Falmouth Academy Class of 2021 Senior Portrait Explications

Class of 2021 Senior Portrait Project Explications The final Arts-Across-the-Curriculum project for seniors at Falmouth Academy takes them back to the portraits and essays they created in eighth grade. Seniors design another self-portrait in the medium of their choice, writing an explication of this new self-portrait. They are displayed alongside eighth-grade portraits and provide a touching look at how the students have grown.

Class of 2021 Senior Portrait Explications

Ellamae Cazeault When beginning to brainstorm for this project, I had a hard time figuring out one thing that was “just so me” to capture in my art piece. And then I realized that there wasn't just one thing. There were many. So I opted to create an art piece that encapsulated many things that make me who I am. No better vessel to do this than through my own name. All seven letters of it.

My name is pretty unique; I have never met anyone else with it. I happen to quite like it. Ellamae. Rolls off the tongue. I often get complimented on it. My gym teacher named her cat after me. There was even a woman who came into my father’s work--I just so happened to be there--and after hearing my name, she decided a few months later to name her baby after me. My name comes from a great-great aunt of mine. From the few stories I’ve heard of her, she was a force to be reckoned with. She ran her own lumber yard in the early part of the 20th century, and she was the only woman in the business. This meant that she was confident and could hold her own amongst the men. I can't help but think that some of her confidence was passed along to me with her name.

In this art project, I decided to highlight a certain aspect of me in each letter of my name. My dad runs the family roofing business, and when I was younger, I would help him measure roofs and ride with him as he visited the different projects. Seeing my dad work firsthand taught me from a young age about the value of hard work, so I put an asphalt shingle in one of the letters. Many people who know me associate me with my large iced coffee I have in my hand every morning. So it only felt fitting to put some Dunkin Donuts merchandise in one of the letters. From a young age, and growing up on Cape Cod, I have always been near the water or on a boat. When I was eight years old, I started sailing and fell in love with it. Every summer since then I have sailed, so I decided to put some nautical flags in one of the letters. Math is my favorite subject, and many people in my grade know that I am someone who they can come to with questions on the math homework and that I am happy to help. So I have put some old math problems and homeworks in one of the letters. Since sophomore year, my summer job has been as a gardener at a private flower farm. Although not the most glamorous job, I have found it somewhat relaxing and have gained so much horticultural knowledge. So I decided to highlight that in one of my letters. I have three dogs, and I have always had a dog running around my house for my entire life. So I decided to highlight that in one of my letters. Finally, I am a big sister, and through that I have learned so much responsibility. Family is such a big part of anybody, especially me, so I decided to highlight that in one of my letters.

Class of 2021 Senior Portrait Explications

Although impossible to capture all of who I am, I hope that this piece can help shed light on some of the larger parts.

Eliza Chun (cover image) Folding one thousand paper cranes is an exercise in discipline in search of a promised wish. I first heard of the tradition in middle school, after reading a story about a young Japanese girl with cancer, the result of the bombing of Hiroshima. As her cancer progressed, she began folding one thousand paper cranes in hope that when she finished, she could wish away her cancer. As she got too sick to fold anymore, her classmates began to help her. While she did die of cancer, the idea imprinted upon me.

I began folding paper cranes, and although I didn’t get through more than twenty or thirty, I hung them up in my room, where they still are today.

Over four years later, I tried again, and this time, I succeeded. As I mentioned before, folding these cranes is an exercise in discipline. It’s easy to think one thousand will go quickly, but it will not. It certainly will not. However, I have found that many of the things I enjoy and hope to accomplish in life follow the same path. Long, tedious, yet ultimately, beautiful. I have always enjoyed writing, and writing is not something that can be polished and perfected with a single snap. The entire process, from worldbuilding to fleshing out characters, from the first draft to the dreaded publishing process, is so undeniably lengthy. Screenwriting is the same way, if not worse. Without determination, without discipline, there is no way to reach the finish line.

While I folded these cranes, I had ample time to think about my family, myself, and the future. At times in the past, I haven’t connected with my family, particularly my parents, but as I look forward, I cannot see a future without them. They have been instrumental in my growth and in all my talents, and I hope whatever the future brings will help me return what they have given me.

My wish is for health, safety, and opportunity for my family.

Silas Clark There are very few art pieces that I’ve worked on at FA that I would consider truly finished. Of the twenty or so pieces I’ve made since seventh grade, I’d say only about a third are completed. In some cases, I hit a time constraint. In others, my attention simply shifted. This is not to say I don’t enjoy art; I just have different aspects of it that I enjoy, one of them being the overall process of creating a piece. When making art, or

Class of 2021 Senior Portrait Explications

reflecting on the work of others, I enjoy the steps. I enjoy thinking about how the piece may shift or be altered throughout its creation.

Paintings often are the result of process. One of the very first steps when painting, even before applying the paint, can involve coating the canvas and sketch with a single, watered-down color and using that one tone to provide a value structure. This is called an underpainting, and just like the name suggests, it follows the same ideas as the colored painting that would go over it. Of the two—underpainting versus standard painting—the one I actually enjoy creating more would have to be the underpainting. Even with just one color, the work can be complex, providing support for the piece as a whole and allowing the colors eventually layered over it really to shine.

That leads me to my own self-portrait. The subject matter, my hands holding a candle, simply acts as a medium to test myself, in particular to experiment with harsh lighting along the way. I initially drew the sketch using an iPad and then projected the digital drawing onto a canvas and traced it using pencil. The media differed, but the base image remained the same. While not exactly emblematic of me psychologically—although I could also be considered an unfinished project—the piece, I hope, highlights what I enjoy most when making art. Keeping it “unfinished,” leaving the underpainting and sketch exposed, allows anyone viewing it to gain a greater understanding of the process of its creation and, hopefully, a greater appreciation for what can be found under the color of many paintings.

Justine Clement The infamous shark. The ballerina. The inaccurate self-portrait. If you have met me, there is a good chance that any of these three things rings a bell. If not, that’s perfectly okay. I’ll give you one hint: art (or lack thereof, in my case). This issue is nothing new. I have never been blessed with the talents that others have in the creative field and have learned to laugh at my attempts instead of being hard on myself. This was not always the case, though. My inner critic and inner perfectionist have always been present in my life, a challenge to live with and deal with in a healthy way still to this day.

In terms of art, since I’ve never been particularly skilled in any of the branches of the subject, I’ve never spent much time delving into the world of creativity, particularly compared to others. However, the one consistent creative outlet that I discovered I had all along was nail art. From a young age, I would get my nails done with Mom and as I

Class of 2021 Senior Portrait Explications

got older, learned how to do them myself. Whenever I needed to escape reality and have some me-time, I would resort to painting my nails. Eventually, I started adding little designs here and there, and eventually discovered that despite everything that I had known about my artistic skills from that point on, I in fact could be creative after all (If you have seen any of my pieces of artwork you know how horrendous they are and that it is perfectly reasonable for me to have bragging rights for my nail-art skills. Just let me have this one little thing). With something artistic that I was actually good at, I fell in love with nail art and soon set aside time each week for myself. Back in eighth grade, when we were drawing the first round of self-portraits (spoiler alert: it was unfortunate. Just look to your left and you’ll see), I was told that come senior year we would be redoing the project with our own twists. From then on, I knew that I would incorporate nail polish into my piece somehow. Fast forward to now, and that is exactly what I did.

