Leporati - Final - Mustaches of my family

Koosmann - Project 2 - Essay

This project was centered on our identity and how we see ourselves as individuals; asking ourselves who we are and what makes us who we are. The first phase of this project was answering a series of questions about our parents, friends, religion, and our sexuality but the question that stood out to me the most was about our nationality. This question stood out to me because my nationality is something I do not think about of a daily basis as appose to an African American or Asian women would. As I thought about my nationality and the nationality of the people around me I realized how black and white (figuratively speaking) our world views nationality and where people come from. We are either, Caucasian, Asian, Hispanic, or African American. There is no middle, no specificity of where people come from.

            I had realized that everyone sees me as a young adult white female, that’s it. As I had this realization I felt like I was keeping my ancestors in the dark, never letting anyone see them.  I always knew that I was from many different places but I never brought it up in a conversation unless someone specifically asked.  So in light of this project I wanted to let people know who I am and what makes me, me.

            The title of this piece of work is WHO I AM. It is a booklet that pays homage to where I come from. The first two spreads are text that briefly says that I am more than what society sees as a young adult white female.  The next few spreads are illustrations created in Adobe Illustrator of simple landscapes or landmark in the places that I am from with text on each page saying “I am German, Norwegian, Swedish, French, and English” each in their own language”. I felt that putting that specific text in different languages instead of just leaving it in English gave it a more sincere feeling. After the end of those spreads I confirm, in a way, what the “I am German, Norwegian, etc.” text implied saying, “I am more than meets the eye.” All of the text through out the booklet is in my handwriting; I felt it made the piece more personal. 

            All of the pictures were created in illustrator. This was a challenge for me because there were a lot of details in a few of the pictures including Germany and France. The very first draft I had was with the countries flag in the background behind the text. I felt like this maybe to simple so I decided to put backdrops of each city or a landmark instead. The first time I drew them out they ended up looking a bit sketched and undone. I quite liked this because I thought it gave the pictures a childish quality that I thought went well with this piece as a whole.

            Overall I am quite pleased with out this piece turned out. 

Final Critique Identity

Project 2 Final- Nader Gharib

Alice Robinson - Final Crit

 

So I think the biggest problem I had with this project was making each poster integrative. Number 3 is one that could compare and contrast negative with positive, and number 2 also is an abstract way is me "protecting" nature as opposed to other destroying it. But numbers 1 and 4 are statements I live by, and that is it. By comparing some one else's religion or philosophy, it will goes against mine. By stating that "karma is real and if anyone doesn't believe me then they themselves are wrong"; that is wrong. This project was near impossible to do and I don't think I did a very good job of trying to make it into a poster. I also have a problem with all poster images are in different mediums, which I don't think is bad but its not ideal- to me. Overall, if given more time I think I could have done a much better job and would have had all of them hand drawn. I would have love to hand draw all of these because it would have been more personal. 

Koosmann - Project 2 Final

Nicolle Rezwin- Identity Final Critique

The name of my piece is called It is Hard to Have Two Religions. This piece is by me, Nicolle Rezwin and I have been working on this piece from October 17-November 4 2013. I used Adobe Illustrator in designing my piece.

As mentioned above I used Adobe Illustrator to create my piece. In Adobe Illustrator, I mainly used the pen tool, image trace, live paint, and the gradient tool. The main subject in this piece is the Catholic and Jewish religion and how they differ. The secondary subject is the differences between my mother and father. This piece is an integrative piece because it compares the two religions, there is strong variation and comparison of scale, and close attention to cropping is used.

This piece has a lot to do with my identity. Growing up, I was fortunate to celebrate two religions, the Catholic and Jewish faith. My Mother is catholic and my father is Jewish. In my piece, I have broken down my experiences. Without the experience of celebrating both of these religions, my life would be different and I would have a different identity. With both religions in to four compositions on 11 by 17 inch paper. In my fist piece, I compared having to celebrate different traditions such as decorating the Christmas tree and eating Hanukkah chocolate gelt. In my second piece, I have compared the two beliefs that my mother and father follow. These are the catholic priest and the Jewish rabbi. The next piece that I composed was of the different food our family eats on major holidays. For Christmas and Easter our family eats ham for mother, and for holidays such as Hanukkah, Yom Kippur, and Rosh Hashanah our family eats corned beef for my father. In the last piece, I used the pen tool and drew an image of me. In the background, I have the colors purple to represent the catholic religion and blue to represent the Jewish one, I am wearing a dark blue shirt because that is what you get when you mix purple and blue together. It is also symbolic because those two religions are a part of me. I am not one or the other. In this piece, I compared my piece to work of former students in other blogs past and present. I really liked the illustration aspect to their pieces and I wanted to bring that in to my own.  The events and ideas that shaped my approach are from past such as how I grew up.

The purpose of this piece is to show that two religions can be hard to celebrate. Celebrating two religions is not a bad thing and if not makes one more acceptable and gives a different perspective of other people’s religion and beliefs. I want my audience to view having different religions as a good thing.

Overall, I thought my project was successful. The strengths are the deeper meanings it has and the illustration. The weaknesses are my first couple of drafts because I felt like I could develop them more.