Final Project Reflection

I was a little bummed I had to rush through my presentation of my final project and wish I could have had more time to present. Also, so many people had left by the time I presented mine that not only did I have to rush through explaining my project, but by the time I was done there wasn't any time for feedback. I was pretty happy with the way my alternative map came out aesthetically. It definitely rendered the look I was going for but wish I had more time to sort out the different meridians so that they led to my three spots (where my dogs live most the time and go to the bathroom) that corresponded with the part of the body affected by that meridian. I tried doing this with a few of them but I think I could have done a more thorough organization of them if I had more time for this project. I wish I could have had more feedback because I would love to know what things really worked and what parts I could improve in this piece. If I ever have time I would love to explore this project again and expand on this meridian concept of chinese medicine in correspondence with my daily paths with my dogs.

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Here is a summary of a project I completed earlier in the semester, check out my website to see the rest of it!

For this project I chose to use an image of the town (Hightstown, NJ) I went to boarding school in. I wanted to dramaticisize the landscape and the emotions 

this place held for me while I attended this school. The landscape is flat and sunny where we as students w

ere supposed to stay symbolizing the safeness bubble we were restrained to. As you move further away from campus toward this menacing cave/mountain landscape, this is symbolizing the fear and risks we all took when moving towards this monstrous outside world. See, we were supposed to stay on campus unless we had permission from our parents that we were allowed to leave. The school was in the middle of a town with a large lake. My boarding school was on one side of the lake while the rest of the world was on the other. The sunny, but rocky landscape that is thriving with vegetation is my campus while the cold, icy mountain range across the lake represents the town students (like me) often snuck off into. I had many friends kicked out of school for being found partaking in illegal activities and so the shadowed landscapes represents this darkness and sadness associated with this mysterious place across the lake. I got in trouble numerous times for being found in town when I wasn't supposed to but it was too hard to resist. Everyone knew they couldn't go over there but the mystery of the life bustling around there was too much to resist. My images mainly focus from the viewpoint of looking at this intimidating landscape because I felt like most of my time I spent looking out at this other world and very little time on the other side looking back.

Final Map Project: Work In Progress

As I am finishing up working on my final project, I thought I should introduce some of the ideas I've been putting together to see if they actually make sense in the big picture! I have looked at a few artists who have used maps as inspiration for their artwork (2 of them I mention below) and really took pieces of ideas from each of them to create my final map of Saint Mary's. I was very interested in using paths as a narration of my Saint Mary's College experience with a dog. Sophomore year I moved off campus and rescued a black lab mix puppy from the local animal shelter. My experience of college without a dog and then with a dog is really drastically different and so I wanted to somehow represent this new life I sort of came into when I got Lilah. 

I was pretty stressed out Freshman year and homesick (I never went home bc I live in NJ and had no car). I had some fun but for the most part  I was pretty sad and lonely Freshman year of college. In October of Sophomore year, I got Lilah at 3 months old and from then on I've had the best college experience. I was always running around trying to find people to watch her when I was in class, starting to train her in my free time, going for walks with her when I needed to relax, and cuddled with her when I was lonely. I loved coming home to her because she was always so happy to see me and I knew she depended on me and trusted me. She was like my security blanket and she never failed to make me smile and ease my stress.

I wanted to take this concept of feeling happy and stress free and relate it to acupuncture, something I have recently gotten really into. The different body meridians that energy flows through captivates me. It boggles my mind how just pressure on certain tiny points along these meridians releases an array of positive feelings and energy. This same type of a energy and feelings I get through acupuncture are what I feel like my college experience has been like with Lilah. I decided to use the 12 main meridians as pathways for representing the paths her and I travel on daily, and numerous times a day. We have gotten to know the roads and trails around her pretty well. For places that we spend the most idol time (at home and where she likes to go to the bathroom) I use Chinese symbols that display a movie of what that spot looks like from Lilah's point of view. I decided I wanted this map to look like a notebook or journal where I write down important places and information as I go along learning. 

This project is almost done and I am still working out the kinks of this idea but this is the general and summarized version of what I have been doing!

Artist: Alex Perry

Artist Alex Perry is another artist I found who explores maps through artwork. This particular piece entitled, Weather Fronts, was displayed in the North House Gallery in London along with other artists with the same inspiration in common; maps. This piece by Perry explores the concept of map making through weather patterns. Perry uses screen printing, applique, and machine embroidery in her work. In this piece in particular Perry has screen printed an aerial image of a location. She then uses different embroideries on top of this image to display the particular weather patterns associated with this piece.

I really liked this piece because you can see the artists hand in the work. Whether Perry used a machine to embroider the images on this or not, the artwork looks very home made. Perry's style of map making sort of resembles a child's view of a map in the simplistic shapes and primary color palette however, a deeper meaning is embedded beneath this simple surface. I think this makes an interesting contrast. As I work on my final map project I realize that I am very interested in using paths to illustrate a narration of some sort. Perry's Weather Fronts may not be about narration but the type of mark making the embroidered patterns make insinuates some sort of narration to me that I want to follow. Are these weather patterns ominous? Do they represent calm weather? The fact that I do not know what these patterns mean generates a lot of curiosity about this piece for me. 

This piece really inspires me to think about different ways of representing paths and I realize I definitely want to include paths in my project that tell a narration without the viewer necessarily knowing what this story is through the representative lines. I want them to explore my piece and try to work through the images I present to them to come up with a conclusion.