In this piece, I used many nail techniques such as ombre/gradienting and water marbling, and played around with different textures such as gel and glitter, whatever felt right in the moment. With the addition of little whimsical designs pulling together this nighttime on the beach painting, I feel as though this piece is a perfect representation of what it is like when I just sit down, focus, and let my creativity flow in the moment.

Caitlin Corkeron I have always been the quiet kid who sits in the back of the classroom and keeps her head down. If possible, I try not to draw any attention to myself. That’s how I have been for most of my life, and I am perfectly okay with that. Due to my shyness, though, I have always found talking to others hard. However, in high school I figured out a way to gain that confidence. My mom came up with the idea of dog agility, where a person and their dog run an obstacle course. One of my mom’s friends, who was also super shy in high school, told her that dog agility had helped to bring her out of her shell.

Ever since we got our Goldendoodle, Star, there was an obvious connection between the two of us. Star and I did everything together. Wherever I was, she had to be right next to me. My mom would joke about how she was my little shadow when she was a puppy. As Star grew and her personality formed, my parents started to call her the third child in our family. Star tries to be human, and her way of doing that is by copying everything I do. We are each other's safe place. Whenever I get extremely nervous or scared of something, Star appears at my side and provides silent support. “You two are the same person. Same personality, same demeanor, but Star is more outgoing than

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you are, Caitlin.” This was a common refrain in our household. My mom decided to sign us up for the agility classes and see how it went. Little did she know that agility would become a huge part of my life.

My first agility class was an interesting day filled with nerves, fear and lots of excitement. That class was overwhelming since there were so many people and so much to do. I was afraid of failing, but Star was always there and tried her best alongside me. It became easier, and now I have been doing agility for three years. Star and I compete in “trials,” which are competitive agility competitions. We have gained many ribbons and gone up several levels of difficulty in the trials. I am no longer afraid to walk into agility classes because they have become a second home to me. The confidence I have gained from those classes has translated into every other aspect of my life. Many things in my life are animal- or dog-related. Most of my shirts have some sort of dog phrase on them. My favorite shirt has the phrase “Better Together” with a human handprint and a dog paw right next to each other. It shows the exact way I feel about my relationship with my dog because she has made me into a better version of myself.

Shelby Eldredge “Does anyone want my black licorice jelly beans?”

“Oooh, I’ll take them. They’re my favorite!”

“No, Poppy!! Stop trying to eat our jelly beans.”

“We tried to stop her but you might not want to eat the ones on top… Poppy might have licked them.”

“Alli, do you want my cinnamon? I only bit into it because I thought it was cherry.”

“Do you want to try this flavor, Dad? I don’t think it has soy, so it probably won’t kill you.”

Movie nights with my family are always entertaining, especially now with my puppy Poppy. They typically involve Poppy walking around the room looking for stray jelly beans or popcorn pieces, and us trying to keep her head out of the popcorn bowls. Even though it usually takes a long time to find a movie we all can agree on, and even if the movies we watch may not always be the most cinematic masterpieces, when we do find one, it’s always a lot of fun. We almost always put on the subtitles because we talk a lot throughout the movie (Cassidy and I are mostly guilty of this) and we make a lot of jokes. On one movie night, we chose a documentary about whales. Throughout the whole

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thing Cassidy and I imitated the whale songs. And you can’t imitate whale songs without also talking like Dory in Finding Nemo when she was “speaking whale.” It may leave everyone with a headache but we also all have lots of laughs. No matter how many times I ask for personal space, and joke about moving out when I turn 18, I love spending time with my family and wouldn’t trade them for anyone else. Jelly beans, no matter how unusual it may be, are something that reminds me of these fun times with my family. That is why I made a portrait out of jelly beans. (Thank you, Alli, for the idea.)

We got my puppy Poppy in September. Since that time, I have taken 1,817 pictures of her. (I’m kind of obsessed with her.) She may not always be the most well-behaved, but we all love her. If you lose a scrunchie, a headband, or your Chapstick, you can almost guarantee that Poppy will be sitting on my beanbag chewing it. She has even learned that my backpack has Chapstick in the front pocket and can now unzip it to get that Chapstick. We also have to make sure that you spell certain words around Poppy like W-A-L-K or T-R-E-A-T or she will go crazy. She may be crazy, but my family all loves her so much. If you want kisses or good cuddles, Poppy is a good dog for that! She will also warn us about any suspicious-looking squirrels outside with her “ferocious” bark.

Poppy has become an important part of our family, and my camera roll.

Francesca Farina An estimated 35% of all microplastics in the ocean are from laundering synthetic garments, and the fashion industry is responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions.

These are some of the statistics I learned while researching the environmental effects of fast fashion. Shopping from fast fashion companies is something that is so ingrained into our lives that many people don’t even stop to consider the huge stress that the industry puts on our planet. And it feels like something that is difficult to stop supporting. When I realized not only how bad fast fashion is for the planet, but also the unethical labor practices used by most popular companies, I knew it was not something I could keep ignoring. Of course stopping completely is difficult and not something that should be expected immediately, but there are always little things that people can do to better themselves in the world. For my Major Effort in science class, I chose to present on the environmental issues that fast fashion brings as a way to share some of what I learned and to encourage others to realize the effects of the industry that are not popularly known about. I realized that everything has a bigger impact than what I would imagine.

Class of 2021 Senior Portrait Explications

Trying to improve myself in a world filled with unsupportive people is difficult, but I have stopped shying away from things just because they are difficult. During my five years at Falmouth Academy, my views on myself and the world have radically changed. I started here as an insecure, super shy girl who didn’t think anything I did mattered, and I am leaving with a newly found feeling of self-acceptance and a realization that there are ways in which everyone can make a difference in the world, even if they’re small. Small changes are what lead to big differences, and I have learned to be proud of the small changes I have made with myself.

One of the hardest things for me to accept about myself used to be my hair. It took me a long time to learn how to do it in a way that I liked. But now it really is something I would never change about myself. Learning to accept that part of myself was a big change that I had to make, but it has made it easier for me to accept other parts of myself that I used to hate.

For this piece, I chose to embroider my hair using recycled textiles. I hope that it symbolizes how rewarding it is to find the beauty in old things. Instead of buying all new materials for my piece, I choose to repurpose items I had. Many of the strands are from shirts I cut up that I no longer wear. I was flooded with memories from all the times I wore those shirts and all the memories that were tied in that, if not repurposed, would have just been thrown out with the shirts. I think repurposing things is a beautiful act.

Buying second-hand clothes is a way to give something a new life and to create new memories that become basically another part of the fabric.

Paige Francis Change can be a difficult thing for many people to process. Whether it's a good change or bad, it’s an adjustment that takes time. You could be moving to a new state, starting a new job, or just meeting a new group of people. Being in a new setting where you’re surrounded by new people is something that almost everyone can relate to, but this has been a common experience throughout my life. It can, at times, be a daunting task. I’ve been put into scenarios where everyone around me knew each other, and I was an outlier.

