Work of Curiosity in 4D Intermedia

  This piece measures the countless times I walked the paths between my house and my cousins' houses. Because we only lived 0.5 miles apart at the most, I spent a lot of time with my cousins growing up. This closely-knit relationship I have with each one has undoubtedly impacted who I am and how I have come to regard family today.  Each of the various paths is marked by a story, and each different color represents a different cousin (8 in total, including my sister). To prepare for this, I called each cousin and asked them to tell their favorite silly, funny, or sweet story of us growing up. From a map, I sketched out the literal roads and corners I walked, then wrote the stories (in my own words) in that shape.  I talk to my cousins often, but not nearly often enough. Calling them out of the blue was lovely. I was surprised at how many of them picked up the phone right away, how most of them said "ohh, that's so hard to choose one!" in response to my prompt, and how ...

  This design began as a trail of snail slime over the roof of the science building, as seen from the painting studio window. Soon, with questions of action and exposure in mind, I transformed the design into two frogs leaping toward each other on the second floor doors of the art building. I am fairly satisfied with the design and final product. I think it utilizes the window space well, has intriguing moments of action to pull the audience closer, and a good balance between small detail and big picture design. I especially like how the blank white wall (in the second photo) creates a visual focal point around the two frogs and focus of the design. Additionally, I am excited by the arcing, leading lines of the frogs' paths create movement and direction within the design. This works anywhere the viewer stands, too!  There are three pairs of yellow eyes peeping around the edges of the door, if you look close enough to notice them. While they do fade back a little bit because of...

Drawing 1 This is a drawing of a climber standing on the Thank God Ledge on Half Dome in Yosemite, and I found it interesting that when I went to wipe the image away, the words "Thank God" were left behind. I actually really disliked the first drawing (on the left), but kept it as part of my project because I thought the remnants of "Thank God" in chalk were telling about all sorts of experiences climbers have when scaling walls. After discovering the difficulties of drawing with climbing chalk on skin, I thought about my next drawings differently so that I would be more satisfied with the outcomes. The next four drawings are based on the names of some of the most difficult and well known climbs. This felt like a natural progression from being intrigued by the name, "Thank God", and the power that names take on when the climb or the climber becomes significant.  Drawing 2 Me I Eat Dust (5.15a) is one the hardest climbs in the world. I can only imagine how ...

  I had fun recreating this scrappy, wind chime-like object. Simple, joyful, small child kind of fun. I felt no pressure to have clean knots, equally distanced strings, or perfectly alternating scraps of metal and glass. Instead, I put myself in the mindset of a child. Who cares if one string is longer than another? Not the child. Does it matter if there is only one piece of glass on this string and none on the next? No, it doesn't matter. In fact, this care free style of creating is  the spirit of the object.  As I recreated this childhood object, I found myself uncomfortable with constructing this in such a messy way. But when I imagined myself as the object's original artist, I realized messy and uneven and non-color coordinated was exactly what I was supposed to be. I felt silly (in a good way) sitting on the ground, holding down one knot with a heel while tying a second with my two hands. I put the same kind of thought into choosing my next object to attach as a chil...