Lystener Lyric 

There you stand, waiting for the truth to spill from your lips, but you can’t. You suck it all back in after thinking of the consequences of what you might do. They say the truth will set you free but they fail to mention that with the truth comes its own burdens.

It is Sunday. Your family has just arrived home from mass but what you are about to tell them may turn what was a beautiful morning into a gloomy one.

 

You finally build up the courage to tell them there is something that they should know. This is your day, the day you have been waiting for since you were four years old.

They stand there waiting for you to say something and the seconds of silence slowly tick by as they await your news.

 

Finally, you are able to utter the words out.

 

They are in shock, a blanket of silence spreads across the room as you desperately wait for someone to say something, anything.

The suspense is killing you, but you silently pray that they will choose to accept you for who you are. That their religious beliefs don’t stand in their way.

After all you are their daughter, sister, granddaughter, niece, cousin and dear friend. These bonds that you hold must stay strong.

 

After what seems like forever your parents speak up, they tell you that no matter what you do, who you choose to be, how you choose to act upon it, they will always support you.

 

You are their baby.

 

Sadly not all of your family shares the same opinion. You lost many people that were closest to you, people you thought would always be a part of your life seem to vanish almost as quickly as you say the words,

“ I am gay . ”

But you knew what might happen, what the consequences of your coming out might entail.

 

You are bothered by your loss, but a sense of freedom calms your soul.

 

No more hiding.

 

You are who you are and you choose to embrace and celebrate that being gay just makes you more extraordinary.

 

 

 

 

 

Mandalas

       For our Mandala Project, we used reflective techniques on Adobe Illustrator to create our own unique mandala drawings. We finished with a copy of our drawings printed on various textures, of which I choose Rosegold colored metal sheet. This project taught us to use lines and shapes to create a symmetric masterpiece.

This is an image is a digital version of my completed Black and white laser mandala.

 

 

 

 

 

Artist Statement

       During the process of creating my mandala in Adobe Illustrator I learned how to use many useful tools. We were able to express ourselves through this piece with the various artistic brushes and designs. Creating the mandala was interesting because you got to see everyone’ personal sense of style through the use of brushes, varying objects and lines. I valued the simplicity of the black and white image and how it could still show so much detail and uncover ones’ style.

This is an image of my completed colored mandala.

 

 

 

 

Social and Civic Responsibility Research Paper

 

The Not So Glamorous life of a Model

       Many people believe that Instagram modeling is a glamorous lifestyle that they wish they could be a part of, what they often don’t realize is that it is actually causing more harm than good in our society. The way they harm people is by showing off their lavish lifestyles but leave out the pain and suffering it takes for them to make you believe their life is perfect and so are they. Many adults know what the truth about these people but it still affects them.As for the youth, they are being destroyed by these types of people because they kill their self confidence and make them feel as though they are not as beautiful or well off.

       There has always been ways that different types of media have had negative and positive effects on the world’s youth. However it was only in the past decade that social media like Instagram, Facebook and snapchat have become part of the worlds everyday life. Before there wasn’t sites or apps that kids could spend all of their time scrolling throw to observe their peers and the influencers that they look up too all around the world. The first social media site was called Six Degrees and was created in 1997, this site allowed you to create a profile and then friend other users. At first it wasn’t a big hit and it wasn’t until the 2000s when these type of sites started to gain popularity. It started with sites like Myspace and then Facebook and continued to expand greatly from there. Now you will find that almost every teenager with access to technology owns a social media account like; Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat. It has now become the normality for kids to spend hours and hours each day scrolling through their feeds or responding to their Snapchat “streaks”. From this media world many people began to attract a large following such as Instagram models, they became the beautiful, “perfect” men and women who could torture the minds of the youth one bikini picture at a time.

       From the beaches of the Bahamas straight to your phone as you sit on the couch, comes the bikini shots of perfectly toned model as she travels the world. Living the lavish lifestyle of free getaways, clothes and all sorts of products, most people envy lifestyle models after all they seem to maintain the perfect life right? This is what most people think as they scroll through the hundreds of posts on their feed, dreaming of looking like a model. To be able to have a tiny waist, perfectly toned abs, chiseled facial structure and a fantastic wardrobe, that’s the dream.  These “lifestyle” models most often convey non-realistic lifestyles, they make people feel bad about all that they dont have and can’t be.