It’s a level of intimidating that’s hard to describe. You feel isolated and like you have to plan out what you’re going to say before the conversation even starts. A couple dozen uncomfortable pauses will occur until you begin to get a foot in the door. Eventually, conversations will become casual, and you’ll forget about the

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nerves you had during your first meeting. Before you know it, you’ve found the people who will be involved in your life for the upcoming years.

You’ll have a hard time thinking back to the time when you weren’t in this new environment, but it’s important not to forget where you’ve been and who you’ve met. For my senior self-portrait, I chose to make a casting of my hands clasping each other. On one hand there is a painting of a mountain range, and on the other is a painting of ocean waves. The waves signify the past, where I’ve been. Although I don’t live on Cape Cod, Falmouth has become a second home for me. I have been attending this school since eighth grade. It’s where I have met some of my closest friends. It’s where I grew up. The mountains signify the future, where I’m going. Colorado is a new environment where I’m going to have new experiences. There, I will meet all the people who will be in the next phase of my life. The clasping hands show the joining of my past and my future. I’m moving on but keeping what I’ve learned and experienced with me.

Ruby Gaetani Feminine Femininity has always been a difficult concept for me. I grew up tall and lanky, scrounging in the dirt for bugs, watching Animal Planet documentaries, and sporting a closet full of dinosaur t-shirts. My hair was stick-straight, always cut short, and my eyebrows sat thick and dark above my eyes. As I grew up, the things that I loved and the way that I looked felt like they were encroaching on my womanhood. Femininity seemed as though it was simply not made for me as I was.

I tried so hard to fit into this magical box I had created for myself, which I believed to be the definition of a woman. I hunched over, forced my feet into smaller shoes, and raised the pitch of my voice. I stopped talking about dinosaurs and Doctor Who and bugs and scary stories. I did what I promised my mother I would never do; I plucked my eyebrows. I tried to throw out every part of myself that didn’t fit into that magical box in hopes that I would finally reach femininity.

Luckily, my eyebrows grew back in. After changing myself had failed to change the way that I felt, I tossed out the magic box. After years of trying to hide myself in exchange for what I thought was womanhood, I made the decision to own myself. In doing that, I’ve found that there is no magical box, or checklist, or special something that makes you feminine. Instead, feminine is whatever you make it out to be. Whatever you want it to be.

Class of 2021 Senior Portrait Explications

In my self-portrait, I’ve reflected upon the concept of my own femininity. I’ve combined two things that are huge staples in my life: The Lord of the Rings, a trilogy which I grew up watching and have loved since I could barely talk; and baking, a source of expression that has become an integral part of who I am. In my self-portrait, I have reflected upon myself, and the curious and wonderful things that make me.

Noah Glasgow According to my great-great-aunt Patricia (herein, Aunt Pat), Catherine and Frances Richmond first moved to Hannibal, Missouri in 1838, with eight young children in tow.

“They traveled with their household possessions west by stagecoach to the Ohio River,” Aunt Pat writes in her family history, “by boat to the Mississippi River, up that River on a raft, and settled on a farm near Hannibal.” With the Richmonds was their son Hamilton, a boy of five, the grandfather of my own grandfather’s grandmother (or, simply, my 4th-great-grandfather). At the time, 1838, a boy named Samuel Longhorn Clemens was already in residence in Hannibal, Missouri at the tender age of three. My own Aunt Pat makes the dubious claim that the two were boyhood friends and proceeds to offer circumstantial evidence. I like to think, instead, that the two were perhaps acquaintances; I know, for certain, that my own ancestor experienced, more or less, the sort of boyhood that Samuel Clemens reproduced in the experiences of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer. Perhaps, at some point or another, Hamilton Richmond whitewashed an undue amount of fencing.

I discovered my own connection to Mark Twain and Hannibal, Missouri this fall, when I began a dive into my own family history. But I first read Huckleberry Finn some time in elementary school and then read it again for English class in my junior year. I thought perhaps a creative and lasting “self-portrait” for senior year would be preserving my boyhood copy of a beloved book, with all its scribbles and annotations; I would restore the cracked spine and loose pages with a new binding, then fabricate a hardcover casing that I would be proud to place and keep on my shelf. Time allowing, I would produce a second hardcover from another book I’d read for English during my time at F.A. I’ve always had a special love for English. For this work, I settled on my worn, mass-market paperback copy of To Kill a Mockingbird. The novel begins with the narrator musing on her own family history: “Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the Battle of Hastings” (4). While the Southern branch of my own family does not

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extend to Hastings, it does extend to Rychert Dunham, who lived in England in 1237 BCE. The books I chose to rebind were both commercial paperbacks, which deteriorate over time. This is primarily because of (a) their cheap, acidic paper and (b) a binding that relies on melted plastic adhesive applied to the edge of individual pages, as opposed to individual pamphlets stitched together in progressively larger clusters. While I could not fix problem (a), a heat gun and extension cord were enough to loosen the two novels from their worn adhesive spine, which was little more than hot glue applied by a large, commercial jig. With the book pages successfully separated, I fabricated a makeshift finishing press with four small planks of cedar and as many standard wood clamps.

Holding the unbound pages of the manuscript between two of these planks and a pair of clamps, I fanned the pages of each book’s spine out to the left and applied a layer of fast-setting polyvinyl adhesive (PVA). Then, quickly, I fanned the pages back to the right and applied another layer of the adhesive. The goal here was to create perhaps a millimeter or so of space coated with the PVA on each page, which seals the spine together. Once the fanning and gluing process was complete, I placed the spine between two more planks and clamps and allowed it to seal for perhaps an hour or so.

This process, in its entirety, is called Lumbeck binding.

Once the simple glue spine had adhered, I cut diagonal ridges across the spine of the book and inlaid short lengths of PVA-soaked twine to reinforce the binding. From there, the hardcover binding involved gluing on pairs of thick endpapers to each manuscript and fashioning the cover from a thin sheet of particle board, PVA, muslin, and cloth I filched from my mother’s art studio. The PVA-bound pages are reinforced with muslin before the endpapers are glued into the hardcover to create the final seal. The books are presented here in their final form, and perhaps one day the grandson of my grandson’s granddaughter will enjoy them just as I did.

James Goldbach For my senior self-portrait, I chose to create a piece of art in a medium I’ve had very little experience in: kinetic sculpture making. This medium requires a calculated blend of wood working, engineering, geometry, calculus, and most importantly, a high tolerance for mistakes. I was inspired to make this project by my dad, who has a long history of working with wood in amazing ways. Over the years, he has made picnic tables, sculpted with care, leaving the live edges exposed and unaltered to allow people who sit there to observe the natural beauty of the bark, finishing the surfaces with Shou Sugi Ban burning techniques, which give them a certain zebra-like pattern as the flecks of carbon reflect the sunlight. He has made walking sticks for his friends and loved ones

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with beautiful wood burnings depicting Egyptian-like pictograms, thoughtful personalized messages and artistic Aztec patterns. These are just some examples of the beautiful work my father has done with wood that I’ve been lucky enough to witness.

