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As an artist I created all my art based off of the things that I like, which range from music to my favorite cartoon characters. My art shows a piece of my personality, I am very child like but I also like the older of things life such as boomboxes and tapes.  I tried to incorporate myself in all of the art so that it would have a personally and passionate aspect to the art. Much of my artwork was inspired by things I would see and think of through my everyday life.​

My art used two mediums paint and colored pencils to add more life and creativity to the art. I would like to expand my mediums even though these two mediums are my favorite. I love art I think it is beautiful what a person can create and what that can mean to them. Even when something is perfect it is your creation that can be something beautiful and that's what I learned in the first quarter.

In the beginning of the quarter I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do for my pieces or what I wanted my pieces to convey but as I worked through all of the assignments I learned more about myself as an artist. When actually sitting down to work on a piece I found it wasn’t that difficult to be inspired. I would just look around me and see something that inspired me or I would think about something happening my life and would be inspired. I found that I didn’t have to know what I wanted a piece to symbolize before I started working on it but that I would find what it symbolized by working on it.

I collaborated on the ceiling tile with Kiamesso DaSilva. Initially, we wanted to paint steps, which would be inscribed with words in Arabic which would translate to “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” leading up to a golden door. In the background there would be swirls and other similar decorations. We decided a ceiling tile would not be the best medium to create this and decided instead to do ceiling tile inspired by sari patterns. We decided on painting a big pearly white swirl that would take up to tiles and decorate the edges around the swirl with small dots and other shapes to create an intricate border for the swirl. We chose to use cool, light colors for our piece because we wanted it to seem wintery. My favorite season is winter and we wanted the piece to remind people of snow and ice and the winter in general.

For the choose your own drawing assignment I chose to draw my cat. I adopted my cat just two weeks before I started on the assignment so I was feeling very inspired by her and I was very excited to draw her. In my drawing I wanted to capture my cat’s calmness and serenity and inspire a sense of serenity and peace in others. I also wanted my piece to express my love and appreciation for her.

For my jack-o-lantern I decided to carve Hogwarts. When I was younger I loved the Harry Potter books. I thought it would be fun to carve a castle and decided I would do Hogwarts. It was a lot harder than I expected it to be but I enjoyed the process and I am pretty proud of the final result. I wanted to piece to remind people of their childhood and the books they read and loved. To carve the castle I printed out a simple drawing of Hogwarts and taped it onto my pumpkin. Then I used a pumpkin carving knife to cut along the edges until I had the shape I wanted. After that I drew in a few details with a sharpie.

“Hey that's mines!”

I looked over at my squabbling classmates. Without thinking I interrupted.

“Actually it would be ‘mine’ not ‘mines’.”

They stared at me. I flushed and returned to my book, regretting my outburst.

This kind of interaction has happened to me many times throughout my life. As I got older I started ignoring incorrect grammar as I discovered slang. I did not want to be labeled ‘grammar Nazi’ or be considered stuck up. It made me feel like how I spoke was too different and wrong.

When I was younger, I used larger and more complicated words than kids my age. I was shy, so I didn't talk to my peers. I did not have many friends at school because all my buddies lived farther away. This situation made me feel separated from my classmates. Instead, I would sit with the adults and listen to the things I didn’t understand, but gave me a feeling of importance. I felt that if I wanted to talk with the grownups, I would need a bigger vocabulary; I looked in dictionaries and watched documentaries to sound older and more knowledgeable. This detached me from my classmates even more; they did not like how I spoke and I did not like how they spoke. Looking Back, it was not very important for me to correct them, because that was their environment showing through. If I did not want them judging me for how I communicated, then I should not have judged them for it.

I have been told that my West Philly accent is not very strong, even though that is where I was raised. I do not use most Philadelphia slang as my parents never used it. My Mom grew up in Louisiana and my Dad is from New Jersey. They both have subtle accents, and their language style has impacted some of how I speak. I believe my way of speaking is a blend of my parents and the area I grew up in.

This does not mean that my dialect never changes. My location can affect how I speak to others. Like most students, I am more respectful in my speech at home. I do not curse, and I use proper sentences and grammar. At school I tend to be more loose tongued, louder and willing to use slang or inappropriate language with my peers. This also happens in other environments; when I visit my friends in South Philly, my words slur together subconsciously. I adapt to the dialect like Slyar from Heroes or Absorbing Replication. For this to happen I do not even have to leave my house. I have found that if I when I watch a show from a different region, I also pick up a bit of that dialect shown on the show. The first time I noticed it was when after watching seven or more Doctor Who episodes in a row, when I spoke to my sister, I used some of the jargon from the show. This confused me and my own way of speaking sounded strange after.

My dialect is not incorrect because it is not the typical way of speaking for where I live. It can show how I was raised and what influences me. Just because someone else's accent differs from mine, does not mean that one of us is superior to the other. My dialect is mine, and everyone else has their own. You can learn a lot from someone from how they communicate; they may fall into a stereotype or they could be completely different. If your going to judge, do it by who they are, not what they sound like.

A few days ago we watched a video called I am a witness.  The video was about Jack a little boy who was getting bullied. You had the option of stopping it by pressing the eye. If you did press the eye then the bullies would be nice to him.   He went thought out his day until he went home and they told him was was not worth anything on line.  It made me think not just of bullying in person more cyber bullying.  Since you can press the eye for cyber bullying that was to represent that you can stop it.  It just not being stopped.  The video makes you want help.  If you don't see it then you forget what you hear. Subconsciously ignore what bad. That why trolls get away with it most of the time. Since untill it happens people ignore it. Since they don't want to see it.   

​1. Today in class we watched a video the supported an anti bullying campaign. The video was a cartoon that depicted the life of a child, who gets bullied everyday at school, online, and outside of school.

2. It makes you think about how cruel bullying is and how easy it is to bully.

3. I only have one picture of myself online, and it's a picture for a resume I submitted for a summer camp I worked at.

4. I do not think people have much information to judge me on because it's only one picture.

5. The goal of internet trolls is to make someone feel bad. The troll then feels better because they have ruined the day for the person they've trolled.

When I started these assignments, there was no real goal. I don’t think there actually is any huge symbolic meaning to them at all.

To be honest, most of what I did was pour myself into the art, my interests, my hobbies, my awkwardness, whatever.

And with being basically raised with the internet, and coming to SLA, I have discovered that there are a lot of people like me.

I want to be relatable to these people, and… reach out to them. Make them smile a tiny bit when they see my art. Make them laugh, and cringe in a sort of not sympathy that comes with understanding.

I want to laugh a bit with my friends about that one time I spent four hours painting a pony head and putting it on the ceiling, or the other time I just sat alone in health, and decided that drawing cats was a higher priority than doing actual project work.

I want to be comfortable with myself, which I’m not always, and art makes it fun and lighthearted sometimes.