My name is Eve Rublevich and I am a Strategic Design and Management student. Over the next three years, I am looking forward to learning about the business aspect of the fashion industry (marketing, merchandising, management, etc.). I intend to pursue a career in the fashion or beauty industry in order to successfully execute my visions. I am extremely passionate about creating an overall look and I intend to immerse myself into the industry through internships and jobs that enhance my existing passions.
When I first began my education at the New School, I had yet to experiment and toy with applications such as iMovie, Premiere, Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, etc. Throughout my first semester at the New School, I learned how to use the previously stated applications and had to train myself to think in a more artistic manner. For the last twenty years of my life, I had only learned how to think in strategic and straightforward manner, and I became good at it. This form of thinking was preached during Elementary School, Middle School, High School, and even the University of Miami where I attended before transferring to Parsons. However, I had been challenged when I began at Parsons because I had to adjust my train of thought and learn how to express artistic thoughts and how to expand those thoughts through exploration of self. Was it difficult? Yes. Even so, it has been a liberating and humbling experience. Since the beginning of the semester, I have learned how to showcase my thoughts and feelings through audio pieces, films, paintings, drawings, etc. Although I enjoyed some classes more than others, I feel as though I have reached peace with my artistic expressions and have acquired a certain persona throughout my art. Since the education at Parsons is quite subjective ( especially throughout the PUFY program) I found myself having to choose one thing and to stick with it and take it further. For instance, when starting a project, I may not know exactly where it may go, however, I am able to continue pursuing the topic and ultimately create a project that embodies my personality and artistic vision.
Looking back at this past year, I have explored many different mediums ranging from watercolor, to audio, photography, video, pattern making, collage, etc. I especially learned a lot during my Drawing and Imaging Class where we explored pattern making, watercolor, drawing the human figure. We learned how to tell stories through our art through the use of shapes, composition, colors and context. Throughout the first semester, I was able to explore watercolor in my Drawing and Imaging class in which I learned how to step back from my art and allow my art to essentially create itself. Since then, I have continued to use watercolor in conjunction with other mediums in order to create enticing works of art that are multi-dimensional as well as multimedia.
Over the course of the year, I have learned how to explore artwork through the analog art component as well as writing in order to defend my art work. Learning how to explain my art work has allowed me to explore my thoughts and expand on my original ideas. I have been able to reconfigure my thoughts and brainstorm ideas that I had never considered beforehand. In the last year, the most exciting project has most definitely been the magazine that I created in my Seminar/ Studio 2: Fashion. I was able to explore my identity as a stylist, makeup artist, photographer, creative director, graphic designer, editor, etc. It is really true when people say that the only way to really learn is to try to do something yourself. I feel as though I grew as an art student in this past semester. I felt challenged in many ways but the challenge was beyond satisfying and produced work that I am extremely proud of. I enjoyed writing the pieces that I had never envisioned myself writing. As stated earlier, I was excited to learn how to write about my art work and how to create connections between written pieces as well as artwork. My work could have been more researched. However, I felt as though some of the topics I wrote about were challenging due to the fact that adequate sources seemed quite scarce. Nonetheless, I have learned how to find scholarly sources and how to ensure that the sources are credible and will benefit and strengthen my piece. I especially enjoyed being able to explore topics that I had an opinion about. It is more satisfying to write about topics that have an impact on your life in one way or another.
While taking a deeper look at two key learning experiences, I would say one of my favorite projects was the project I created for my Drawing and Imaging class for my final project. I explored the concept of beauty and how it has changed over the years and how it will continue to change. Due to many influences, the idea of beauty has adapted and been adopted in many different ways. I began to draft many different ideas that circulated the same concept. I began to draw different portraits through the use of symbolism. I then decided to use watercolor as my main medium. After seeing the way the watercolor portrait came out to be, I used photoshop in order to digitally modify the portrait and to add a deeper meaning. When creating art, I really enjoy adding many surprises and different layers in order to create a multi- dimensional piece that tells a story, one that can be interpreted in different ways based on the viewer and his/her own experiences and opinions. I really loved and connected with this project due to the fact that I had something to say. The best type of art/ works in general are the ones that make us feel something- something that gets us thinking and reflecting. My goal is to deepen my knowledge about myself through exploration of art. If I were to create this piece of art again, I would be more diligent and careful with the planning steps. I would perfect each and every layer and dimension to ensure that each layer is work that I intended to “perfect” as much as I could.
