Explorations

Exploration

“How can you find, explore, and/or expand your passion?”

For the Explorations Project we were given creative freedom to pick a topic we might want to learn, improve upon, or continue. I had a hard time picking a topic that I wanted to explore because I had so many ideas but also had to take into account the time frame I was working with. After a lot of brainstorming and going back and forth between various topics I settled on learning how to mosaic tile and create art with it. I choose this topic because last summer I traveled to Sicily, Italy and saw this famous cathedral that was composed of entirely mosaic artwork. I ended up bring back some of the mosaics which is what inspired my Explorations.

Process: I started my project with research the techniques of mosaic tiling and what materials I would need for this project. I would need various tiles, a strong adhesive, sandpaper, tile grout, and some sponges. I also needed and actual surface that I was going to create my design on. My initial idea was to do a mirror but I pivoted to terracotta pots based on what I could find easily available to me. My next step of the process was to lay out my design and patterns with the mosaics so I could get and idea of my layout. Once I had stuck all my tiles to my pots my next step was to put the tile grout on. But last minute I also made the decision to create another small artwork but on a flat piece of wood. The hardest part of this whole process was applying the grout. The grout when applied dried over some of the tiles in a way that I wasn’t able to remove it. Making the overall result especially of the big pot look a little messy. Additionally when the grout fully dried I noticed some gaps and cracks. To try and fix this I went in with a palette knife and tried to individually apply the grout between the tiles. While this worked to cover the gaps and cracks it also left an uneven texture of the grout rather than a smooth end result. To fix this on the pots the next day I went in with sandpaper and tried to sand down the more uneven edges for a better result. The flat wood mosaic work was a bit of a fail because I used a lot of the while tiles and with the white grout they disappeared. Also the tiles were texture with ridges so the grout kind of got stuck in between the ridges. Below I have linked my final Explorations slideshow that shows my entire process with photos and the end result.

Video of Explorations Project presentation:

Reflection: From this project I feel that I have definitely learned and gained a lot. One thing that it taught me was time management. A lot of time goes into the entire process from the brainstorming and sketching to the actual completion of the piece and so making sure your organized with your time and not picking something too ambitious for the time given. I am also glad that not everything was super easy and smooth in the process so that i was able to adapt to the situation I was in like when the tile grout wasn’t working out like I wanted it to. It was also nice to be able to have so much creative freedom with this project because it meant I could work with various different medias and try out new things. I do think maybe if I had the chance to do this again I would think of something that combined a skill I already know and have learned with something I don’t know much able, so I would have a good balance in my project. I have many ideas for possible Zenith Project ideas and am excited to see what I might create and also what new skills I will be learning next year.

Poetry

We started the poetry units with a series of mini workshops with Ms. Moore a published poet. Through her workshops we learned about a lot of different types of poetry and ways to make a poem more meaningful. These workshops are where we created 3 rough poem drafts, that then we had the option of further developing for our actual poem production. I choose to a poem about daydreaming and the feeling of it contrasting with nightmares we get. I kept mine short and concise trying to get to the point of my poem across well. I included a lot of rhyming because personally that is something that I enjoy in other peoples poems. Overall I am really proud of my final poem.

My poem’s inspiration came from the Cento poem workshop that we did at the beginning of the unit. This gave me my inspiration of writing a poem about something similar or in the realm of dreams. I think being engaged in that workshop helped me a lot later on when writing the draft of my poem. My mentor poem analysis also played a big role in giving me inspiration for the lining and formatting of my poem. Once I had these two ideas in my head I knew I wanted to write my poem how I had envisioned it in my head. When writing out my draft of my poem I didn’t have any real formula for writing it. I just wrote whatever felt right to me and figured I could go back and clean it up. I included lots of rhyming phrases in my poem because that is something that I typically enjoy when reading poems. I also included repetition of phrases like daydreams and nightmares which I had gotten inspiration from my meteor poem analysis. My poem is broken up mostly in the same way with a stanza with three lines, then one long line then it repeats. I intentionally choose to do this so when reading my poem there would be some type of flow to it. Some of the feedback that benefited me and that I’m glad I was open to was changing the punctuation of my poem. This made me think about how each stanza was meant to be read and how I wanted to place emphasis on various lines in my poem. While I do think my poem is a little short I feel like it does a good job of being precise with conveying my emotions. But I think in the future given the opportunity I could revise it to be a little longer. As for the recitation aspect of my poem I spent a while just reading it out loud to understand if I liked the wording and formatting. Since I had already been reading it out loud to myself I had already pretty much memorized it, so on the day of the recitation it wasn’t a challenge for me to recite it fully from memory. I feel this allowed me to be more focused  and engaged in reciting my poem and taking into account where I pause and place emphasis on because I wasn’t worried about reading the next line of my poem. The poetry writing process to me was the best writing experience of this year. I felt free when writing and unlike some of the other writing experiences I enjoyed every single step of the way. It has left me with a sense of accomplishment and I am glad I was able to end the year on a high note in my writing experience. 

I feel like my production conveyed the meaning and the spirit of my women quite well. I think this is due to the music choices I made which is like a dreamy whimsical beat to match the daydream theme of my poem. But I also illustrated a few visuals that helped convey certain words that I wanted emphasized or that were a big part of my poem. I also feel in my poetry production I used my creative freedom the most for my visuals that went with my poem. I wanted the animations of my poem to only be for certain words or phrases that I wanted to highlight in my poem.