Conceptual

This was the beginning of the first of the two years at Freestyle Academy. First projects, first attempts at using many of the programs offered and first times exploring many concepts and art forms. More than anything, a few test brushstrokes to try the feel of what lies beyond.

The projects here were simpler, and executed without many the later acquired skills, lacking in knowledge and efficiency but that didn’t matter because, at least for me, that wasn’t the point. To me the point was to learn as much as possible, even if I could produce better work if I fell back into my comfort zone.

Here’s some of the poems that I wrote for English during this unit. Admittedly, not all of them are my best work, I didn’t feel the most comfortable writing poetry at the time. Some of them still hold up, some really don’t.

My first attempt was very timid, it helped that the poem was meant to be short, but you could tell I was attempting to hide in my shell for as much as it could be possible.

Dust

Not the most compelling composition and,

oh

this 

typography

but a first attempt is a first attempt.

 

This one, however, happened to work.

Time

The moment I’ll make a step

The world would begin anew

And again.

One

Two

 

The moment I think this thought,

The present

Becomes the past.

Nothing that ever has happened is now.

Now is what happens.

Ironically enough this one is about the flow and passage of time as we experience it. And to think this one would be the one to still somehow hold up to my standards…

This one however is significantly more sporadic and, for a lack of a better word, messy.

Questions

I really have to admit,

For the longest time

I did not know who I was

 

The questions kept,

Kept,

Kept,

Kept

And kept

Falling on me

with no

immediate answer to them.

 

Who? From where?

 

Why?

 

Those are not all the questions I have for myself

Just a fraction.

And I have even more for the world.

But now I have

At least some real answers

And that’s definitely better than having none.

 

It is strange,

 

But sometimes I do want to do silly things

Making cartoons for kids.

Making sure those stories are at least half as smart

As these I grew up with.

 

Make mistakes,

Drawings, more mistakes and more drawings and even more mistakes.

Learn from mistakes

Try again

All over the place, isn’t it? I had my passion for sure, but the execution unfortunately fell through. It’s very clumsy, to a frankly embarrassing degree, but it’s a good point of reference for who I was and what I was thinking at the time.

This was the year before Design and Digital Media switched places, with Design still being a required class, therefore, along with English I completed Design assignments. The two productions for this unit were photographs.

Here they are along with the artist statements.

One

I am exploring the feeling of excitement through the experience of walking alone.

The photograph showcases a book with a wood texture on the cover and a cartoony boat design on the front. It is laying on the ground which has a varied texture and it has a large blue paint splotch on it. It is outside in slightly dim natural light. The book is closed.

The book is a representation of the solitary spending of time, “walking alone” if you will. The symbol of a boat on the cover represents an inner journey while the paint splotch stands for creativity that can flourish while the person is alone. It is also dripping in a pattern that could suggest bleeding referring to the difficulties one faces while alone revealing the duality of such time. All of this is completely isolated from the background further showcasing isolation.

Overlap

The object of my photograph is two bike wheels overlapping each-other. It was taken in the early afternoon along with the rest of the shots I did for that project. We have a “balcony” in our first floor apartment that we primarily use to store all the bikes we’re not using on a daily basis. These two particular bikes belong to my mother and my sister who aren’t using them as much at the moment. There is also a lot of junk in the background that I was, admittedly, too lazy to fish out from behind the bikes. I choose those particular bikes because they both are bright and colorful which makes for a neat contrast.

I used a few adjustment layers to fix up the contrast just a little bit, no drastic changes there. I think I am getting used to them. That’s good because I know those are used often. I also attempted to blur out the background but I couldn’t really do it the proper way because I didn’t have enough time, so, instead I did a decent enough selection of the background and then made a copy of it on a separate layer on top of layer one and applied gaussian blur to it. Which is probably not the right way to do it, but it sort of works and that’s what counts.

You can tell that this was not within my comfort zone and the result really shows that. Nonetheless, I learned a lot from producing those two photos about photo editing – something I really didn’t do much of before.