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Art and technology meet in digital imaging computer art classes are not only for artists
Las Vegas: more than meets the eye
Inspiration:

The days of sharing computers are gone.  In the new classroom, each student has his or her own computer and is responsible for a variety of assignments.  The classes use the software programs Corel Draw and Painter.  With these programs, students are able to create digital images by simulating techniques they would use in the studio.
“Digital imaging involves working with digital cameras, scanning photographs and turning them into computer files,” said Bowen.  “You can put an image on the screen and manipulate it until it becomes art.”

It is predicted that new computer technology will change the way art will be created in the business world.
“Commercial art in the next five years will become 100 percent electronic,” said Bowen.  “The printing industry is close to being 100 percent electronic, and photography is almost all electronic.”
While computer art has been making advances in the business world, Bowen believes that traditional art will never be replaced by technology.
“Computer art will join with traditional art, it will not replace traditional art,” he said.  “You may be able to create art on the screen, but you don’t have the thrill of the aesthetics, like the smell of the turpentine when oil painting, and the feeling of the brushes on canvas.”
Sprite agrees that traditional art could not be replaced by computer art.
“They are both different [ways to create art], but they’re both fun,” he said.  “I wouldn’t just do computer art, because I like painting too.”

One main difference between computer art and traditional art is that the computer can help people who are not traditional artists create images.
“This opens the field of art to a wider group of people,” said Bowen,  “those that don’t necessarily have drawing skills.”
Classes in computer art are becoming valuable to many non-art majors, especially business and education majors.
“The class would be useful for anybody that wants to put an image in front of somebody, using it in brochures, an Internet web page or in some other way,” said Bowen.
He explains that while art majors find some aspects of the class easier than the students with other majors, both backgrounds bring different skills to the class.
 “People who are technology oriented help the aesthetic people learn the computer skills, and the art majors help the students less familiar with art with the aesthetics,” said Bowen.  “They can help each other, and they do.”

As computer technology is constantly changing, Bowen expects that his Intro to Computer Art and Digital Imaging classes will also be changing.
 “I think they will be evolving courses,” said Bowen.  “Computer art changes so fast, and its hard to keep up with computer technology.”
While Bowen’s classes are already using the most up-to-date computer technology available, he hopes that his future classes can involve more use of the digital camera and photo technology.  In the meantime, however, the combination of art and technology offer a little bit of something for everyone.

VEGAS!!
The city of lights!  The city that never sleeps!  Drinking and gambling.  A whole strip of hotels with casinos for you to spend your hard earned money — maybe even come back with a little in your pocket.
“But, Chandra,” you are saying.  “I don’t gamble.  I don’t drink.”
Or perhaps, “but, Chandra, I’m not twenty-one yet, so I can’t gamble or drink.”
Well you have come to the right person.  Because I know how you feel.  But there is nothing to worry about.  Las Vegas knows you are there and it accommodates.
Check out New York, New York to see the city but not the gun fire; Paris, if college is costing a little more than expected and there isn’t enough to go across an ocean; or the MGM Grand, complete with its own theme park.
Then there is a whole downtown area known as Fremont Avenue.  Here there is a covered walk complete with a light show that starts every hour on the hour after dark.
There is Coca-Cola world, where you can see how Coca-Cola is made, view old Coca-Cola commercials, drink as much Coca-Cola as your bladder can handle, and sample drinks from around the world made by . . . you guessed it — Coca-Cola!
Try the Hard Rock Cafe, where you can see concerts of some of the best, or the Stratosphere, where you can ride a roller coaster or a ride that goes up and then free falls back down.  And both of these rides are hundreds of feet high!  There are dozens of arcades, and most of the hotels have their own roller coasters.
And this is just the strip!
There are thrift stores and lots of retro stores, for those dressing straight out of the seventies,  and beyond even this there are malls!
See Merlin the Magician beating a dragon; a volcano show; a water show.  Take an animal walk.
There are also air plane rides, helicopter rides and skydiving sites.  You can hike or take a trip in a raft.  You are right by the mountains.  Go camping!
On the wilder side, you can get pierced, get a tattoo, or even GET MARRIED!  BY ELVIS!
So next time you’re looking for something exciting, don’t overlook one of the nations best spots,  Las Vegas!  And even if your under twenty-one, don’t forget that Las Vegas is still the place to be.

American writer Christopher Morley said, “the courage of the poets is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.”
Or is it sanity?
Depends on who you ask.
April is National Poetry Month   perfect timing for an exploration into the inner workings of a few of VWC’s talented writers who share a love of poetry, but whose beginnings, dreams and goals are inspired and guided by their own personal visions and feelings for the art.

Poetry is not an expression of the party line.  It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.
Allen Ginsberg
 

Crystal Walker
“My friend and I were just . . . listening to the radio,” junior Crystal Walker recalls.  There was a song writing contest announced; the rest is history.
“She dared me to do it,” Walker said.  “I actually chickened out of entering the contest,” she said, deferring to a “cheesy love song to a boy I liked at the time.  But that’s what got me started.”  She was 12 at the time.  She’s been writing ever since.
Co-president of the English Honor Society on campus and an avid participant in poetry slams, Walker’s poetry is often a study in introspection.
“I try to write about what’s real to me,” she said.  “It helps me understand and relate to the things going on in my life. . .  I keep a notebook by my bed to record any ideas, dreams and inspirations I might have.”
 

Poetry is an orphan of silence.  The words never quite equal the experience behind them. ~Charles Simic

Briana Muggli
Senior Briana Muggli’s indoctrination into the art form came at a very early age.  She remembers being eight years old, sitting at the dinner table when she told her father that she wanted to write poetry.  Muggli continues to write
“Just to get things out,” she said.
One such untitled poem describes a woman’s inner turmoil as “a gown of patches (a dress by Mondrian) . . . where the seam is a line that marks the joining of edges (the spine of the soul).”
Unpublished as yet, Muggli assists other writers via VWC’s literary magazine, “The Outlet,” which comes out every spring.  She’d like to see her own work in print someday,
“But it isn’t a priority,” she said.

The eye is the notebook of the poet.
James Russell Lowell

Mike Polityka
Senior Mike Polityka, on the other hand, has already had one of his poems published in Surrounded By Dreams, a collection of poems chosen by the National Library of Poetry.
Polityka writes whenever the mood strikes him.
“A lot of the poems that I write are lighthearted,” he said, exemplified, perhaps, by the title of one of his poems about a bane of college life: “No Great Grade Can Stay (with apologies to Robert Frost, the author of “Nothing Gold Can Stay).”  But he takes his writing seriously.
“I believe that once a poet, always a poet,” Polityka said.   And he plans to keep on writing.
As for their futures in the writing business: Walker hopes to go on to graduate school and eventually earn a Ph.D. in English.  She wants to start a literary magazine of her own by the time she’s 35.  Muggli’s eyes also rest on publication.  As for Polityka, he aspires to have his work published again, and is thinking about writing a textbook explaining approaches that people can take to help them write better.
What makes a poet?  It is as different for each person as the style of writing they choose. Perhaps Thomas Hardy said it best when he said that a poet “. . . express[es] the emotion of all ages and the thoughts of his own.”