After watching him create over the years, I’ve been inspired this year to create a project out of wood to showcase nature's inherent beauty. This kinetic sculpture represents many things; it can represent the solar system, our home planet spinning around with its many small satellites and rings of thin dust orbiting it for what to us seems like an eternity; it can represent the perfect parabolic movement of a droplet of water creating ripples that seem to radiate endlessly from the epicenter; it can represent the constant movement, change and oscillation of life, its unpredictability, yet its constant cyclical motion. These are the feelings and images I aim to evoke from the viewer when they turn the crank of this kinetic sculpture.

To create it, I spent hours planning, calculating, cutting and sanding each piece of each mechanism with the generous help of my dad, Jay. This project would not have been possible without his knowledge of wood, and his ability to teach me how to manipulate this once malleable and living material. Each night during the past few weeks, after his Michelin star-level meals, we would go out into the garage attached to my house, which he uses as a workshop. Inside the garage, time seems almost to dissolve, enveloped by art, creativity and relaxation. Sharing this experience with my father for essentially the first time was truly blissful, and we’ve connected in a new and special way because of it.

Not only do I have my father and his wonderful workshop to thank, but he has taught me that I also have the wood to thank. Each plank, dowel, disk and ring that you see taking part in this mechanism was once part of its own organism, constantly growing new layers of woody skin, each containing pieces of history and fragments of local events that happen each year. Every piece of wood tells a story, and every piece of wood has its own unique beauty. Much like snowflakes or sand dollars, no two grains of wood have the same curves, the same patterns, knots, rot, bug tunnels or bark. Realizing this is appreciating the art that nature has made to contribute to our own art, and I am eternally grateful to my dad for helping me see this through his eyes.

Drew Harmon I find myself lost within my own thoughts more than enough times throughout the day.

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These thoughts carry my mind all over the place, with no apparent direction or destination in mind. It feels like the world around me washes away, and the only thing that matters is what I am thinking about in that current moment. I like to call this place the “true present.” It is a peaceful and serene mindset to be in. There are no regrets of the past, and no worries about the future, in this zone my mind falls into. Breathing in and breathing out are the only motions that hold value to me during this time. Whether I have come to this place involuntarily or by choice, it is always a complete mind flush and leaves me feeling refreshed and motivated by the time I snap back into reality.

I used to believe that I was never a drawer or a doodler because I cannot accurately depict a real-life sight onto paper. It is funny to think that I was once so shallow to believe a drawing must look realistic and recognizable in comparison to reality. I recently have gotten into a style of drawing that involves no thought process, no initial ideas, and no regrets. I simply draw a line, draw another line that could be near it, or branch off of the initial line, and maybe throw some shapes into the mix as well. This process is repetitive, but it is never the same as the previous figure I drew. The only thing that guides my scribbles and lines is my subconscious mind. When I draw in this style, it pulls me right back into the “true present,” and I realize it does not matter what the end result looks like. Not caring what the finished product will look like allows my subconscious mind to create images I could not even fathom beforehand. True beauty comes when there is no bias or standards of what said beauty should appear as.

The art piece in front of you is the result of a mind flowing freely, with no direction or destination for how the drawing should finish.

Ella Heywood “I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.” -Georgia O’Keeffe This quote is, for the most part, true to me and how I try to live my life. As an anxious person, many (and maybe even most) things in day-to-day life are things I want to avoid doing because they are scary to me. But also being a somewhat aggressive person has enabled me to push myself through the fear to do the things that I know I would regret not doing. I started realizing that I could push through the panic because I understood the fact that I was scared.

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The first time I overcame this was when we first moved to Washington state around 2008. We were exploring our new home and ended up at the beach. My dad, being the funny man he is, jokingly offered me $20 if I fully submerged myself in the icy waves.

Me, being the serious child I was, deeply contemplated this offer. The water was wavy and cold. I wasn’t sure if it was worth it. But why shouldn’t I? Because it was scary. But why was I scared? I realized that I wasn’t really sure if I actually had any reason to be scared. Before I could think myself any further into the hole I was in, I ran. Right into the ocean. It was absolutely terrifying and wonderful at the same time. The rewarding feeling I had running back up the beach was the best feeling. I didn’t even really care about the money at this point. I was just so proud of myself for doing something that I wasn’t sure if I could do.

When thinking about what I was going to do for my senior self-portrait, a lot of the ideas scared me. I thought for a while about doing something more in my comfort zone, like painting or drawing, but then I thought to myself, why not do something that I’m not comfortable with? Why am I so scared of it going wrong? What are the consequences of this project going wrong? There’s nothing wrong with failing. In fact, it’s good to fail sometimes. So I took a leap of faith and decided to do something I had not done since I was around eight years old. I would make my own clothing. Although this was scary to me, I decided that I would push through it and finish it no matter what. Even if it went wrong or didn’t fit right.

Anna Hoehlein I grew up playing and walking on the local beaches of Falmouth, with family, friends, and sometimes alone. The parking lots of these beaches have been provided with a plentiful number of both trash and recycling cans for the public's convenience, and the overall well-being of the local environment, yet over the years it has always been a wonder to me how much of a trace people leave behind them. I was taught at a young age to pick up after myself, indoors and especially outdoors, so perhaps it's just ingrained in me, but it hurts my heart to see how taken advantage of our planet is.

People flock to come and enjoy the beautiful beaches, yet they leave them a mess, polluted with trash that poisons the already small amount of wildlife we are lucky enough to have here. I know that I myself am guilty of mindless waste, but it's something that can easily be worked on with a little more conscious thought, something that we as a community can all apply.

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The plastic and trash you see displayed in this self-sculpture all have come from the local beaches of Falmouth. I only used a small percentage of the waste I was able to collect from simply walking up and down the shore. I wanted to make a piece that represented my frustrations with this particular human habit, and that also displayed the link between the waste we leave behind and our own lives because I feel like it's a connection that is often easily forgotten. We as people take what we need from the Earth and then spit it back out when we’re done. The problem with this, though, is that as we continue to take and spit out, we are eventually going to start having to take from what we’ve tossed. Out of sight, out of mind is a temporary fix because as proven by my beach walks, the waste is and has been making its way back into sight, which means mind is sure to follow.

My hope is that this piece is ugly to look at and confrontational enough to help quicken this sight-mind connection. The planet is all of our homes, and no one wants their house to be trashed.

Alyssa MacDonald Looking back on the earliest years of my life that I can remember, the most prominent memories I have are of sitting in my room playing with my dolls and dollhouses. While that is of course probably true for many kids, playing with these seemingly simple toys has led me to a lot of thinking as I have grown older. Perhaps I was so fascinated with creating detailed buildings out of wooden blocks and dollhouse furniture that sprawled across my bedroom floor because I felt like I was creating real spaces. Most of the experiences I have had throughout my life have been defined by the spaces they were in, a concept I particularly enjoyed exploring in many of my college essays as I applied to architecture school. Now, having been through high school and the process of looking ahead to my future, I have been able to reflect back on these times of the past. I have taken a lot of inspiration from my earliest fascination with the concepts of space to develop high school hobbies that allow me to explore the same ideas. This connection between the past and future is something that I want to always remember to keep in mind.

