Introduction

I feel proud to present the third volume of this book – a collaborative project of student writing and artwork created at Lake Washington Institute of Technology. Students in the English language learning (ELL) program wrote stories representing places and people in their lives. These stories were interpreted by art students and created visual representations through drawing and painting techniques learned in their classes. A new element of the project this year included an in-person interview between the ELL and and art students to get to know each other before creating the work. Students met in the library, guided by questions to have an informal meeting time and get to know each other a bit before creating work for this joint project. I hoped to add to the cultural humility aspect of getting to know people from different backgrounds. I am grateful to the students for sharing their work with our community and publicly, and the effort and dedication to this project by the ELL instructors (Kelly Cover-Tam, Corinne Tubbs, and Karyna Tytar) and art instructor (Amber Chiozza).
Sue Wozniak, Librarian

This is the second year I had the privilege of collaborating with Faculty Librarian Sue Wozniak and the amazing professors in the English Language Learning program. Sue reached out to  me about having LWTech students create a visual response to creative writings created by the English Language Learning students. My students in my stacked painting course (ART 111/255/256) and ART 121 Introduction to Drawing created either direct illustrations to the stories, or created their own interpretations based on their own experiences and feelings. Students from my drawing course created illustrations for their spacial perspective projects, utilizing concepts that they learned throughout the quarter such as linear perspective, atmospheric perspective, and value structures. Students from the painting course incorporated their project with their landscape project, either directly illustrating the locations mentioned or creating a loose interpretation on a place that gave them feelings like those mentioned in the story. Visual art and writing share a creative chord, both attempt to share our individual experiences with others. It was a pleasure to watch one student create written works and see how other students could translate that into something visual. This type of collaboration, written works to visual works and vice versa, is a long standing tradition through creative humanity, and I’m glad to see Lake Washington Institute of Technology integrating this type of collaboration onto our campus, proving that there are infinite ways to connect with each other as people.
Amber Chiozza, Art Professor