Beth Emmott

Kaitlin should be working on her cheesy type project but instead she is reading my blog. What’s a teacher to do?

Philadelphia University where I teach had its second annual Day of Service today. Classes were canceled and students and faculty were expected to choose from a lengthy list of projects, a worthy cause they would work on. Some were quite organized and some were less so.
I joined a group who knit hats for premature infants to wear in the hospital. We were referred to a web site which had many patterns for hats, booties and other items infants could use and we showed up with our yarn and needles and knit away.

Some of our hats.

Students, faculty and staff all joined in creating a mother load of hats to be donated to an area hospital. I worked with a smaller splinter group and the picture shows some of our results.

School started this week. I teach two courses at Philadelphia University. Graphic Design at the sophomores level and an elective, Digital Imaging. It’s a long day 8–5. Every year I loose my voice the first day.( It comes back by the second.)

I like working with the students. They keep me fresh and hopefully I teach them something. I’m also always forced to update my software skills which is a good thing.

“Hail, hail, rock and roll.”

I’ll be speaking on Color Theory at The Quiltmakers of Boyertown this Wed (tonight) with my friend and partner in crime, Professor Jane Likens. Our presentation covers the physical properties of color, methods to study color and how different colors influence each other.

We feel that it is most important to understand the first bit, what color is,  in order to master the last, how colors influence each other. Not what paint is, or what dyes are, but what actual color is and how humans perceive it.

Color is Light and Light is Energy!
It is the small part of the electromagnetic spectrum of wave lengths that the human eye sees. When this Visual Spectrum is present we see white light. When individual wave lengths are viewed we see them as individual colors.

Prism

In the 1600’s Sir Isaac Newton proved the physical properties of color when he passed a light beam through a prism, refracting the white light into its separate wave lengths. (If you have a prism, look through it at a light source and notice what happens.)

I’ll discuss more on color in future posts.

If you are interested in having us speak to your organization, (or conduct workshops) contact me at beth@emmott.com or at 700 S. 10th St., Phila, PA, 19147

In the mean time—GO PHILLIES!!!

This spring a friend and client, Jeanne Ruddy whose dance trope, Ruddy Dance is located in Philadelphia, choreographed a work called Oceans 1:Wetlands dealing with environmental problems facing the NJ Wetlands.

Jeanne’s passion is contagious and as a result I gave my Philadelphia University Graphic and Digital Design sophomores a project to design an advocacy poster on the topic. Most of my students had never heard of wetlands or at least had not been too concerned. Much research, and lots of design exploration was required—and at the end of the semester time was short. The results were exciting and several are below.