The model of my house I have built represents a number of pieces important to my story from both past and future. Using a digital model of my home I had previously created on

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my computer, I was able to easily create a to-scale model, which represents the hobbies I have now, but I couldn't leave out the experiences I took inspiration from in the past.

On the back of the model I have used the same dollhouse furniture I used to play with sitting on my bedroom floor to create my bedroom itself. And of course it wouldn't feel right to build any building other than my home. As the saying goes, “Home is where the heart is.” To me, my house itself is nearly as important as the people in it. I am excited that, as I venture off into the world, I will be able to continue to discover the beauty in the spaces around me and to find many more new homes, though none of which will be as important to me as my first.

Lucca MacDonald When I was in third grade, I drew my first dragon. I remember there was this art project where we had to draw one flying over a city. For some reason, the scales and twists just spoke to me. After that, I couldn’t stop drawing them. I drew them on my notebooks, in my sketchbooks, for other art projects. I doodled them all over my homework, even used them to embellish holiday cards to friends and relatives. One of my favorite things to do was to create my own types, basing them on elements or making new worlds to populate with my three-horned alien dragons. As I drew, I started to develop a style and found what my dragons look like. Okay, so maybe I stole some elements from the millions of dragon books I had and also How to Train your Dragon by Cressida Cowell, but the dragons I drew were still uniquely my own.

Over the course of my life, I have made many efforts to hide my younger self. The Lucca of ages 1-10 was fidgety, had a hard time making eye contact, and talked primarily about animals. She struggled to keep friendships as she got older, finding that most people in the world did not want to still pretend that they were cheetahs and leopards and...well...dragons. When I moved from Maine, I decided to reinvent myself and leave the Lucca of the past to the past. Little did I know that this would create a feeling of inauthenticity in myself and make me wonder why even with my closest friends, I still felt like I was performing a part. But there was one thing about myself that I always kept close, and that was my affinity for drawing dragons. For my senior self-portrait, I’ve decided to draw a dragon to reach back to my younger self through the seven years that separate us with the one thing that has connected us. I want to tell her it’s okay to be her, and it’s okay to be different.

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Beatrice Mattison Girl with the Emerald Earring “I need more AR points.” This is something every 7th-grade FA student, when facing the Accelerated Reader requirements, can understand and has said. I remember needing a few more points before the end of the trimester, so I picked up Girl with a Pearl Earring

by Tracy Chevalier. The book gives a beautifully imaginative recounting, through the eyes of the model, of how the painting came to be. The face of the girl in this Vermeer painting is incredibly famous, yet no one knows for sure who she was.

Unfortunately, this is not rare. Women in history are often forgotten or overshadowed. Some scholars suspect that the model was Vermeer’s eldest daughter, who was rumored to be quite the painter in her own right. Nothing is certain though. I thought it would be fitting to place myself in the shoes of this woman as a way to end with what I began at FA. This drawing is done in charcoal, which means it is black and white. I used pastels to give color to the earring, drawing attention to it. Unlike in the original, I wore an emerald earring. My sister and I have a matching set.

The earrings are made to look like ones a character wears in the movie Howl’s Moving Castle. It is a lovely book that was turned into a movie by Studio Ghibli. The animation style is unique and stunning. It’s the movie I watched with my sister before she left for college. The earrings were my going-away gift for her. We are incredibly close, and this was the first time we were separated. The earrings invoke a melancholy and bittersweet feeling for me. They are beautiful but hold a twinge of sadness. This same sentiment could be said about the nameless girl in this famous painting I have recreated.

I have a great love for history and finding the women in it who have been left unappreciated. I do hope that if I am to be remembered by history, that my name will be as well so that I do not end up as an anonymous, voiceless face.

Treven McKeone I have never quite seen myself as a creator, but I do consider myself creative. The difference is quite minimal, but if it makes any sense, I see the word "creator" as implying being the origin of what you make. I don't, and I am entirely willing to admit this. At a young age, I drew fanart of people I looked up to. When I grew older, I began to write fanfiction based on my favorite stories. I live for what I know, not for much new.

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Fan content comes naturally to me, and crossovers even more so. My "self-portrait" doesn't necessarily depict me; it more so serves as a view of a part of my life I haven't necessarily hidden, but have not made much of a deal over.

Art is the expression of human experience. Whether it be through the paintings and sculptures on display in museums, the wonderful weaving tapestries of storybooks, or the impressive acts of performative arts, it is natural that we as humans express ourselves in one way or another. The things most familiar to us are the most often depicted. I consider myself a musician, and a mashup artist. The musical mashups you heard on these speakers were all made by me. I've spliced in bits from many kinds of music that I am familiar with. Most of these mashups are based around certain characters from various media, similar to the thematic leitmotifs of a film soundtrack.

Some contain multiple characters, symbolizing a clash between two characters. No two mashups represent the same character.

The trickiest part about all this is putting into words why I do it. In the literal sense, I'm part of a community of people who do things like me--in fact, each of these has been or is planned to be part of a crossover project, a "tournament" of characters based on musical battles like this, leitmotifs clashing with vocals and instrumentals of all kinds. I consider myself creative because I am one of the many people pushing for these creations… but I don't consider myself a creator. I'm not the one writing these lyrics, singing these songs, composing these instrumentals.

Art never needs to be wholly original to be its own creation. The best artists have their influence. Even some more formally defined "music" contains a variety of sampling for an effect. That's why I'm proud enough of what I do to consider myself an artist. Every creation depicts a part of the world as I understand it, and I'm glad to show what the world means to me with all of you.

Maria Medeiros Throughout everyone's life, at one point or another, they will lose someone they love.

It’s inevitable. Living things must pass on at some point or another, but when this happens, it doesn't mean it's always easy for the loved ones left behind. I have particularly realized this, this year when two of my family members passed within six months of each other. When something or someone passes on, parts of you feel missing, like there are holes in your heart that seem, at the time, unrepairable. You feel numb, incomplete, and an overwhelming sadness starts to wrap its hands around your neck, slowly suffocating you, slowly leaving you gasping for air, abruptly leaving you

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with a choice--the choice to let this life-changing event either swallow you whole or aid you in ultimately blossoming into a stronger individual. The choice is yours to make.

For me, as hard as it was, amidst the pain and endless nights of tears and the numerous times entering a silent, empty house, I realized that living in this way, letting the insurmountable loss affect my life, was no way to live. I started to force myself to go out and participate in activities again, even if all I wanted to do was bury myself under the covers. As unenjoyable as it was, this effort over time helped me to heal. Even though it's been a couple months and I am definitely over the worst part of my grieving process, the sense of loss has never left my side, which has helped me to understand that it is completely okay to at times feel this overbearing loss. It's valid, but the life lesson is to never let it stop you from living, because the cold, hard truth is that the world stops for no one.

This embroidery and needle felting piece represents the grieving and growth I have had to go through over the course of this year. Looking towards the broader picture, I think it can represent this tough process for a lot of people, and I hope people can look at this piece and in some way relate to it. The eye is in the center of the piece because eyes are known to be the gateway into the soul and because the placement structurally frames the most important aspect in the piece. The clouds above the eye represent the fogginess and numbness you experience throughout loss, something that can prevent the growth of “flowers” (people), seeing that flowers need sun to blossom. Lastly, the eye is crying onto the bed of fully flourished petals to show that individuals can in fact grow from grief.

