English 104 Essay 4: Writing about ISU Art-on-Campus (500 words)
This assignment is part of the 5th Annual English 104-105 Foundations Essay Competition. Four $125 awards will be given in the spring of 2006. Instructors will submit the best essays to the Director of First-Year Composition by or before midterm of Spring 2006.
Purpose and Audience
The purpose of this essay is to describe and analyze art or cultural artifact(s) at ISU. Your essay should be of interest to the general public or people who have ISU connections.
Planning
Some planning activities that you might do include the following:
- Spend some time with the object, writing down what you see and what kind of emotions or thoughts you have as you look at the object.
- Look at the visual communication principles in the Student’s Guide: English 104 and 105.
- Read pages 33-48 in Getting the Picture.
- Check out the ISU Museums web site (www.museums.iastate.edu) to see if it has information on the object.
- As a class or in groups, interview an ISU museum curator about the object.
- In pairs or small groups, interview people who frequent the site of the object.
- As a team, describe, analyze, and interpret the art piece.
- Jot down quotes from your team members.
- Take a photo, draw an image of the art piece, or locate and import a photo from a website
Drafting
After you have picked a focus, you need to decide what evidence to use to support your focus and how to organize your material. For example, can you come up with one or two adjectives that best describe the object or people’s reaction to it? Those adjectives might become the focus of your essay.
Remember that your introduction must orient the reader. To do that, your introduction will identify your focus or thesis. It will also identify the object (what it is, who created it, when it was created, what its title is, and where it is located), explain why the object is worth writing about, and forecast the arrangement of your essay.
Include a picture of the object. Label the picture (i.e., figure 1), and then refer to the picture when you first describe it and, if appropriate, elsewhere in your paper.
Be sure to back up terms and comments with specific details. If you say the object is beautiful, you will need to describe specifically what makes it beautiful. It you say the object is bewildering, you might want to use interviews from bewildered passers-by. Be sure to include their statements on why they found the object bewildering.
A note on documentation: Correctly identify and quote or paraphrase interview material that you use in your essay. If you use information from the ISU Museums web site, indicate within your sentence the source of the information: (Example: The ISU Museums web site states that Josiah Wedgwood was successful because of his "scientific knowledge, artistic taste, administrative ability and business acumen.") If you have questions about the documentation, see your instructor. With your final draft, include any drafts, notes, etc.
Evaluation Criteria
- contains a clear and interesting thesis supported by specific, concrete details
- has an introduction that attracts the reader's interest and orients the reader
- provides a sufficient and interesting description of object
- contains insightful inferences about the object
- interweaves quotes from team members
- demonstrates an understanding of visual elements and principles
- has a conclusion that brings the essay to a thoughtful close
- is well organized
- avoids errors that are distracting to the reader
- includes appropriate documentation
- includes some type of visual image of the art piece integrated into the essay