Staci Jordan
Arts Scholar
TRYathlon
Semester 4
As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of three art events during my fourth semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.
TRYathlon #1: Viewing of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart
February 17, 2024 | Prime Video | The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart EP. 2
#film
For my first event, I chose to watch an episode from the show The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart on Prime. According to the description, the show is about a young girl named Alice Hart who is sent to live with her grandmother after her parents die in a fire. The particular episode I watched was all about when Alice first moved in with her grandmother. They live on a flower farm which is run by and also serves as a safe place for women who have been abused or have faced some other sort of trauma. The part of this episode that stood out to me the most was the secret language the women had. They used the flowers to send messages to each other. For example, one red flower called “Fire wheel tree” would be translated to “the color of my fate” in English.
Their flower language both reminded me of a discussion I had in my Intro Linguistics class about the elements necessary for something to be considered a language versus a code and the challenges I have been encountering while working on my Capstone project. Based on what I learned in linguistics, the “flower language” would most likely only be considered a code for the English language, but this codification is similar to the way an artist may think about what elements they would need to incorporate into their work to convey a certain message to their audience. Artists must choose elements that they know their audience can recognize and assign different meanings to, in the same way, that the women in the show could only use flowers they attached meaning to and documented in their flower dictionary. In both situations, it is important to know your audience to be able to make a connection.
TRYathlon #2: Viewing of the play, Untold Damage
March 15, 2024 | UMD’s Theatre in Video Streaming Service | Untold Damage
#theater
For my second TRYathlon, I watched a play called Untold Damage. It is about a 17-year-old boy named Tomby who seems to have autism or some other developmental disorder. Tomby lives with his twin brother, his older sister, and their parents. Tomby and his twin brother, Greg, are about to turn eighteen soon, so there are about to be some changes in the Jerome household. Greg is going to join the army and his older sister wants to get married but she does not want to leave him. She is the main one who takes care of Tomby. She is the closest to Tomby in the Jerome family. However, Greg loves his twin very much too. He sometimes talked to him like he would talk to him if he didn’t have a disability. It seems like one of those talks is what led Tomby to reveal his secret to his sister.
This play made me think about our discussions in our Arts Scholars colloquium about how art can help us create a more inclusive, diverse, and equitable society, as well as reinforce exclusion and inequality. At the beginning of the play, I was surprised but appreciative of the fact that the play included a disabled character. However, the play could be interpreted as mocking or invalidating people with invisible disabilities. At the end of the play, Tomby’s sister and the audience discover that Tomby has been “normal,” as his distraught sister put it, for several years. He appreciated being taken care of and continued to pretend to be more developmentally behind than he was. Tomby’s story could make the audience less likely to trust when people have invisible disabilities. The play was an example of what to avoid when creating art to foster a more inclusive and equitable society.
TRYathlon #3: Trinkets and S’mores
March 28, 2024 | Arts Advisory Board | Trinkets and S’mores
#visualart #ArtsScholars
For my final TRYathlon event, I attended AAB’s Trinkets and S'mores event. This event was an opportunity to enjoy pizza and s'mores, connect with other Arts scholars, and do a fun easter egg hunt. It was great to see how our love for the arts was something we could connect over, even though we may have had different forms of art that we enjoy or like to create, as well as different majors. During the event, I was able to meet some of the first-year scholars that I would not have met and or even talked to outside of this event. I also really enjoyed being able to talk with some sophomore arts scholars about the struggles we have been having with our capstone projects. It was nice to know that I was not alone and it felt good to vent. Although those conversations did not do anything to solve my problems they helped me to relieve some of the stress I was feeling because of it. Attending the event also allowed me to practice some problem-solving skills. There was a time when we were trying to make s’more but the fire kept burning out. A few scholars and I spent a lot of time figuring out different ways to keep the fire going. Given everything that happened that night, I had a great experience. I enjoyed hanging out with some of my fellow Arts scholars.