Erik Palmer Future Utopia or Dystopia?

I might seem like a very content person regarding my current position in life, but I always find myself getting lost in my thoughts, primarily about the future. How is my life going to be different three years down the road in college, or even thirty years, when I hope to have a family? What will our country, let alone our planet, look like in fifty years? I could think about these topics all day and produce radically different expectations of how the

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future will present itself each time. There are just too many variables and factors that can influence how the human race chooses to tackle the topic of time, such as the evolution of politics, technology and science. Unlike many other things or hobbies I’m interested in, this subject is always present in the back of my mind: “What will society look like and how will it change over time?”

Given this assignment of creating a piece of art that’s supposed to illustrate who I am in one way or another, I instantly knew what I wanted to do: a landscape purely based on my thoughts of the future world, conveyed through a simple pencil drawing.

Constructing depictions of landscapes with an emphasis on architecture and depth perception has always been my forte when it comes to artwork, so I took this opportunity to do my best to design a scene that shares a glimpse of what I believe society will possibly look like a hundred years down the road.

As time progresses, will society stray towards a utopia or dystopia? Decide for yourself because I have absolutely no clue on what the answer is to that. My drawing conveys that uncertainty by not reflecting a clear answer to that question. I made sure to include both utopian and dystopian qualities within this specific artwork. A relatively clean looking cityscape with some borderline outlandish structures bundled within a terraneous environment, somewhat representative of a society with no problems, right?

Not really. Take a closer look at the architectural style of the buildings, with their heavy emphasis on baseline geometrical shapes. Will this be the prominent style of construction in the future, due to the dilemma of limited natural resources? Who knows.

You can choose to interpret this visual in many different ways, but I see it as a “confusion” of a landscape, and this “confusion” perfectly represents my thoughts on what I will see and experience as I age; there is definitely no clear-cut picture, as much as I want there to be.

Saniya Rajagopal Ami Tomake Bhalobashi I love you It’s a strange sensation being surrounded by the language of your family but not being able to speak it for yourself. Honestly, it’s frustrating. My family has lived in India since the beginning of time and has spoken its languages for just as long. Yet as the first generation born in America, I instantly lost that connection that seemed almost infinite.

It’s not only the connection to my ancestors that haunts me, but my connection to my grandmother rests in the hands of language as well. While Dida, my grandmother, can speak English, I find her aching to be able to speak with ease in Bengali with me.

Whether she admits this need or not, I can feel it. I want the wall of language between

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us to not exist at all. But alas, I simply do not know how to speak Bengali. Sure, I can throw around small phrases here and there - mainly those that refer to food - but I can’t go much farther than that.

Regardless of the language barrier, Dida has been by my side since the day I was born.

Even though English isn’t her first language, she has never made a point to complain or use it as an excuse not to spend time with me. She handles internal translations with grace that presents as effortless, though I know it’s anything but. With this in mind, I realized that if she could handle speaking another language for my entire lifetime, then I can handle trying to learn her language for a few moments at a time.

So as I spent more time with Dida, listening to her stories and enjoying her company, I began slowly piecing together the language so that I could try to speak it. One of the first phrases I learned was “ami tomake bhalobashi,” meaning “I love you.” This is the phrase I chose to embroider onto the silk of my great grandmother’s sari. While I’m far from fluent in Bengali, I’ve found that “ami tomake bhalobashi” is the perfect phrase to understand. It’s not just an expression of my affection, but also an eternal message to Dida.

I had no idea how to write the phrase in the true letters, so I sat with Dida to practice the art of writing in Bengali. Slowly, I began to pick up the patterns of the shapes of the letters and felt myself grow more comfortable with the writing. The best part of this process was the way that Dida watched me write from over my shoulder. She maintained a soft and simple smile. I knew that this artwork meant a lot to me, but I think it means just as much to her.

Maisie Saganic This portrait consists of two parts—an auditory and visual. I have been singing and making music for as long as I can remember, so I knew I needed my music to be a part of this project. The four songs I recorded are all written and produced by myself. These four were picked from the other songs I’ve written from my time at Falmouth Academy; the oldest song I chose I wrote around the same time I made my eighth-grade self-portrait. They represent and tell the stories of my most influential moments of high school—family

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interactions, friendships, and breakups (obviously). Perhaps my favorite song on this EP is the final one I wrote, titled “Bin Benign.” The title holds no message. I just liked how it sounded. The lyrics of this song talk about my hatred for the “times between change,” which held applicable for much of this year. Senior year, whether it was because of infamous “senioritis” or because of COVID, seemed like nothing more than a transition period. I was incredibly frustrated with both myself for feeling so defeated and burnt out, as well as my environment for not waiting up for me when I kept giving up. I had to hold out for graduation, though, because I knew summertime would completely rewire my brain. I finished “Bin Benign” with three days of school left. The exhilaration of knowing the end is so near is echoed in the exuberant three-part harmony of the chorus, singing out, “I think it’s been a long time coming.” I also think the use of intricate rhyming in the second verse is a gorgeous touch, if I do say so myself.

The second part of this piece is my watercolor painting. At my time at FA, I was enrolled in both advanced drawing and painting classes, and quickly found I loved drawing and coloring blind contours, which is what this piece ended up being. I wanted to create a visual that would fit my music as closely as possible. I am the figure in the foreground, holding my late Uncle Mike’s guitar (the same guitar I recorded these songs with). My family is behind me to the right, and to the left are three of my closest friends.

In all of my songs are pieces about these people. In my hand I hold a piece of Japanese Andromeda, which is referenced in my song “Box Song.” My audience, who are my friends and family, listen to and watch me play. The skin tone of my foreground figure versus the background’s spans way farther in terms of colors. The painting just didn’t look right without that pop of green on the left side of my face.

Victoria Searle "Time is like a leaf in the wind, either it's time well-spent or time I've wasted. Don't waste it." — Cage the Elephant, "Telescope" What exactly is “wasted time?” I've often found myself grappling with this question as there is no universally accepted answer. I feel that one of the only limitations to human progress is the fact that each of us has a fleeting amount of time to make our mark on the world. This concept is what inspires our thirst for efficiency in everything that we do, but that same thirst can be a detriment.

When beginning this project, all that I knew was that I wanted to use my guitar as a canvas for whatever the art piece might be, so to find inspiration for what should be painted on the canvas, I thought about how I felt about the instrument. I’m not in a band, not a songwriter, no school club to play for, and I rarely perform for anyone, so why is

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this object so important to me? With no end goal for my progress, couldn't every callus-forming moment that I press on the strings be lost time? While strumming in my room, I'd feel as though I were separated from my problems, fears, and stress, but the moment I’d set the guitar down, I would find myself feeling guilty for the time I had wasted. Whether it was twenty minutes or a few hours, I’d have the same feeling of inefficiency.