I have attached photos of the process and final piece of my Drawing and Imaging Final.
Another one of my favorite projects from this year is definitely the Fashion Magazine that I created for my Studio/ Seminar 2. I am so grateful that I was able to create the fashion magazine- I know that I will cherish it as the years go on. I feel as though the magazine was an amazing token that I have worked towards this year. When the magazine was first assigned, I was overwhelmed and it felt so far away. Over the course of the semester, I thoroughly enjoyed watching my visions come to life. I was able to direct the photo shoots in order to cater to my visions. I had so many visions and so many ideas that sometimes I felt as though I wanted to do too much. However, the more I worked on the magazine, the more I was excited to see the final product. It was difficult to pull away from the InDesign document sometimes because as I stated earlier, I had so many plans that I wanted to execute. Working with InDesign was a challenge at first, but now I feel confident in my abilities. Additionally, I learned a lot about outsourcing throughout this experience. The reason being is that I had many printing difficulties. Nonetheless, I learned that sometimes our fate rests in other people’s hands and is based on the decision of other people, people that you have never even met. When printing the magazine, the first printed copy arrived with white space around some of the pages due to the fact that the formatting was not impeccable. Therefore, I decided to reprint it with a different facility, one that was in Los Angeles (where I am from). I had spoken to the Designer at the company and he and I communicated for a few days which was hard due to time difference and also difficult because I was quite stressed and simply wanted to ensure that my work would arrive on time. Unfortunately, although I had seen the cover and thought the formatting would arrive perfectly due to the fact that I had reformatted it a few times and spoke to the Designer and sent a video of how I want the magazine to set up, the four magazines arrived the day before my presentation and they were all incorrect. It is irrelevant to describe how they arrived because they were incorrect and the spreads were not spreads, they were front to back pages, but I was unable to use those magazines. While I was freaking out and panicking, I had realized a lesson about life: Things are not always in our control, actually they rarely are, but things have a way of working out. Rather than dwelling, I decided to focus on my presentation and the launch of the magazine and ensured that my work, even though it was not the proudest print, represented the amount of work that I had put into the magazine for four months. I was proud of the work I had accomplished and learned that sometimes people do not care as much as you do. Therefore, it is important to remain true to yourself and true to your work because the rest will fall into place.
I have attached the Letter from the Editor.
After this year, I am looking forward to learning more about my specific major. I am excited to have more business oriented classes and to have classes that are a little less abstract. As I stated earlier in this write-up, I most definitely enjoyed some classes more than other hence the reason I am excited to have classes that revolve around more than just our own experiences as individuals. I want to pursue who I am as an artist and as an individual as I continue my education at Parsons. I am sure that over the next three years I will be creating numerous works that I am proud of and works that culture me as a student and as a person. I truly believe that through exploration of self, we allow ourselves to grow and experience the world around us. Additionally, I am looking forward to networking and meeting more students with similar goals. I feel as though this year, I could have interacted with more students and young professionals because we can grow from each other. Furthermore, when collaborating with other students, you are able to attain new ideas and new input which is extremely important in the design world/fashion industry. I want to continue learning about applications such as InDesign, Premiere, and Photoshop because I know there is so much more I can learn. Moreover, I need to learn to trust technology more due to the fact that it is still new to me and may sometimes frustrate me. Yet it is important to remember that although it may seem frustrating to learn new applications and to deal with some complications these applications may face us with, it is there (to stay might I add) and it will only continue expanding in our world and in the fashion industry.