       What you didn’t see in that bikini post is the hundreds of other photos taken to achieve the perfect angle or that maybe she didn’t eat at all that day for fear of not looking skinny enough. Young Australian model Essena O’Neill, decided to come clean and unveil what really goes on behind the scenes of posts. In one of her posts where her abs look especially toned, she wrote “NOT REAL LIFE – took over 100 in similar poses trying to make my stomach look good. Would have hardly eaten that day.” She speaks of hardly eating and taking so much time just to get one picture. What she decided to do was go back and re-caption all her photos describing to her followers what extremes she had to go to just so she could feel like she could satisfy everyone. “I was lost, with serious problems so beautifully hidden … If anything my social media addiction, perfectionist personality and low self esteem made my career,” she said. This goes to show how hard of an impact being a social media model can affect them and the people watching them. How is it that something that causes so much pain can still draw so much attention. What is it that keeps people browsing, Essena O’Niell continues to explain, “Over-sexualisation, perfect food photos, perfect travel vlogs – it is textbook how I got famous. Sex sells, people listen to pretty blondes, I just happened to talk about veganism a trending thing on YouTube.” Shocked, probably not because there really isn’t anything overwhelming about those topics, but one thing probably drew your attention in. Sex, the word can make people feel and think many different things, it intrigues people with its power. One thing so simple yet complex can draw your attention and make you keep scrolling. “People listen to pretty blondes”, a statement made by Essena O’Niell in the previous quote, how does this make you feel? What is your reaction when hearing it? Does it shock you that someone would say such a thing? Or are you shocked because you know it’s true? This is the feeling that you are left with because you know it’s horrible but there’s nothing you can do to change it and its rapidly growing follower count.

       The most important thing for people is remaining healthy, well studies are showing that the most affected by the false advertising of social media models are young girls. Often enough it can be said that kids between the ages of 10-18 tend to spend the a large sum of time on social media. Since they are spending so many hours on these apps and websites they are being exposed to more and more false advertising and it is affecting their physical and mental health. These models are showing kids what they think they should want to look like or aspire to be like but it is just affecting their mental health in a treacherous way. One young fashion loving lady, decided to share her feelings of what it is like to grow up surrounded by these “perfect” people and wish you looked like them, “You see these beautiful girls with perfect bodies and chiseled faces and it makes you feel bad about yourself and makes you question your beauty.” It is unbelievable that at the age of 17 a person could feel that self conscious all because of some photographs on social media. Actually it’s not crazy because it is happening everywhere and to everyone, some people are just affected more harshly than others. After getting a response from a teenagers point of view, one mom stepped up to show her concern on the matter, “ When i was a young girl I did not have access to all the things you kids have nowadays with social media, this benefitted me because I didn’t have to grow up with the pressure of looking like these social media stars that are such a large presence in our kids lives today”

       What can we do to fix this situation? As a start people need to take a second to educate themselves and others around them, that Instagram is not real life. The perfect portrayal of a fancy dessert at some restaurant you could never afford, is not important. People need to take a step back and look at what is real in their life and what is worth paying attention too. Little girls and boys need a chance to grow up without the threat of social media models affecting their self confidence. Everyone is beautiful, everyone has a purpose and no bikini picture should come between them and who they were meant to be.

 

 

 

Aboriginal Art

       I chose a jellyfish for my Aboriginal project because I wanted to do a sea animal. A jellyfish is very free flowing and I’d like to think that my personality is pretty easy going in a similar way. I also think that many jellyfish are beautiful and can consist of amazing colors.

       When it came to painting my Aboriginal piece,  incorporating the elements of art was very important. Movement was one element that I found especially important for my painting. Jellyfish have a lot of parts that move a lot and the ocean has a ton of movement as well so I had to work to make both items look as though they were moving and flowing. To add detail to the Jellyfish I used a lot of patterns and shapes to give it a cool and intricate design. I also used dark and like colors to show contrast and highlights. My blue color scheme was based on the fact that the ocean is blue and it happens to be my favorite colors as well.

 

Movie Poster

Shameless

       For this design project we had to create a movie poster and ticket based off a story we created. My story is about a young woman who lives an impoverished life in a bad neighborhood. From a young age she had to learn to take care of herself and her siblings. However she lives another secret life, she spends many nights with wealthy men on lavish dates. These men stay unaware of her origin and the rough life she lives, this double life she lives is her way to escape the struggle.

    To produce the movie posted for this story I started by sketching fonts and objects on an iPad Pro. Then I transferred those sketches to illustrator where I revised and improved them. At the beginning I struggled a lot with coming up with a poster that represented my story and also followed the simplistic poster style. For the poster, I started by creating a lot and slowly cutting it down to main objects until it turned into something I liked. For the ticket and envelope I tried to reuse the poster and then wrapped it in a relatively simple envelope that had the outline of a finger over a woman’s lips. This was to represent, the main character’s “lips being sealed”. This just added dramatic affect to her having a secret.

 

This is an image of my movie poster created in Adobe Illustrator.

This is an image of my movie ticket created in Adobe Illustrator. 

 

 

 

This is an image of my ticket envelope made in Adobe Illustrator.