From your writing exercise, make an image that evokes the space you recalled. Consider text, color, material and document your work. Include a short text on brainstorming, process, and outcome.
I’m in my dorm. There’s light, lot’s of it, from the windows. There’s my white linen bed sheets, an uncompromisable safe space. My backpack, my decorations, my photographs, my daily necessities, my my my… oh how I hate this solipsism.
But why am I here? Didn’t I have a glorious dream of coming to Parsons, the “best” fashion school, to pursue this one dream? Didn’t I imagine myself, all romanticized, filling up my sketchbook, taking photos, brisking the streets of New York, being encompassed by fashion? I’m here, and I supposedly should have it all in front of my fingertips.
Yet I’m trapped in a state of confusion. Between classes and projects, I am a bouncy ball from one wall to the next, unable to gain control until being flung to the next to-do. Here and there, here and there. Only when I take a breath and look out to window must I remind myself: I am here.
For my process, I started with the words I had already written to serve as an inspiration for how I would express this memory in a physical form.
When told to envision a place, my mind immediately jumped to my dorm room. I have clear, vivid thoughts of feeling trapped, overwhelmed, and not sure of what to do with myself here. It’s funny, we get a lot of light and the room is small yet spacious, but I’m constantly with a funny feeling that I shouldn’t be here.
With ink brush pens, I drew a cartoon girl as a representation of myself in a small, paper box. Inside I drew what I remember being in my dorm- bags, photos, the windows- and a suitcase hinting of a recent move. The outside rim writes 310 E. 15th Street. The girl almost fills up the box, as if the walls were gravitating inwards. She is like a little doll trapped in a story, where her future is unpredictable. Heavy thoughts I AM HERE loom, distractingly questioning “BUT WHERE DOES IT LEAD TO?”
I chose to use paper because it is fragile like as if something could go wrong and one could crumple it up immediately. The uncolored sketchy nature of the scene alludes to how nothing is for sure, things are barely yet made sense of, and also a slight sense of emptiness.
The thoughts of the uncertainty of course I cannot surrender, but I know that no one knows the future and no matter how hard we try, we still can’t control it either. As I try to make sense of this new world around me, I will try to focus on the present as being anxious will never add an hour to life.
My memory of this feeling of being overwhelmed in my dorm room I will try to remember, but even if I walk through this same room for the rest of the year, I know my emotions in here will never be the same. And perhaps, later on, I’ll look back at this room and forget how I really felt.
