I am Sarah Fresard, I was born in Geneva in June 1998 and moved to the Cayman Islands in 1999. Growing up in a small community on an island in the Caribbean will forever have an impact on who I am. I love to travel and I feel like all of the traveling I’ve done has had a big effect on my art and my passion. I started drawing when I was toddler, I always loved creating different characters and telling stories about them and that has continued to what I enjoy to this day. Having a huge love for films especially Animated films, I decided I wanted to be an illustrator to be able to help design characters and story boards for films. Wanting to live in New York City since I was like six, Parsons was my first choice for school to prepare and move towards my dream.
In my first semester at Parsons, It was a big change from my little high school back at home. Finding it difficult adjusting to the city I put my focus towards my work at school, and started falling in love with Parsons and learning about design. My favourite class was Drawing and Imaging, that is where I found my passion for drawing still life, specifically models. I have continued to attend classes to do so to this day.
Drawing and Imaging:
I also enjoyed my Space and Materiality class since it got me to try things I’ve never done before such as wood working, and discover the Making Centre and other helpful resources on campus. Spending hours in the wood shop and accidentally hurting my self several times, I felt accomplished doing something that I never thought I would.
Space and Materiality:
My Studio and Seminar 1 was very interesting. I enjoyed how we had to do several group projects which was nice to meet people and have friendly faces you know to see around school and in class. I was really interested in the different projects we did, such as one about beauty standards around the world. I loved hearing peoples points of views and seeing their talents in both classes. Seminar was when I started getting passionate about writing, having always thought I was a bad writer I learnt to love what I write and work towards improving it rather then avoid it.
My first highlight from my first year is a project I had to do in Studio 1. We were assigned to take inspiration from different animals and insects and create a garment representing a location and time period. We were given the 1920’s in Paris, from the start I was excited for this project I liked my partners and have always been interested in the 20’s specifically in Paris where all the writers and artists lived. We first created two prototypes; one male and one female, the living creatures we choose to reflect was a praying mantis, flying squirrel, and a fly. We decided to make the final resemble a flapper dress with a head piece, the hem of the dress was to be from an old book from the 1920’s we found at the Strand, the purse was made from the book also. Researching for this project was very intriguing, I read the book “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway to get a sense of life in the 20’s in Paris, and to this day it stays as one of my favourite books. For the presentation day we created different presentation boards describing the design of the garment, and I did the make up.
In my second semester which I took this Summer, it felt like a different school as I felt like a different person. Taking some time off of school I came back in a much healthier state of mind and prepared to try my hardest but most importantly expand my knowledge. My Time class was very interesting and I was always attentive as we watched a lot of work from different well known artists to learn and be inspired for our own projects. I am a big cinema enthusiast, so I was erratic when we watched parts of movies from directors such as Jean-Luc Godard and David Lynch. It was great to have a class to improve and practice my skills in Adobe premiere and story boarding as it is something I would like pursue as a career.
Time:
My studio and Seminar 2 classes were my favourite classes of the semester. It was different then my first semester as this time around I felt much more motivated and interested in what we were learning. Having a fear of having forgot how to write a proper essay or even read in an efficient way to learning, I was very happy that in my seminar class we went over how to make a strong a essay, citing sources, and annotating. It was exactly what I needed and helped me become more confident in my assignments and also in Studio. My studio class was a great way for me re-discovering my strengths and weaknesses in design and more visual art.
Studio:
My Sustainable Systems was the most time consuming but extremely interesting with field trips to places I’ve never been to and do things I’ve never done. Having an 8 hour class for 5 weeks the work load was very heavy, but I was very happy with what we had to do. I got to experiment with growing my own bioleather out of kombucha and naturally dying different materials including my bioleather. I really enjoyed the field trip to Governors Island, and I felt like each trip or lab experiment we did it helped us get closer to each other and have hands on experience. I found it interesting how we can use design to help improve the world, I never thought I could hold enough power in art to make an impact and this class helped me realize I do have the power.
My second highlight of my first year was my final project in my Sustainable Systems class. We were assigned to create a shelter for a location suffering from climate change. I choose Dafur, North Sudan, as I wanted to focus on desertification and drought refugees. The shelter had to be collapsible and we were only given a handful of materials we were allowed to use; felt, our dyed wool, bioleather, canvas, thread, bamboo sticks, and metal fasteners. I see this project as a highlight as I learned how to sew by hand for this and was proud that I was able to incorporate all the materials including those we had to naturally dye. I used to onion skins to dye my wool, bioleather, and canvas, because I wanted to get a yellow color to match my desert theme. Although it didn’t really turn yellow I was still very happy with how they came out as I felt it matched my theme even better than a yellow would.
Our shelter had to include how food would be produced, how energy would be stored and created, and how they could collect water. I used the canvas to at the top to show the water collection, the bioleather to symbolize solar panels and the wool in little felt pots to express food production. This project was incredibly interesting and I was very proud of how it came out.
Final Project Studio:
For our final project in Studio, we were assigned to choose a place in New York to go to and get first person observations, from these studies we have to create something for the place. I choose Battery Park, I live right next to it but have only gone when I was younger to see the Statue of Liberty, so I thought it would be interesting to learn more about and discover somewhere that is in my neighbourhood. Researching and seeing all the different memorials there, I learn about the parks past having gotten it’s name from being an artillery battery and being the main route of escape for people during 9/11. Having a dark past I was moved by the tranquility of the park and it’s beauty. Having many memorials honouring human rights, remembrance of fallen soldiers and veteran, it felt like a place to not be sad but have hope. I wanted to incorporate these feelings in my final project. I decided to use photography as I have been passionate about it for the past year. I used my polaroid camera to take a series of different pictures that relate to each other.
I wanted to use this polaroids and use transparent paper over them to illustrate on them different things people see, think, or feel while at the park while highlighting all of the various things to do at the park. Each set has three photos relating to something; one set is memorials, another is benefits (such as food, a place to rest, and a place for enjoyment) the last one has to do with the social aspect of the park showing different people but also an area that was completely empty and quiet.
In the future I hope to create more art using techniques and materials I am not used to, trying out new things is difficult but I love the feeling of expanding my skills.
