Artist Statement

This body of work is mostly focused on my friend's band that I spent time taking photos of. I went to their band practice and took a lot of great photographs. I was able to get a lot with perfect timing. I spend weeks editing my photos. It takes a lot of focus, and I am a perfectionist about my photo editing.

I know I didn't exactly do the collage correctly, but it is mostly just things I found interesting and funny. I will spend more time looking for strips of color so that I can make a real artistic collage.

I worked on the drawing a lot more this quarter. I want to learn how to draw hands really well, because they are super challenging. I liked drawing fabric. I learned how to draw draping fabric and I thought it was interesting so I made it as detailed as I could make it.

I am determined to do better on my drawings. My photography has gotten really good too, I have a specific style in the way that I take photos and the ways that I edit them.

• 3 zucchinis sliced long
• 1 jar of tomato sauce
• 1 pound of ground turkey or beef (optional)
• 1 can of tomatoes
• 1 onion chopped
• 1 12oz container of ricotta cheese
• 16oz various shredded cheeses
• 1 bunch of basil
• 1 beaten egg
• 1 pinch of nutmeg

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Sauté onions until golden over medium heat. 
3. Then brown ground beef or turkey in the sautéed onions. 
4. Then add the sauce and tomatoes and let that simmer. 
5. Mix the ricotta, the beaten egg, nutmeg, 4oz mozzarella and parmesan cheese together.
6. Grab dish for lasagna.
7. Place the sauce at the bottom for first layer
8. Begin layering the zucchini layer (salting slices to draw out moisture if wanted), then ricotta mixture layer, sauce again, then the shredded cheese. 
9. Repeat this process until you have completed 3-4 full layers. 
10. Place basil on top.
11. Cover the dish with foil and bake for half an hour then let rest for 15 minutes and serve!

Journal 1

April 23

IAGO (Act 5, Scene 1) Page 254

(Moves to side to show other characters on stage aren’t the focus.)

I have rubbed this young quat almost to the sense,

(He would look at Othello and speak, but Othello can’t hear him.)

And he grows angry. Now, whether he kill Cassio

(Phrased as a question, he may say this TO audience.)

Or Cassio him, or each do kill the other,

Every way makes my gain. 

(All of these lines are sad for Iago. He says this to himself, but it is sad because he knows Roderigo has caught on to his mischief.)

Live Roderigo,

He calls me to a restitution large

Of gold and jewels that I bobbed from him

As gifts to Desdemona.

It must not be. If Cassio do remain

He hath a daily beauty in his life

That makes me ugly. And besides, the Moor

May unfold me to him—there stand I in much peril.

(Said to audience so they know that whatever happens, Othello must die.)

No, he must die. But so, I hear him coming.

Besides my notes, I noticed in this scene/soliloquy that Iago has a lot going on. He is so involved in his secrets that he confused himself. Iago needs to talk to himself through this scene but still addressing the audience so they understand his plan to make sure Othello dies, that he wants Roderigo to live, how he will get Othello to finally snap and kill Cassio for the lies he has been told about him. Iago may be confused if he wants Roderigo to live or not. Roderigo knows that Iago stole gifts from him that were meant for Desdemona. But he can’t let that happen. 

Nowhere in the scene did I see Iago question or speak up to a God. He is so invested in his own ego and power that he has no space to think of someone else watching his every move.

Iago knows that whatever happens, something will work in his favor, because all all, he is the mighty puppet master.

Journal 2

Secondary Character: Cassio

April 24

Appears in Act 2, Scene 3; When Iago gets Cassio drunk, Cassio gets into a fight with Roderigo and Montano, and then Othello sees him drunk and fires Cassio from his job as lieutenant.

Appears in Act 3 with Desdemona when he begs her to convince the Moor to give back his job.

Then, in the scene where Iago hides Othello so that he can talk to Cassio about Bianca, though, Othello believes Cassio is laughing about Desdemona. Cassio speaks of how he is only her customer, and she has fallen in love with him, while describing hsi relationship with Bianca.. This makes Othello angry because he believes Cassio is calling Desdemona a prostitute.

Cassio is extremely vulnerable throughout the play. Iago makes him the main character of his evil plan to break apart Desdemona and Othello, and gets Othello so angry with Cassio that he wants dead.

First hand, Cassio observes very little. He isn’t given the chance to be around because Iago tells lies and makes everyone hate him. Iago tells Cassio to get drunk, tells him to talk to Desdemona to get his job back.

Cassio is a very innocent character. He only wants his job; and in Cyprus he has Bianca. Bianca was his prostitute who fell in love with him. Cassio’s judgement was impaired by Iago and then loss full control over his life.

Emilia

April 25

Emilia is a middle aged woman, maybe around 35 though. She married Iago at a young age , because of her parents’ pressure for her finding a spouse. She is low maintenance and has really stopped loving Iago. She sees first hand how cruel and conniving he has become, and she has known him a very long time.

