Author: Florence Gao

Florence Gao Interconnectivity Project Reflection

Florence GaoCommunity

For this project, I chose the food court in Newport Mall as my field site. After eating in the food court for a few days, sitting there and wrote my field research notes, I was intrigued by the inclusive environment that the food court offers to all different kinds of people: no matter their race, age, social economic status, etc. At first, my project idea was to make an artboard that is full of scrap fabrics that I gathered around the school and place them on the board based on their colors. I wanted to make each color represent a different group of people that I saw at the food court, and together they made up the field site as a whole. However, when I started to pin fabrics/glue fabrics on the board, I failed to find a way to make the fabrics stay without showing the glue or pins which I did not want them to appear on the board. So I changed my idea and got the inspiration from the aprons the workers in the food court wears when they hand out samples to everyone who walked through the food court.

When I was visiting the site, I was surprised that the worker who handed out sampled gave literally everyone who walked by a sample-kids, couples, business people who work around the area, homeless people and even the genitors and their co-workers. I think this welcoming environment plays a huge part of the interconnectivity of the food court.

Below is a photo of one of the workers.

I made the garment from all scrap fabrics that I found just to make the piece look nicer overall(so it would not be on a naked manikin. Then I made the apron piece using a sewing machine and muslin. Here are some photos before I colored the piece with acrylic paint. I added the off-white looking buckles because I liked how that is a style(high-end street style vs. workers in the restaurants) that is such an opposite thing of the apron. I thought it did not look as uninformed as I wanted to look more uninformed so I painted it with a light blue color that is the same color as the table cloth looking fabric of the dress.

Here is my finished piece.

Florence Gao Zine Reflection

Florence GaoIdentity

Below is the link to my whole zine(flipping through the entire zine), it was too large of a file to be directly uploaded to this post.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uuV6i9cF8wm5Eka13X_aoYwqeeDcBJRC/view?usp=sharing

(please log in to your New School email account for access)

Zvc  

My zine was about my trouble of sleeping and how my cat that I adopted helped me through it. Basically, my zine contains a few pages of me alone, then introduced my sleeping problems and smoking problems, then to when I first met my cat and at last I gave up smoking+slept much better now because of my cat. In the end, I also attached a part of my therapist’s letter about my cat being my emotional support animal, which I hope it would help my readers understand what my zine is about. Above is the front cover or my zine. For the cover, I used one of the previous pieces that I did called “Studio Chaos” that was based on my nightmare/the messy feeling that I had while working in my studio.

I feel like it would be hard for a lot of people to understand what my cat means for me-to me, he is more than a pet. Before having him, I would wake up at least 3 times per night and have reoccurring nightmares. After getting my cat, I not only got less depressed, having him slept by my side also made me able to sleep without taking medicines. I feel that my cat is a big part of my identity, just because that sleeping is so important(think about this, about 1/3 of our life we spent sleeping).

Here is what my zine looked like in my indesign. One of the photos of multiple me and my cat was photoshopped. That took me a long time and hard work but I love how it turned out, that is for sure my favorite page of all.

 

I made all my zine except the handwriting part on InDesign and printed the final one at village copier. I first tried to print it on the procolor printer and the first day the printer broke so I could not print at all. The second day it successfully printed but it was a much bigger size than I wanted and also the color was quite off(I had a lot of vibrant colors). Then I went to a shop to print out my zine in the size and color I wanted, but when I wanted to pick it up they told me that their machine was broken so they could not bind my zine. In the end, I had to go to village copier the day before it is due and paid the extra fee for the rush fee and got my zine 30 minutes before school started and wrote rest of my scripts when the class was starting.

If I would do another zine, I would definitely make sure that my printing was successful at the first time. It was such a struggle to print and this was my first ever zine so I never like tried to print anything like this. I think this was a great experience to try making something that I have never done and I think I did a pretty good job of making the whole zine looked put together and all the concepts throughout my zine made sense. However, my handwriting is crappy because I was in such a hurry and made a writing mistake. I would so want to do it better if I had more time(but I guess it kinda represents the clumsy side of me..). Other than that, I think my zine was very put together and I am satisfied with my first ever zine.

 

 

Florence’s 3 favorite image

Florence GaoIdentity

Out of all the photos we took for the class, I like the 2 identity shots I took with my cat the most. I feel like my cat is a huge part of who I am. I spend all my personal life with him, we sleep together, play together and support each other with love. Without my cat I would not be the person that I am right now. Before having him, I used to not sleep well and had anxiety when I had to stay alone. After adopting my cat, at my apartment, there is always someone who is waiting for me, that kind of feeling of safety and security really made my life better. He is more than an emotional support animal, but family.

Florence’s Artist Breakfast

Florence GaoArtists Breakfasts

Location: Beijing China

Time: February 12th

Person: Ian Timpone

My ex who had this chocolate lava cake and coffee ice cream with a cup of mocha in a fancy cafe.

 

 

Location: Newport, NJ

Time: February 11th

Person: Me

I ordered this açaí bowl via Ubereats since I was sick and it was snowing outside. This açaí bowl had chocolate protein in it and was topped with bananas, granolas, honey and peanut butter.