I see myself as an experimenter by nature. My first approach to a new material or a prompt or a new product usually is to tinker with it and figure out how it works. I like to know the mechanics of what I’m working with, inside and out. Visual art isn’t enough. I value tactical products with performing intent, products that complete certain functions. When I start on a shoe design or a graphic or a product, my motivation comes from an improvement that I can visualize before I pick up a pen. While my works are generally vague as I’m still originating my style in my first year, my ideas are sparked by something I see and I know I can make it better. Indifferent of the obstacle, my approach is consistent: Tweak it and fail until a pattern develops. Find the root of the problem and attack it.
My first year as a design student was a year of conceptual growth and trial and error. Turning through my sketchbook is like flipping through a linear timeline of my mind mapped out on the pages. Creative maturation is what I find. I find a few ideas that I worked to fruition and many that never left paper. They now exist only ideas, but valuable are the traces of paths my mind once roamed, to dead ends and to treasure. I see my concepts maturing as I progressed through the year. What started as a list of shapes ended in prototypes. My ideas developed. My drawings improved. My scribbles and notes became art and my sketchbook has filled.
Memorial Park Design: Studio/Seminar 1
We were assigned the construction of a memorial. We modeled them. To prepare, we were taught the approach a student took to design the Vietnam War memorial in D.C., a simple design. I remember her saying she had the impulse to cut into the earth like a wound. I’m fascinated in the ways creativity manifests in people, and how its differs in the minds of youth and adults. I memorialized the creative minds that are warped by age, lost by time, and in doing so, I designed a park somewhere between a contemplative space and a playground. The final form took shape in a 3D digital rendering exploring the park and its many features, which included creative word games and its contemplative surfaces of wood and turf and rubber and the floors and walls. The park was lifted in the trees like a series of treehouse to capture the feelings of youth.
Trip to Four Freedoms memorial, Roosevelt Island. Studio/Seminar 1
The studio class took a class trip in order to prepare for our memorial assignment to the Louis Khan-designed Four Freedoms memorial. It’s dedicated to FDR, and isolated at the tip of Roosevelt Island, it’s a solitary contemplative space distanced from the noise of the city. The peaceful environment is rigid in stone architecture. It taught me that the structure of a setting can determine how we feel and how we think. My thoughts were clear and it allowed me to reflect on the strength impact my memorial should have on its visitors.