Throughout the play, Emilia realizes the difference in how Iago treats her, and knows she can’t cross him. She sees the anger in his eyes and guards herself and Desdemona for as long as she can. When she learns that Iago’s plans worked and Othello killed her, she finally reveals the truth She has never been afraid of Iago, only weary for the lives that would have been harmed. Taking care of Desdemona was Emilia’s way of saying how sorry she was for whatever her future was, because nothing Iago planned could turn out good for anyone but himself.

Journal 4

Prepare for Presentation 

April 29

For this performance and part, I need to express much emotion. I have to move around a little, because in my interpretation of this last scene as Emilia is that she is quite frightened by the fact that Othello killed Desdemona, then she is also with Iago in this scene. Emilia knows about all the lies her husband has told to manipulate people throughout the play.

Emilia is also dying at the end of this scene, so I have to get myself on the ground a certain way. I am stabbed by Iago, and I fall as I say my last line. Then Othello lays next to me, and stabs himself once he knows he killed the woman he loved when she was innocent of everything. 

My prop which is also my costume is quite simple. I made myself an apron that I’m wearing with a nice shirt. Emilia doesn’t have any obvious or even hidding hints about anything she may have on her.

I think that my scene will stand out because it is the final scene with a lot of plot endings. Both Othello and Emilia die, leaving Iago on stage all alone. In the play, he was carried off and said to have been tortured for everything he did. But he isn’t in this shortened script.

As a group we decided on how my part will have to die on stage as well as Othello afterwards.

Journal 5

Analyze Character’s Lines

April 30

“Moor, she was chaste. She loved thee, cruel Moor. So come my soul to bliss as I speak true. Speaking as I think, I die, I die.”

These are Emilia’s last lines when she dies. This is important to the play because,  Emilia was a minor role, but her presence even in 3 scenes, were extremely important. Emilia was told to watch for Desdemona, then her action was one of the reasons that got her killed. Emilia knew all the lies that Iago had told Othello about Desdemona’s life.

I think I delivered this line with less emotion than I could have. It was hard for me to feel the pain that Emilia’s character needed.

My group scene members worked hard while practicing. I think that it would have been even better if we had memorized more lines but that was very hard. There was also not many movements we could find to make the scene more visually interesting, besides dying and just laying on the ground. During the speaking parts, my character was letting Othello know that he had killed the woman he loved, and that Iago had been lying to him since before they came to Cyprus.

Doing the performances didn’t really help me understand the play any better. I know how to read Shakespeare’s writing, but when seeing it performed, I can’t focus on what he was really trying to convey through the words. Seeing the words on paper, stationary, I can focus on exactly everything that was hidden, but important in the play.  

We will be discussing the transitions and coping methods it takes to be subjected into a culture of education that is focused upon religion and riches. Two topics that this family has always struggled with.  

My brothers Asa and Tucker are identical and fraternal twins. They are now 19 years old and they are freshmen in college, the first school they’ve ever been apart from. Tucker attends Georgetown University for a biochemistry major. Asa currently attends Virginia Commonwealth University for computer engineering. They went through elementary and middle school in every class together, then to a private high school in Philadelphia. They were given full scholarships to Saint Joseph’s Preparatory School. Here they were set into a very religious brotherhood community, boundaries more focused on the practice of religion rather than the focus on financial complications that needed to be crossed for success.

When I asked my siblings about their experience with the initial change into a private school, they explained their feelings about how it may have been more work than they had been used to, but this community was so closely knit that they hardly noticed it. The educational boundary that seems to frequently interfere with financial issues was also apart of my own childhood.

At the same year that my siblings had to move into a private school, I had done the same. I attended William Penn Charter School for my sixth grade year. This was an extremely difficult change to bear. I had only recently lost my mother to cancer and starting at a new school made life much more difficult. The work was incredibly more challenging than I had ever had to experience before. I cried every night, but still stayed awake doing homework until two a.m. I had transferred from a public school just two days into the school year. The principal of my middle school had to persuade another girl to take me around for a few days since we had all the same classes. This girl was my opposite.

I knew from a glance at the school that I wouldn’t fit in. My family has always had to be really careful with money. None of the other students I saw in the grade could possibly be on a scholarship like I was. This school didn’t first focus on intelligence. They focused on a bank account. Not one that I could try to compare with. 

Lucky for my siblings, they’ve always been smarter than the rest of us. Saint Joseph’s has a very specific dress code of a suit and tie. Every young boy there must have their hair cut above the shoulders, shaved facial hair. Making them each look the same. With no room for judgement on appearance. 

I asked the question of whether Asa or Tucker had ever hoped they were more rich just to fit in with students at the school, with a modest answer, they each said that it hadn’t crossed their minds. They have the intelligence of the richest man in the world, so this didn’t change their experience in high school.