Yet within my playing I reject efficiency; being a self-taught musician is far from the quickest way to improve, but the consistent extra effort has been gratifying. As I've grown up, I've come to realize that my playing has never been about efficiency but rather an escape and something I do for pure enjoyment. It may not advance my career, astonish others, or lead to a big break, but it makes me immensely happy, meaning every moment of music making is time well spent. I've always adored music, and if all I have is a fleeting moment, then who's to say it can't be filled with song?

Alice Tan Who is the mother who knifes her children? Abandoned and betrayed, Medea of Colchis seeks revenge on her husband by killing their twin boys, succumbing to the animalistic wrath that runs deep within her nature. If there is a woman in Greek tragedy who embodies the identity of being “out of place,” Medea would be the first to come to my mind, and I’m drawn to her for it.

I came to study in the U.S. when I was fifteen. Being foreign and slightly out of place are tender feelings I hold dear to my heart, crucial in informing my perspectives on the world as I am stepping into adulthood. I grew up jumping bamboo sticks overlooking the edge of the South China Sea, yet now I put ketchup on scrambled eggs and quote 30 Rock back and forth. Balancing between Chinese and Western identities, I developed a fondness for things of somewhat incongruous existence, “out of place,” yet managing to inhabit their surroundings.

I am fascinated by Medea because her story contains a violent culmination of the otherness identity. From the beginning of Euripides’s play, Medea’s desolate situation is laid bare in front of the audience: She is a foreigner without a home, a soon-to-be exile from Corinth, and a wife made mistress by the very husband for whom she had slain her family. On a literal level, Medea is physically out of place, ordered to move out of the city-state. Metaphorically, she is the “barbarous” in contrast to the “civilized,” being

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described akin to the “wild kine” and the “lion flash that guards their brood.” Her personal tragedy is the ultimate subversion of femininity, uprooting the societal presumption of motherhood in a way that is bloody, merciless, and shocking.

Though it’s preposterous to suggest that Medea’s gory tale mirrors my life, I did want to paint a self-portrait that explores an “out of place” identity. To celebrate my love of the Ancient Greeks, I posed in a toga on top of modern clothing, leaving my glasses to blur the line between past and present. Because of my Asian race, I cannot pretend to be Medea without adding another layer of foreignness, creating the modern version of what it means to be different. The olive branches in the painting invoke Athena, which creates a facade of reason. The bloody dagger, though, hints at the violence that is jarringly out of place.

But don’t worry, I won’t go on a murderous rampage.

Natalie Todd-Weinstein Perched on a chestnut dining room chair in my grandmother's office, my five-year-old self was anxiously orating all the goings-on of my busy five-year-old life. The goings-on had recently included moving halfway across the country and starting a new school, amongst other things. My grandmother listened with patience, giving her undivided attention and never once interrupting.

When I finished my monologue, she offered a truly groundbreaking idea that not all change is loss. I recall being floored by this advice. It has since become something of a mantra.

The very fiber of this conversation, and the many after, was change. I have always been a creature that has craved stability, and while it is normal and healthy to gravitate towards stability, my attachment to it was often so strong that it would be at the exclusion of progress. Not ideal, as I am sure you can imagine. None of my reactions to change was made better by the fact that I am an incredibly sentimental person who definitely spends way too much time looking for the “meaning” in every situation and

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who agonizes over the “lasts” of everything. I actually remember being in fourth grade riding the bus home for the very last time and saying goodbye to certain trees that I saw each day. While I am happy to report that I no longer bid adieu to trees, it would be disingenuous to say I am not still very sappy.

What I have come to realize, through time and brute force of the universe, is that, as my grandmother said, change doesn't have to be loss, and the moments that are pivotal to who you are don’t leave you when you start the next chapter. Forgive me for starting to sound like a Disney movie, but I’m used to obsessing over the picturesque moments that had passed and our inability to experience them again for the first time.

In these photographs, I attempt to make my current standing with change visual, with acknowledgment of both the past and the possibility of fresh starts. The large image in the middle represents new beginnings, and while there is some external loss, the core of who I am remains untouched. The smaller images on the side represent moments in the past, but in a present-day context.

My mantra, “Not all change is loss,” has been at the forefront of my mind in recent months, as my time at Falmouth Academy dwindles down to mere days. I am grateful for the community that I have gotten to know, both faculty and students. I am proud of how my grade has grown and what we have accomplished. I am, dare I say, trepidatiously excited about the next chapter of my life, even though it includes some massive change.

Ellie Thomas There are moments when I forget that I am an artist. The stereotypical paper-to-pen artistry has never been my strong suit at Falmouth Academy. So when I heard that I would be given the opportunity to create anything that represents who I am, my mind immediately thought of dancing. Movement, to me, is a form of expression. Making shapes and sounds to form feelings of emotion that can seep through my body and touch an audience member is so significant and rewarding. But for the audience to feel something, I, the dancer, must feel something also. When I tap, there is a sense of freedom that soars through me. With tap dancing, you become both a musician and a dancer. You are transported into your inner rhythm and improve your sense for finding the beat and pattern in music. Tapping comes naturally; I don’t need to think about what my feet are doing because it is all muscle memory. Depending on how I’m feeling that day, I will pound hard on the ground to sense my anger and frustration or when I’m in a

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good mood, I want my feet to sound light and airy. I am given the ability to create different beats and speeds.

In the beginning of my FA career, I sometimes felt that I never had a voice, but I have found that tapping has always given me an outlet for expression. Tapping is a release that has given me so much self-confidence. Tapping is definitely one of my favorite forms of entertainment because I get to put smiles on people’s faces.

Maddie Valley When I was a little kid, I didn’t live here. I lived in Virginia where the closest thing to the ocean I went to nearby was a pond where my dad and I would go fishing. When I came to Cape Cod to visit my grandparents, it was quite the shock for me. We were at Wood Neck Beach, but I would not get into the water because I was terrified of the seaweed. I thought the slimy tendrils of the eelgrass, that I couldn’t see under, were going to pull me into the depths. I still loved to swim, so my father carried me over to a place where the water was clear. Despite this, I still felt the strong pull of curiosity that, back in Virginia, allowed me to turn over rocks and search for snakes in the creek, so soon it took hold of me and I began playing with the seaweed that had already washed up on the beach. I popped the air sacs on sargassum weed (it really is nature’s bubble wrap) and looked as the little hermit crabs scurried away from me, wearing their whelk and periwinkle shells. I didn’t want to leave by the end of the day.

Since then, I’ve had an unmistakable connection to the ocean. I’ve been in every sea-related summer camp in Falmouth at least once and spent months in the marsh looking for every creature I could discover. When there were horseshoe crabs in the marsh, I spent my time protecting them and educating the children, who would poke and prod at the crabs, on the correct ways to hold them (upside down, while holding onto the sides like a pie crust, as one of my camp counselors had said). The ocean is a place of both comfort and mystery for me. It’s so familiar, yet there is so much of it left to explore. I am the type of person who has an intense thirst for knowledge, and there is no place where there is more knowledge to discover than the ocean. It’s a world that is so alien, despite making up the majority of our planet. The beaches here have shaped me so much as a person that I will be studying marine science in college.

