Cross Course Reflection

My name is YIXUAN LI, I prefer people call me Angelina. I was born in the City of Canton — Guangzhou, spent one third of my life in Beijing, and another one third of my life in New York. I’m a New Yorker since 2014, because I studied high-school here. I fall in love with the city and that’s why I decided to stay for college. Well, even though Parsons is my first choice anyway. I’m currently in the BBA major, which we study both design and business at the same time. This is the end of my first year, I’m glad that my choice of coming didn’t disappointed me at all! It has been an amazing year, with a lot of laughs and tears. But the only thing that I know for sure, is that I developed myself into a better person.

I couldn’t consider myself to be an artist before I came to Parsons; I’m not a painter, I’m not a designer and I’m not a producer. Throughout the year I learned that “Nothing is impossible”. I can still remember the first time that I stepped into my first year studio class, looked so concerned and lost. Don’t know what to do with photoshop and illustration, don’t know how to make a book. However, but the end of my first year, I even know how to use Premiere and InDesign, I made a book for my last year Memory Studio, another book and several films for Time class. This year, I even painted a lot of canvas and sewed several clothes! Really, Nothing Is Impossible!? First year is hard, you always stay up late for homework, never really had a good sleep. I guess that’s also the reason why I liked Parsons, for every single courses that I’ve taken this year, it pushed you to the maximum of what are you capable of doing. My teacher always told me “Think out of the box”. For example, my finals for this years studio and seminar is all about fashion. I’m a person who is interested in fashion, but never really dive into the pool of this industry. For a person who never sewed before, I choose to make a jacket, which is really hard to pattern and construct. I was struggling and freaking out for weeks. But, at the end of the day, I made a jacket! A jacket that’s ready to wear, well sewed and even good looking. My seminar paper also helped me a lot with the designs. I started with the topic of Neutral at the beginning of the year, I dug into the word, end up with several other words, such as gender fluidity, androgynous and unisex. It’s a process of learning, learning different words and concepts. As I went through the research, I started to learn more about the ideas of androgynous fashion; how does it started, why is it popular, who are the targeted audience. This is what I liked about the class, I learned through the process of writing a paper.

 

Furthermore, my first semester of the year also brought a lot surprises to me. I can still remember the work that I did for my Memory studio class. It was about Memory plaza, I made a model for an open theatre. Its called “The Broken Pieces of ART”. I was trying built a memorize plaza for Broadway shows. I’m a person who really enjoyed stage, I’ve been dancing since kindergarten. Now, I lived on the theatre district, got a lot of broadway shows happening around my house every day. However, I figured out that most of the people came for the Name of Broadway, not really for the actual work. You can tell by the number of people who are actually waiting for actors outside the door every time when they finished the show. With more and more new shows coming up, the classic broadway started to get forgotten by people. I want audience to really pay attention to how much work did actors put into a show. I want them to be appreciate with the show. Thus, created this piece. The idea is to show people that with an opportunity and stage, you can see a lot about the culture and art. However, that’s not the purpose of a show. It’s not just about the surface that you’re looking at, but also about the time that they put into the show. We can still see the shadows of those old classic broadway show in the new shows. However, they are not as clear as it should be. Is not just about art, but the spirit.

Throughout the year, I’ve noticed that I’m capable of doing a lot of different things. Both of the works that I picked are difficult  and takes times. Somehow, just because of it takes a lot of times, so by the time you actually done with the piece, you will feel so proud of yourself and couldn’t believe that you made something that you never imaging you can do.

If I can ever experience my first year again, I wouldn’t change anything but push my ambition in every work that I’ve done so far. Is not because they are bad, but I want them to be better. For a lot of the time, I’m just playing safe card in my work. If I know that my ability can be reach higher than what I expected, I would love to put more crazy ideas in everything.