After getting over the basics about their experiences with transitioning into private high school, I changed the questions for college. Tucker, going to school at Georgetown, a very prestigious Ivy league school, spoke about the financial and educational ties. Georgetown is an extremely expensive school to go to. He has been blessed with a great amount of scholarship, grant, and financial aid money. Asa has also. Tucker’s current cost for each semester is a mere $700. Georgetown is very much still focused on the financial issues of their students. Regardless of the amount of money they make as an institution, most of their profit is given to financial aid to help under privileged, extremely intelligent students, get the greater education they deserve.

The educational and economical boundary that has been crossed by these boys has changed the type of man they’ve begun growing up to be. They know what it is to lose their mother, and adapt to a new world where they believe they will be invisible and forgotten no matter the brains. These boys have been through more than many adults have, and they still have been able to make their family proud, and keep their faith. We have all known the burdens of keeping secrets to fit in, some are blurted out because the truth is too painfully obvious, some are dug deep, to hide from cruelty. This judgement could just be all in our heads though.

Lost Identity

When I was a little girl, I only remember my mother having been extremely controlling. We were hers and if we didn’t do as she said, we had broken a law, no matter how minuscule it might have been. There was no room for our opinions. Even in my education. She would have wanted me to be smarter. There wasn’t time for me to become better at my writing, I simply should have just been able to do it. There wasn’t anything natural about writing for me. 

She took my papers. She took them and crumpled them up. All my hard work. I was 10 years old. She didn’t think I was smart enough to write a decent paper. 

“Give me the fact list that you have on the woman,” my mother demanded. 

She wrote the entire paper. I could barely read her handwriting but she made me rewrite everything she did and turn it in as my own. I wasn’t allowed to voice my opinion. It wasn’t right, I knew that when I turned it in, but she would be upset with me if I didn’t do as she said. She was the boss.

I was always afraid when turning in my papers. They weren’t mine. I was little, and didn’t really care how intelligent they sounded, as long as I felt honest. The guilt of dishonesty that never went away. With the lies you must tell to please your parents. 

Getting sick didn’t end her tyranny. It was all that kept her from “being hyperaware of the pain.” My mistakes in language kept her mind moving. She thought that the idea of intertwining her expectations into mine would be helpful to me.

As this process continued I realized that what she was doing was beneficial to only her. My mother was living through me. I knew nothing different and so I simply went along. You don’t say no to a parent who is losing hair and is nauseous all day, every day. 

The constant revision of my papers did not end. Her sickness progressed and made her interest in my education dissipate. She was forced into not overseeing and reading all of my work before it was turned in. She got too sick to know I existed.

One of the main points from the essay “How to Tame A Wild Tongue” by Gloria Anzaldía. “So, if you really want to hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity- I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself.” Language is the representation of experience, ethnicity, and family, all together to create the final melody. A perfect combination of sounds and a back story, that can all become known from a few simple words.

If language is your identity, who are we until we find our own? My identity was lost. As if mine were the clone of my mothers.

“A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him. And a child cannot afford to be fooled.” This quote, taken from James Baldwin’s essay, “If Black English Isn’t A Language, Then Tell Me What Is?” This states that any teacher who in fact dislikes children will not teach the child effectively. I connected this to my own experience because I learned from my brothers about the world and language. Much to their dismay. They saw I would never be taught by my mother who had taken the time to teach them. They must have been loved in a different way. I only learned from my own mistakes, and those of my siblings, when chastised for misuse of language.

I was forced to whine into a jar when I was young. I complained often I guess, but when I did, everything was gibberish. Nobody wants to hear words they can’t comprehend. The jar stayed on the kitchen counter until I was seven and a half years old. The way I spoke disgusted my family.

While my mother was sick, she ran a blog. She hated the term, so it was simply, her online journal. She began it the day after she was diagnosed. Wanting to be able to tell her story in the beautiful way that she knew how. Her writing was her everything. She touched people across the country. They read every post she ever wrote. So many people that didn’t know anything about us except what she wrote. I was 9 years old when her news crushed me. This was when I learned what a story could do. A person’s words were power. They moved mountains and could touch the heart of another without a physical contact needed. Even in Layman’s terms, her words sounded so honest. Despite the cliché, I find their overuse, very powerful and truthful.

“Dying is very inconvenient,” she wrote. Three days before her death, she knew it was coming. It isn’t about whether the language “intersects” with identity or not, but rather your identity is kept locked in your mind and soul. The only key to open it is your language. Whether writing the truest of true, or speaking, it’s poetry. She apologized to the people she never met, for leaving them. Her parting words made strangers burst into tears. Her story was public. But it was also over.

