Learning Portfolio Reflection Post

I was born in Toronto, Canada where I was raised by a thriving business woman as a mother, and a creative production designer for a father. My dad worked from home most of the time, so I spent my childhood watching him research, design, and create spaces for movies, television and commercials. Our relationship was founded on creativity and our mutual love for built environments. His endless remodelling and decorating of our home, and dragging me around to antique stores on the weekends, ignited my love for interior design. For as long as I can remember the idea of Parsons was a dream to me, so having the opportunity to attend the interior design program has been life changing.

My first year at Parsons has really pushed me to explore a plethora of art forms and writing styles, helping me expand as an artist and strengthen my craft. Looking back at all the work I’ve produced over the course of this year, it is evident that I always push myself to try new things weather it be new materials or new techniques. Almost all of my works this year were developed and created with a large amount of inspirational research conducted prior. Getting inspiration from other artists has really helped me try new things and developing my skills. Among the many different types of projects I have created, I seem to relate each work to the environment surrounding me and the idea of sustainability. I pay keen attention to light, colour and movement, and how these are represented within nature, and use this as inspiration for my pieces. In my Space and Materiality class, my teacher taught us how to produce architectural renderings that were entirely accurate depictions of the spaces we we’re studying or creating. This spatial awareness of size and scale then really helped me with perspective drawings in my Drawing and Imaging class. During this creation process in studio classes, academic research and writing plays a large role in the clarification and understanding of my own ideas. While making something it is necessary to consider how you would talk about this project linguistically, and while writing about a project it is necessary to consider how this project would appear in physical form. Making and writing go hand in hand when clearly understanding and representing an idea.

One of the highlights from this year was a jacket I made out of paper towel, with a painted mural on the back, while the other was a 3-D pop-up carousel book. They’re both very different aesthetically, exude different moods, tell different stories, and required totally different techniques. But what I love about them both is the experimentation that was required to make each of these pieces successful. I had to learn new techniques, and how to use new materials. They both focus on memories and personal reflection, and despite these projects looking entirely different, the risks I took while making them to accurately depict my own thoughts and emotions is what really connects them to each other and to me personally.    

 

Even though I am an interior design major, I didn’t choose to focus on interior design related projects. This force of innovation within myself has caused me to be extremely proud of all of the work that I have created. Going forward, I hope to now develop my architectural and interior design skills (spatial drawings, renderings, models, material knowledge), all while having the ability to explore. I plan on finding and developing my own design aesthetic that I can take with me as I begin my career while also practicing new crafts that might not represent my taste, but help me grow as a designer.

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