Discovering What Exactly This Life Becomes

I discovered that spray painting the hats works just as well if not better! I like the effect that I got from the metallic touches on the hat, and it represents my idea of my grandpa being a strang and durable material. Obviously I am using his ACTUAL hats so its a bit more centimental. The only thing I need to work on is how I am gonna make it completely silver....maybe another layer of spray paint?

This is the practice hat I made for my charettes project. I planned on having it be made of completely wire, but I did not get my desired effect, so I needed to decide how to emphasize the hats and the hard material successfully in a different (and frankly cheap) way

(What my project will be similar to, but more awesome)

So...I am on the discussion of self and other right now. And even though I should be writing about my project, I wanna write about this girl. Christine Meder. So she's pretty awesome. Today in charettes I had a pretty rough day, and I had this awesome friend to make me feel better. She wrote a nice note for my door, and let me gem about it and threatened to beat up the person who caused my pai. I'm so thankful for my best friend, and I hope everyone has someone in their life that affects them like that. I fee she is a big part of my self even though she is an other, because she helps me recognize who I actually am and helps me to do what I would do, not what society THINKS I should do.......we give no fucks. I love her

By the way, this is a picture of my sister acting like a cowboy in my family's Dairy Queen......I figured i'd add it since I love my sister and I use her a lot for my artwork

Charettes Self. Is it so simple as to say that we watched a movie in class? Yes.....Kidding. Since when is anything ever that simple? We watched the video "Women Without Men" and it was quite thought provoking. The imagery was....amazing to say the least. There were faceless men stroking worn down prostitutes, girls watching themselves in the third person get raped by two brutal men, women flying through the air to inevitably hit the ground and meet there death...and oh, so much more. I found it compelling that we watched such a whimsical yet depressing movie. Normally there is not so much depth to those types of movies, and based off of interviews ive seen with the directors EVERYTHING was purposeful. Due to this movie I have thought of some questions in which I wrote as I was watching the movie. Quote. "Munis commits suicide -what lead her to that extent?" " 'A star dropped from the moon, two stars dropped from the moon, ______ and a galaxy was born' WHAT WERE THOSE FEW WORDS??" "Does this explain the healing process in a way?" "Why am I repulsed by fat people when i'm not skinny?" "Does that image relate to 'Christina's World' in any way?" Those are only a few questions that arose during class, and although some were irrelevant to the discussion of self and other, some I found very legitimate to help decipher what it is that defines self and other, No

interview with Shirin Neshat on the history and politics behind "Women without Men"

This poem inspired me. It inspired me to see the body for what it truly is, a deity. We talk about what makes ourselves relatable to others and vice versa, but before we do that I think we should go a step further. We should think about what it is that makes our body so great. What makes it so magnificent that creates this fascinating discussion about self and other. To appreciate what is so often undermined and unappreciated. This video just made me realize that the only way we can ever truly understand what connects ourselves and others is to truly understand and appreciate ourselves fully first. I APPRECIATE MYSELF.

Our self is made up of so many others, including the people that we are in relationships with. So this post is specifically for "my other" or my (pretty damn recent) ex boyfriend. Even though people don't like to admit that who they surround themselves with changes them, it does, and my ex definitely changed me. Now for some it's for worse, but luckily mine was for the better, so I can only be thankful and be happy that it was a positive experience rather than a damaging one.

Self and other. Question of the day. Actually, of the semester. I'm not sure how to answer it. I've been contemplating everything we learn in class from the movies we watch to he discussion we have, and as I learn I realize that the things we learn just further support how I feel. I think that self is just a mixing of others and how they affect us. It is just that simple. We take in everything, our life is but a sponge sitting on a kitchen sink in some typical shitty suburban house. There's kids running around after soccer practice and dogs laying on the kitchen floor while the wife makes dinner and gazes out of the window. This sponge, his sponge take up everything. From the air it is surrounded by to the surfaces it touches to the liquids and dirts that it picks up. It absorbs absolutely everything, and although sometimes there is more of one thing than another, it all the same has been affected. And when life starts to take its toll, the sponge wears down. It doesn't do it's job we'll enough, and starts to fade, getting smaller and smaller. Eventually, the sponge is thrown away by the middle aged soccer mom, but in life, things aren't so simple. After a point in time self and other gets a bit complicated. Our self is made up of others and our experiences all throughout life, but when we get to a certain age our pieces of other begin to leave us. With old age and loss of memories we lose exactly what it is that made us ourself. In a way we reverse, and what once made us ourself leaves. I guess the question that is arising from this is what exactly happens after you lose yourself? Well many things could happen. You can die off. Simple right? You can go to a nursing home, in which others try to restore yourself, but your brain just can't tolerate that. You can be taken care of by friends and family....or you can become the crazy lady that goes to the grocery store and yells at the bags of chips asking "Why aren't you answering me Antoine???" Our lives consist of a fulcrum and two ending points, almost like a seesaw. We have birth. A wonderful, beautiful, creation of life that is probably the most pure thing in the world today. Then we transition through childhood and whatnot, but we eac the fulcrum of our lives at the age of around 30-40. Here we have experienced life. We have become our own person and accept who it is we have become. I a way, I believe, that this fulcrum is when you make peace with yourself. After that fulcrum though, you begin to revert to your more naive stages. You lose those memories, lose those experiences, and things begin to fade in your mind. Your kids ask "mommy, do you know how to do this problem?" On their math homework and you draw a blank. You begin to forget what high school was like, or what the name of that really hot calculus professor you had was. All of this becomes a distant nothing. You fade, and once you begin to reach the other end of the seesaw, and to become a noticeable nobody". You are just another person in society, generally disregarded by others. Then, the time comes which your last breath is taken, and your noticeable nobody becomes an actual nobody, and you are sent away to a better place. This all is something I believe to be a relevant truth. When is it that life decides we must stop experiencing life? I don't think that we will ever know the true answer, but it is something we must ponder (which I believe is the purpose of charettes self). pour quelqu'un qui ne se connaissent pas vraiment, ils le présentent comme tels aux yeux d'autres

My own personal touch on our quilted piece. A picture of my dog Max when he was still a very small puppy, because everybody loves dogs:)

So the second day of our charettes class we went over our projects that showed our similarities and difference of Kidist and ourselves. Our group (Christine, Lizzie, Stephanie, Lindsey and I) seemed to be well received by Kidist and everybody else. Our project was bright, colorful, meaningful, well executed and creative. But in a way I wonder if that was how we should have truly represented ourselves. Are we bright and colorful. These projects are going to really make me think. That might not be the best, seeing as how the mood I am in is rather volatile and I don't see a positive outlook coming from is any time soon, but it's necessary. I'll be asking the simple questions, like "What is life?" "Why me?" "Is this fate or my decision?" All of those questions that nobody thinks about, but yet they need to be thought about. The charettes class just made me take the class a bit more seriously then the time before.....I know I need to bring my A game, and speak up, and not let our class be the boring class. It will be an adventure.

Our collaboration of the three groups

So far today this is our collaborative project we've done

Most recent artwork

The video above shows the creative process in which i went about making our first group assignment, which was based off of the in class discussion that we had.