Guest artist Mia Jordanwood

The students were treated to an interesting presentation by Mia Jordanwood.
She shared examples of her work and stories of her life creating art.

To thank her the students created small postcard style images  and created a thank you card that represents some of the stories she shared with us. 

They also reflected on favorite stories and pieces of art. 

Here are some excepts from Ms. Mia reflections by the class.

Today Ms Mia came to talk to us about installation art. She said before she moved to Cambodia she was an artist in New York. She shared amazing stories about her artwork. The one I enjoyed the most is when she traveled to ten different countries and interviewed people that had a hard life. She would make a postcard each day with a person’s story and picture of their experience on it. 

Katie

Ms Mia told us about a piece of art with hair and pencils. She made it because there was this rule a long time ago in South Africa that if you put a pencil in your hair and it falls out you are colored and if it stays you are Black.

Helen

Ms. Mia wanted to show what other people feel. She puts her art back into society so many can experience it.

Panhaboth

Today’s guest speaker was Ms Mia. She is an artist and likes art that has meaning.

Lisa

Ms Mia asked for a grant from the Government to create Installation art. She visited ten different countries in 99 days and created a piece of art each day.

Morgan

Ms Mia made many collages. She said Gorilla art is art in the city – not in a gallery.

Siwoo

She had interesting ways of sharing her art. Once she asked stories about a person’s life, ordered a cake with the story in top, paid for it but never picked it up.

Bunleng

When she came to Cambodia in 1995 she was asked to create art at Toul Sleng. “It was a sad place”. She made small cement shoes and out candles in them.

JC

She talked to us about war, pictures she painted and showed us one with a page from a bible.

Selin

One of her projects was call 99 days. She created one postcard-sized piece of art each day. She said this was her first tough project.

Raj

Ms Mia went to many countries with war. In one of those countries she made an art studio. People could come in and have their photo taken for free. She gave them a picture and listened to their stories.

Nayan

She is showing peoples lives to the world. One of her quotes is “talking about what happened can make you feel better.”

Emely

Ms Mia loved making postcards. She usually used card paper and acrylic paints but sometimes she made her postcards collage. Some of her postcards were inspired by refugee’s stories. The refugees she talked to lived in cells and were only allowed out for one hour a week.

Molly

My favorite story was the part when she said that when she traveled to 10 different countries. It took her 99 days and she made one post card every day.

MengSeu

I liked the art with the shoes because it had a strong message. It had a lot of light and was really bright.

Carlota

What was interesting was the story about an Embassy that was blown up and a lot of their papers were stuck in the trees. The people from the National museum wanted her to create something from the paper.

Dong Ha

Ms. Mia said, “everyone is an artist but some of us have the space and time to express ourselves”.

Rithy

Ms Mia made artwork out of paper that was in the trees in Kenya. This cool artwork included a page from a bible and the words were underlined.

Arthur

I thought the Khmer rouge story was interesting because a lot of people died during the Khmer rouge reign. Mia was asked to make a peaceful artwork about it/ She made shoes with candles in them to say that the spirits are now free to walk in these shoes – back home.

JoYii

I really like the burnt piece of bible she found. She could still see the words and the words underlined. She knew someone had had this bible before and had read it before. It was important to someone.

Jiwon