May 2, 2019 500 AM
Since I was seven years old, I’ve had the opportunity to learn from The Chinati Foundation.
When I was younger, my sister and I would travel from Presidio to Marfa to attend the summer art classes with Michael Roch at the Ice Plant. My experiences were always so much fun. We worked with paper maché, wood, paint, and so many other materials. Every summer we looked forward to the learning and the meeting of new friends. Just last week I had the opportunity to explore The Chinati Foundation with my Advanced Journalism class. My classmates and I made pinhole cameras in class using a cardboard box, a piece of brass, a pin and electrical tape. With the tiny pinhole made in the brass, we created the aperture, where the camera captures light and inverts an upside down image onto the light sensitive photo paper. The photo paper was then left into the photo developing chemicals which gave us a negative image. The outcome of the image was shocking! How could I possibly capture a picture using a cardboard box?
After learning about pinhole cameras, Chinati intern Andrew Moreano took us to see Dan Flavin’s fluorescent lights. When we first walked in, Andrew asked us to think about what colors we saw. Turns out the colors we saw from far away were a different color from the actual color of the lights.
On behalf of the Advanced Journalism class at Presidio High School, we’d like to give a big “Thank You” to Michael Roch, Andrew, and Adele Powers, for their dedication to educating the youth of Presidio County.
