Bare, Basic, Beauty: A Senior Amplified Art Project by Christopher Ogaz (2015)

Our amplified unit was easily one of the most unique and interesting projects, not simply because it was one of our last units at Freestyle, but because it was a culmination of so many different elements. We started out by implementing various different components of our blink project where we used techniques such as meditation, quick writes and fine art to unearth our subconscious. As Malcolm Gladwell, the writer of the book Blink explains, there are parts of our cognition that are ‘locked behind a closed door'. Our use in these unique practices were compiled into a single piece of art in hopes to gain personal insight on our own thoughts and cognitions that normally get trapped behind this ‘door'. There were three primary components that the amplified artwork required: 2 lines from one of our edited free writes, implementation of our fine art pieces (the mandala, the zentangle, and zentangle word), and an unusual photograph. After these components were compiled, our goal was to craft a single piece that collectively portrayed our subconscious feelings.

This piece was also created on our two year expertise platform that we have been strengthening these over our years at freestyle. We not only had to venture into self meditation (experimental unit), we had to take in part in spontaneous quick writes (also experimental) , create physical medium artwork , on top of using our photography and technological skills (almost all units). To capture my photo of the bee I had to use a DSLR camera using the RAW setting, Adobe Photoshop to edit the photos, and used Google App Programs to write my pieces for english. After creating this artwork and reading my free writes, I believe that the message that I was trying to hone in on was the natural, yet ordinarily forgotten beauty of our world.