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I decided to use this project to show that extremely important part of myself. I drove to Wood Neck Beach, which has been a second home to me during the summer, and walked along the shore for an hour. I scanned the ground for shimmering rocks and interesting shells and collected them. It was something I did constantly in my youth, but this time those shells were going towards another purpose instead of just the side compartment of my mum’s beach chair to be forgotten until we found them next to the ice cream truck money. Both the shells and rocks that cover my silhouette and the sand that surrounds it were found here in Falmouth, Massachusetts. I thought it was the best way to show how much I feel like the sea is my home.

Ryan Waite People ask me why I solve Rubik’s cubes. If I know how to do it, why do it again? Why do it faster? Why do it tens of thousands of times?

Speedsolving Rubik’s cubes is a microcosm of progress as a whole; getting faster is based on a combination of factors. Practice is important, but only useful if there’s something specific I’m practicing. I could be practicing new algorithms, improving my efficiency, or improving my lookahead (predicting where pieces will end up after I do a set of moves).

My cubing practice has a symbiotic relationship with my consumption of other media, which is a major factor in my continued enthusiasm for daily practice.

When practicing, I’m always listening to something, whether it be music, podcasts, or YouTube videos, which in many cases helps me learn something. A quantum mechanics deep dive, or some interesting obscure geographical topic? Sure, but it would be more interesting if I’m also solving some cubes.

Solving Rubik’s cubes is an intensely individual experience, but what really keeps me going (and keeps me practicing a variety of different similar puzzles, some of which are a part of my mosaic) is the wonderful, welcoming cubing community and competitions. Competitions are the main way I’ve met people who share my hobby in the region. Competitions are fun, social events that are more focused on self-improvement than winning; the main opposition is your past self.

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Speedsolving Rubik’s cubes is similar to a lot of the other things I like to do, which is why I feel that it encapsulates me so well. I love the feeling of progress, and the main way I’ve found to enhance and ensure the feeling of progress is to quantify everything, keeping track of data points and making graphs out of them. Even if a Rubik’s cube solve (or a round of disc golf, or a book) isn’t so good or doesn’t meet my expectations in some way, it’s still a data point. Every extra data point is guaranteed to help make a graph more comprehensive and visually pleasing.

I’ve brought this mentality to other, non-quantifiable things too; I’ve consistently kept a journal for eight years, first as a notebook, then as a typed document, and now (the achievement of ultimate efficiency) as voice memos. I’ve started recording my dreams, and recording any meaningful and interesting thoughts I have. The more I can offload from my brain, the better I feel. My reminders app is always full of things, and I have a note file filled with miscellaneous pieces of information, even those that might only be handy to reference one day out of a thousand.

I could have just used normal 3x3 Rubik’s cubes for the mosaic, but I wanted to include all the cubes I have that would work. This makes it less precise, more of a hodgepodge, but perhaps this makes it more interesting. More of a reflection of my character. More of a reflection of my diverse but similar interests.

Jordan Watson Upon first sitting down and deciding to write a song for my senior art project, I found myself stuck in the realization of how hard it is to write a song. For the most part, songwriters write the best songs when they experience some type of overflow of emotions, whether that’s love, heartbreak, or even just simple happiness. I just couldn’t find the inspiration. I was feeling discouraged and disappointed in myself. My whole life, music has been the one thing I can consistently count on. It regulates my mood, sends frissons through my spine, and is honestly the most unique and reliable kind of therapy I’ve ever experienced. I’m lucky to have been born with the ability to understand how important it is. But understanding its importance definitely doesn’t translate to being a great songwriter or a brilliant lyricist.

My brother, Josh Watson, is currently attending the Berkeley College of Music. He has released an album on all platforms and probably can play any instrument you ask him to. Sometimes the pressure of comparison creeps in. And writing a song after his legacy is probably the last thing anyone would want to do if they were me, but because of his endless support, I felt more confident in doing so. As I began my exploration of chords

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and lyrics, I fell upon the perfect melody. It made so much sense to me, but as soon as I started to record, something just wasn’t right. Josh kept peeking his head in, asking how I was doing, and I became increasingly frustrated. I’m definitely not as well-versed as he is in regards to music production, but I wanted to do this by myself. When Josh asked me if I wanted help. I felt a surge of embarrassment. Why wasn't I good enough to do it by myself?

I soon caved and let him help me, but with that I learned that it wasn’t that I was not good enough. I just hadn’t gone to a music-specific college for three years. Josh really helped me tie this song perfectly together, and I can’t thank him enough. I’m so lucky to have a big brother who will help me through anything and always be my best friend.

Sama Zaman Look directly up above you. See a face? You might be thinking, why is she hung from the ceiling and not on the wall like the other portraits? Well, I’ll answer that question later, but answer my question first! Do you think that when this girl grows older, she would eat tinfoil? Or part of a $20 bill? Toilet paper? Hand sanitizer? GLUE? Well, it might interest you to know that she definitely would, and she in fact did!

Last summer, as I was shoving a piece of a crumpled-up receipt paper in my mouth at work, my manager asked me why I do such things, referring to moments when I drank half a bottle of vanilla extract for a TikTok, or the water that became dirty from washing our ice cream scoops. I explained to her that I simply let my curiosity get the best of me.

My curiosity, a trait I’ve held since I was very young, peaked during quarantine. This was when I experimented with typically unpalatable food combinations, such as sriracha-flavored ice cream, and packing peanuts topped with melted garlic butter. Most recently, I was introduced to Coca-Cola with coffee, when my mom brought home several cans from work. I felt skeptical, since I couldn’t understand how two separate beverages, both delicious, would pair well. As I cracked open the can, the sizzle of its carbonation, along with the potent smell of coffee, kept me eager to take a sip. When I did, the bubbles of this drink danced around in my mouth as the caramelly sweetness of the coke, and the bitter buzz of coffee melted into my taste buds. Immediately, my skepticism disappeared. I fell in love with this drink!

Class of 2021 Senior Portrait Explications

Since each of these drinks had nearly double the amount of caffeine of a regular coke, my peers and parents could notice my jitteriness after I drank a can every day, often alongside a standard cup of coffee. In class, I would sometimes be shaking, persistently bouncing my leg and unable to stay still. At work, I would be bouncing off the walls, running from one end of the store to another, while helping customers and completing tasks. My energy levels became chaotic.

As I continued drinking a can of these cokes every single day, I developed two bad habits: crushing the cans after drinking them and piling them up in my room. When my mother asked about the mess of empty crushed coke cans, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I felt too lazy to throw out the cans. Instead, I told her I was collecting them for a school project. Who would’ve thought that in a few months, that would actually be true!

This excuse I made to my mother certainly had an influence on the design of this portrait. However, with this portrait, I wanted to reflect how drinking coffee-coke has me bouncing off the walls, quite literally by putting this portrait of myself off the walls. I felt that using a baby picture of me would help to show that this energy and characteristic of mine has stuck around since I was young and is currently reflected by my obsession with coffee-coke. Along with that, the walls are so boring! I felt it was necessary to spice up this portrait with a unique display, just like how coffee-coke spiced up my taste buds when I had my first sip. * As many portraits were included in this collection as possible. Some students opted to do video or musical portraits, some were not hung in time, or were taken down before a good photograph could be taken.