My name is Ziming Gong; I’m a student at Parsons The New School. My major is fashion design. Able to become a fashion designer is one of my biggest dreams. So I chose to come the to Parsons because I believe that Parsons will lead me to better future and help me to chief my fashion dream.
I took six different classes this seamster; each class is working on various chief skills, for example, my English class 1700 and 1750 help me to improve my English skills on speaking, learning, writing and reading. My drawing class taught me to use different drawing materials to create paintings. Space and materiality class which I think I learned the most, the professor Aviva, she taught us how to the various materials to create artworks, and learned how to do laser cut, how to use wood cutting machines, also she taught us how to use different skills to build a chair. I think this class is excellent; I learned many different skills.
I think that academic studies and studio making always have some connections, most importantly, academic studies give me betters idea and inspirations during studio making.
A good theme or something I’m absorbing it will always make projects and paper exciting. I enjoy making artworks, because I’m good at arts, also I think making artworks it’s a better ways to express my passions and emotions. Because I’m not good at writing the paper or doing presentations, so I enjoy doing them.
Further research always helpful, because I can help me have a better understanding of what I’m doing, even can give me better inspirations when I create artworks or doing research papers.
First highlights in this semester will be my project #2 in my space class. I made these water shape necklace and bracelet. The modern culture inspired me. In this project. In our society today, there are few sensitive words, for example, LGBT, people of color, homosexual, feminist and sexism. I want to make some connections between human rights with my project. In today’s modern culture, there are some people are against difference, that they think, human should follow “rules,” but being different then what they believe human the should be. In this project, I was inspired by the water gun incident, that way I think water is an essential element of my project.
I did lots of research on this project, and it took me the long time to finish this project. I used the heat gun to heated up the polyester when it started to bend, I used the pliers to turn it into different shapes, and the polyester started having negative spaces. Sometimes when the temperature was too high, the polyester will meltdown, and created some holes, which made the polyester looks much like water. The hardest part of this project is that polyester boards are cool down really fast when it been heated up, so it’s tough to bend it into the shapes I want.
This is the first time I used this type of material, which are quite challenging, but it turns out successful.
The second highlight of this semester will be the project #1 in my space class, which I made my first mask. In this project, My insertions are from the Middle East culture and the outfit of MiddleEast women. The women there have equal rights as men, they can’t express themselves, not allowed to wear colorful clothing because of their religion. This has been a controversial issue, so I want to state my own opinion through my artwork.Also, I inspired by The Maison Margiela 2017 spring summer haute couture collection. In this collection, the designer put organza mask on models’ face and sewed the cartoon faces on it. So the models have a second face. I added some ironic elements into my mask to illustrate how women were treated in the Middle East.
I used hemp rope as one of the mean materials. There is a metal wire in the middle of the mask, covers with hemp rope; I used this metal wire to maintain the shape. And then I sewed the hemp rope layer by layer. This project took me around 10 hours to make, the hardest part will be the sewing part, it’s tough to keep the hemp rope in shape, but this is a fun mask to make.
In both these two projects, I learned how to use different materials and tools to create unique artworks. Also, I learned how to find good resources to support my artworks and how to find the good connection between these resources and my artworks, it helps me to find good detractions and inspirations.
Next years, I’m looking forward to learning more about finding sources and how to create more exciting works. Next semester will be much harder than the first one, and I will be able to learn more skills, both academic studies and studio making. For example, I’m taking the sewing class, which will be useful when I start fashion major.
