Cross–Course Review

My name is Jasmin Lee Hack, I am a dual-citizen with passports in the United States and Germany. I have grown up influenced by the American military with numerous traveling excursions and various people coming in and out of my life. I am an Illustration Major with a future concentration on Medical Illustration. One may ask where this interest came from and it can be seen in the background story of my life. The various medical mysteries that stemmed from such a hectic lifestyle. I became fascinated with the intricacy of the human anatomy and began to attempt to implement this into my work.

Most of my work this semester deviated from my original interest in human anatomy and portraiture. In various classes, I was pushed outside of my parameters and dove into new fields of art including videography and more digital based media programs. With this I was able to find new interests and learn skills needed for various future projects. Within all these various projects however I still held a very distinct style to my work. In my writing itself, I developed stronger opinions and a more dominant writing style. The particular skills attained within each individual class allowed me to become stronger in my various works as a whole.

The common theme when I was allowed to deviate into my own personal interest for a project once again tended to implement various parts of the human anatomy into drawings as a mechanism for deeper meaning into my pieces that could not essentially be seen at a surface level. This made my work more personal to me and made it more intimate to be shared with viewers.

In my academic studies, opinion and life experiences influenced how I portrayed my views to my writers. Within the first semester of my seminar class, I was challenged in a constructive and effective way to speak my mind and show this in my work. Various readings and essays allowed us to challenge the thoughts set before us and to be constructive in the way we presented our opinion with supporting points. This dominate style of viewing the world bled into my work where I once again took challenging ideas and set them into my art through subliminal messages being hidden throughout a bigger picture. It was within my personal life experiences that I developed these opinions and at times my work became solely focused on these life occurrences in an effort to explain how exactly my mind thought.

These projects that ultimately were rooted from opinions of life experiences were the most interesting and exciting to me due to the level of depth I was able to attain within them. I was able to place stories and ideas people had not even thought to look. I enjoyed the ability to make personal work that showed who I was as an individual and to put forth my own view that was to interpretation of others.

Most of the research that was done for these projects took several stages to evolve. The majority of this was from the sprouting of a new idea and the interest in seeing other forms of information that could be utilized to form a coherent thought that could support itself alone. This went from my illustrations including human anatomy which needed research on the structures and make of the subject to research in an a more interior architecture way which needed research done to support an intervention. My working methods to achieve this became stronger later into the year through spreading and planning my work out in an effort to maximize the amount of time I had to invest in each project I was assigned.

Within the first semester of my time at Parsons, numerous class debates within my seminar class allowed me to develop my own opinions and not be afraid to voice what I believe while also taking other people’s views into mind. This is where for one of the first true times, I was able to have a say and my point be valued within contemporary society.

Preparing for my seminar debates was done through either reading excerpts the night before or in class material that was presented to us. There on I would either open the discussion with my own opinion and wait for response to engage with or I would wait for someone else to open the discussion in an effort to gauge my opinions and to challenge my initial thought. Personally, to prepare for this more intensely if it were a more developed discussion, I would do more research on the topic presented and attain various opinions and thoughts before coming to my own conclusion and beginning to debate. This allowed me to take and appreciate everyone’s opinion and analyze how they came to this thought.

In the second semester and around the time I as deciding what I wanted my major to be, a Time class assignment allowed me to talk in an abstract and artistic way through visuals and text on my own personal experiences and how they have shaped my view on life. The title of the book was called Gut Feeling. and it personally spoke to how stress and anguish within one’s own life can cause pain. It contrasted and compared medically diagnosed pain to a deeper and more complex one that is routed within us. This assignment allowed me for the first time to really dig into my biggest interest which would develop into a desired career of medical illustration.

Within my Time class however, preparation was through gathering personal images and references as well as going to various medical books and drawings to develop my concept. Once I had archived enough images, I would begin to lace these various ideas and visuals together in a stimulating way for the viewer, each ideas and subject being placed specifically to convey a message. My thought process went through constantly analyzing how the viewer would perceive my thoughts yet still staying true to my own work. This allowed for me to effectively express my experiences and thoughts through my work and still allow others to relate.

I am interested in exploring more in depth how the human body can be used to explain various topics and how to take more abstract ideas and concepts and visually portray them for others. I am interested in the learning the various importance and ways that illustration can be used within contemporary society. This could create numerous projects where I explore various forms of illustration and push my skills beyond what I am comfortable drawing in an effort to use this new information for my medical drawings. I desire to explore modes of digital media as well as new drawing techniques that push my talent to a new level.

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