Language in my experience, is the power that kept my mother alive for longer than a year. It encouraged prayers from coast to coast. And it kept her mine for a little while longer, even if I believed she wanted to leave me. Language is identity. It also creates connection, whether healthy or not, the power of language is something to be worked on, not cloned.

They’re coming for me. Who are they? My monsters. They come out of the closet while I sleep. Creeping towards me they come, grabbing my limbs and pulling my ponytail back until I wake up screaming in a cold sweat. I talk to myself to break the silence. Am I crazy? Can I be treated? Everyday this week was a struggle to not walk into the hospital. If I were to hurt myself though, can I blame it on those monsters?

“They are my nighttime battle scars,” I could tell the doctor. The nurses would look at me with pity. Hoping nobody sees my anxious ticks when I tell the blatant lie. Do they already know that I've been abusing myself, they never tried to help. The abuse is only within myself though. I can’t take the chance of making scars, they’d see more obviously. My reasons not to go. Daddy would be angry if I told anyone I am going insane. He’d be expected to do something. Or help. An impossible task. I’m already burden enough taking up space at home. 

Those monsters began as my thoughts. Look what they’ve done now. I’m hallucinating those real attacks on my mind. Who can believe a silly little girl? They’re all so normal. Losing control of oneself is simply uncanny to the simple minded. Can I blame them? They haven’t experienced the world like I have. But why do they get to be normal? What is it like? To not want to die for a day. To have control over at least one thing. I don’t want to die. I don’t think so at least. Nobody would care though. I wonder what its like to think or know somebody out there loves you and is willing to help when you’re in need. I’ve never known. How could I expect to have somebody that cares for me. Shame on me for wishing for something I know will never be mine. That needs to be earned and deserved. So i don’t deserve that gift. Interactions frighten me anyway. What if I suddenly told someone the truth. Take off my mask of smiles and be honest. They would surely walk away, because what can they do? I’ll never be able to tell another how I really see the world. Nobody else can see it this way, they wouldn’t be able to live with themselves. Then, it’d be my fault when something happened to their well-being. I’m so used to feeling everyone’s pain as my own.

Everyone is a stranger. Though isn’t that a contradiction? To know so many, but have them all be clueless of the true you, they only know the amazing person I created, the one I wish I could be, and others think I am. They’ll never know the truth behind these big, innocent eyes. Nor do they want to. I’m dying inside, and nobody knows. 

Surviving is becoming too hard. Am I finally getting too tired? That day when I collapse from feeling everyone else’s troubles will be my last. That sounds so inviting though. The finale of my existence. What a relief for those who think they know me.

Are these all my excuses? I’m only trying to take the blame off of me because I know my elder’s judgements are true. I’m nothing. I never will be.

A. What is negative space? Negative space is the area(s) around an object. You can outline the object, then shade in the wasted area outside of the object.

B. Explain how you found negative space in 1. your cut out? I found the negative space by tracing every separate section of the image, and pasting every other section on one side, and the other pieces on the other side. 2. in your stool drawing? To find the negative space of my stool drawing, i looked for the areas around and between the shapes of the object.

D. Does seeing in negative space enhance drawings, why or why not? I believe it does enhance the drawing. I say this because when you see the negative space, the positive space stands out more.

            ¿Qué pasa? Mi nombre es Bailey. Estoy enferma ahora. Sin embargo, es casi desaparecido. Me siento un poco mejor que la semana pasada. Tengo catorce años. Mi cumpleaños es diez de julio. ¿Cuándo es cumpleaños? Vivo en Filadelfia. Hace es bastante viento hoy.

¿Qué te gusta hacer en Maracaibo? Me encanta es bailar. Cuando baila, me siento libre. Mi también es cocción pastelitos, es por eso que mi amigos llamar me magdalena. De vez en cuando me gusta dibujar o jugar con mis amigos. Uf, no me gusta nada ir al escuela, que puede ser aburrida a veces. ¡Pero me encanta mi maetros! Simplemente no, el trabajo. ¿Qué música te gusta escuchar? Casi siempre yo escuchar a Beyoncé y Glee Cast canciones. ¡Me encanta su música! La música es mi vida. Me ayuda a concentrarse.

Soy es muy boba y baja. Odio mi estatura, a menudo es muy agravantes. Mis hermanos reír a mí mucho. ¡Tengo cinco hermanos! Es una locura en mi casa. ¿Tengo hermanas y hermanos? Personas dice yo soy súper extraña. Aunque es cierto.

• The most common way of saying hello in Español is ¡Hola!
  
  
• When talking to your friend or someone closer to your own age you may say ¡Hola amigo!
  
  
• To say how are you in Spanish, You may say "¿Comó estás?' or ¿Qúe tal?
  
  
• When leaving a conversation, to say goodbye there is many different ways to respond such as,

​In a real-life situation, you may need to say hello, how are you, and goodbye if you wonder how a person feels in a conversation, and how to say goodbye when the conversation is finished.