand, involves pressing contact paper onto an inked mesh screen to transfer the graphic onto the paper.
She said screen printing is a popular and versatile print method but requires a lot of physical knowledge. The method depends on hand and body placement, the angles of the screen print and the amount of pressure that needs to be applied on the screen to create a project.
Both printmaking techniques are tedious and take weeks to prepare, requiring her to post detailed demo videos explaining the process on Canvas.
Carvajal said because of time conflicts, she couldn’t attend the Zoom training that SJSU provided for faculty members, but she took a few classes based on recommendations from her colleagues.
She said the classes taught her to adapt her teaching methods according to the online requirements, like how to use two or three cameras over Zoom while instructing students.
Carvajal’s instruction videos show multiple printing angles to give students a better understanding of the process, creating the illusion of in-person learning.
“I have each [camera] focusing on different visuals,” she said. “One of the cameras is on my face and the other two are on my hands and so I give a pretty detailed demo of how to use all of our materials to create the project.”
SJSU drawing instructor Erik Friedman said he also had to adapt on his own.
He said the Facebook group called “Online Teaching” has been helpful. The group was created when the pandemic hit in March and consists of posts from teachers who offer online teaching tips.
Friedman said he also made elaborate demo videos that he worked on before the semester began. He said his students seem to have adapted well to his beginning classes in design and drawing.
He said many instructors feel they have an additional responsibility to make sure their students are coping well in isolation, while also trying to make online learning worthwhile.
“It’s not ideal in any sense of the work, but at the same time we are trying to make it as meaningful for the students as possible given the circumstances that we have been put in,” he said.
Rachel Huang, an animation and illustration sophomore, said online learning is not as impossible as she once thought.
“The faculty in my program have all been really understanding and have been trying their best to change the curriculum and their guidelines to best fit the current situation,” she said.
After making the transition last semester, Huang said her teachers expect students to be more comfortable with remote learning this fall.
She said technology is integral to learning art online and as long as students have a working computer or tablet to record their art process and submit assignments, they can make it work.
However, some students feel deprived of the opportunity to showcase their art within the department building.
Pictorial arts junior Mitchell said the lack of access to SJSU’s art galleries and being unable to host shows to display their work
is disappointing.
Huang said she has reminisced about personal interactions on campus with other art students.
“One of the hardest parts about online learning during quarantine is the inability to physically be with your classmates before, during and after class,” Huang said.
Many art students also said they have to stay encouraged and show resilience through these challenging circumstances.
“We’re all working hard to stay positive and make our experiences meaningful in this new environment,” Mitchell said.
