Seminar Reflection

BIO

I’m Lisa Paravano and my major is Strategic Design and Management, and I’m hoping to minor in Communication Design. I’m half Italian and half Somali, but I moved around a lot because of my fathers job. As a civil engineer working for an Italian company, he moved us from Abu Dhabi to Dubai, Turkey, Rome, and Miami. Living in New York has always been a dream of mine, even before I knew I’d be spending my senior year of high school in America. I only started to take my art seriously in my sophomore year of high school, when I took AP art and learnt everything I know about realism from an older girl who was also taking the class. She ended up being more of a mentor than the teacher was, and is the reason that I’m here today.

A LOOK ACROSS MY FIRST YEAR WORK

Although I feel that I’m slightly out of practice with writing after taking AP Language and then AP Literature in secession before coming to parsons, I found that my writing has become more organic. Still, I don’t think that my style of writing has deteriorated. Instead, I feel that it became more singular and less formulaic.

In first semester seminar, we were more focused on creative writing. While I don’t consider myself a creative writer in any capacity, I found it interesting to look over work that I was ashamed of with fresh eyes. Honestly, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was.

eg. an extract from an in-class creative writing exercise

She couldn’t help but think of all the wonders of her hometown that stood in the path of danger above the ceiling of the tunnels. Statues, flowers, children, and even her peaceful Sunday mornings could potentially be taken away from her. She thought back to all the strangers that she had characterized in her head. She assigned them lives. Emotions. Stories. She dreamed up grand romances between the lady in the black button-down coat and the man in the white T-shirt. Of the days they spent walking through the park together. Of the questions they’d ask each other. The questions Matilda would ask them. Do you have siblings? Children? How old are you? Are you in love?

But these questions would never be answered, nor would she be able to ask them. She wouldn’t even be able to ponder them anymore. Her Sunday mornings were gone. Instead, she was left with the unconscious man. Perhaps his name was Jaque. Francois? He didn’t look French. Maybe he was a John, she thought. She settled on John. Perhaps he had a family. Perhaps he was a writer who dreamed up alternate universes with futuristic beings instead of the stories of strangers. Perhaps he was a photographer. A teacher. A lawyer. A murderer. Perhaps he had a love to walk through parks with, and to take to museums, and to take photographs of as she sleeps soundly on Sunday mornings. Instead, John was underground with Matilda and the scientists. And she was not.

eg. a poems about a dystopian world

 

While looking through my work, I realized that I like to focus on small details that are common to anyones lives, and then place them in a more fantastical space. This same idea carried through to my second semester essay writing, where I found that my strongest paragraphs (or at least the sections that I liked most) included specific and recognizable elements.

eg. excerpt from my paper on biracialism

This faces them not only on “select your race” sections of  the SAT, but also when contemplating whether they can feel comfortable joining the Black Student Union. Along with the benefits and fulfillment associated with having a rich background come layers of complexity. These layers include history, psychology, and politics, and each of these added obstacles complicate an already difficult task: finding an identity that feels welcoming.

In my first semester, I learnt how to create these details even more vivid and singular in order to make my work more stylized. This was definitely helpful when writing a more traditional paper because it helped me keep it engaging and personal, despite the scientific evidence. Interestingly, my visual work is also very detail-oriented. For instance, I like to focus on realism and more intricate work, while I always stray away from abstract art and uncontrollable mediums.

HIGHLIGHTS

eg. studio final – semester 2 – procreate (digital painting)

Process Video:

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eg. (part of my) time final – semester 1 – graphite

The most exciting parts about these two projects– which are my most memorable from the year– was definitely challenging myself with attention to detail. I enjoy pushing myself to depict realist portraits that stray further from “simple” each time. By simple, I mean the same portrait in the same pose at the same angle in the same even lighting. I used to fall into this pattern a lot when I first started drawing more realistically simply because I felt comfortable knowing that I could execute it well. With these, however, I challenged myself to deal with strange shadows, with hands, and distortion of the face. These three elements made the process so incredibly fun and difficult. Essentially, if I felt like ripping the piece up at any point, I knew I was making progress. Still, I wish that I had learnt the formal methods of depicting proportions accurately, because it would’ve saved me a lot of time. Turns out, “eyeballing it” is not always the best method. I just learnt these methods this semester and I can already see improvement.

CONCLUSION

In the future, I hope to continue exploring the idea of biracialism visually. My seminar paper really consumed the rest of my projects, I noticed, because I became so immersed in the exploration that I wanted to express how I felt about it. I also hope to refine my realism skills in a more versatile way. I really want to work on creating pieces that have a more expansive quality. Essentially, by moving past a single portrait, I can create entire worlds. However, in order to do this, I have to give up certain levels of control, which I’m not sure I’m comfortable with just yet. I will be, though.