Natalie Hon

...She told me my dog couldn’t dream of laying on the beach in Hawaii with an umbrella drink... ...You are not an authority on animal behavior or neuroscience. You’re not really an authority on anything... ...Don’t tell my dog what she is and is not capable or doing. My dog is smarter than you. She is also nicer, cuter, and fluffier than you. She also does not try to push her beliefs on me. She does not threaten me with the wrath of God. She only ever suggest (not even insists) that I be happy and maybe giver her some of my sandwich every now and then...

...My dog does think and so do I...

Moustache:

n.

variation

of

mustache

Mustache: n. the hair on the upper lip of men

Blink. Reflect.

I have really enjoyed the process of creating instant art, quick writing, and the compilation of the Blink book. I consider myself a very intuitive person and, while I sometimes have trouble getting started, I generally have no problem committing to a random idea or just creating what I feel. This was consistent throughout my work in this unit. I made seemingly random connections, like the association I made between mustaches and regret in the colored pencil assignment, throughout the instant art prompts. As I compared my writing to my art and put everything together for my book I realized that these “random� connections may carry more weight that I had imagined. Many of my images and emotions bring me back to little moments and memories I remember from my childhood. These connections caused me to do a lot more self-reflection than I thought I would.

Throughout the unit I found that my images inspired my writing as opposed to the quotes and prompts inspiring my writing. The same prompt about regret caused me to draw a faceless man with a mustache and then write interview questions for a person with a mustache, which really seemed to have nothing to do with regret. When prompted to create an image based on the idea of moral culpability versus free will, I drew fairly accurate shaded spheres in charcoal, one white, one black, and one gray. This inspired a series of poems about marbles and planets, similar to what I unknowingly portrayed in my image. In fact, I think that this prompt was my favorite because of that symbolism of marbles and planets. What seemed like a rather silly idea became the inspiration for my poetry project, a collection of haikus using the images of marbles and planets to address feelings of growing up, the value of simplicity, and ideas of power and control. My favorite materials we worked with were the construction paper, magazines, Exacto knives, and glue from the collage prompt about free thought.

I love manipulating existing text and images to create something new that has a new meaning. I felt that these materials and this process really spoke to the idea of free thought.

A lot of aspects of these assignments caused me to step out of my comfort zone and take risks. While I embraced following my instinct as far as ideas go, I work horribly on a short deadline. It was hard for me to stop working and clean up. It was hard for me to call something “finished.” I don’t believe we ever really finish projects like these. For me, this feels like a risk because I am always concious of how other people view my art and what they take away from it. Calling a piece finished when I’m not really sure that it is finished makes me extra worried that what I’ve created will be misunderstood or misinterpreted. This risk was also present in my photography. I am used to setting up each shot perfectly and putting a lot of thought into my subjects, but limited time took me away from this habit. In the case of my photography, I think the time constraint helped me produce very interesting images. One of the risks I took in my art that particularly sticks out to me is attempting to draw a realistic face in colored pencil for the regret prompt. I hate drawing people. I think I am horrible at it. I am never satisfied with the results, but I decided to go with my intuition and not edit based on how I percieve my skills. I am still not satisfied with how it came out, but I did stick to my idea and take a risk. A risk that paid off for me came about in the collage project. I did my best to use any image that stood out to me regardless of color, shape, and style. I also tried to ignore basic elements of design such as proportion and spacing that I have always been taught to follow. This created a sense of frenzy and spontinaeity in my piece, which I was really happy with.

In my writing I took many content-related risks. In multiple pieces I went on rants that generally covered controversial issues (often using controversial language). In my freewrite about free thought I recalled a memory from 6th grade when my over-zealous Mormon teacher told me my dog couldn’t imagine herself laying on the beach in Hawaii with an umbrella drink. I wrote a stream of thoughts criticizing her ignorance, which I greatly attributed to her religion. This theme of criticizing religion and questioning the existence of a god came up throughout half of my quickwrites. I think that tackling those controversial, complex ideas was a major risk for me. The many styles of writing I experiemented with represent a smaller risk I took. I tried different forms of poetry, compare/contrast pieces, and surrealist-style reports that I had never attempted before.

There are a lot of formal and tonal consistencies across my Blink art. Many of my pieces are very simple and include a lot of negative space, making them feel a bit dark and contemplative. My charcoal spheres, crayon bubbles, tree pencil drawing, and colored pencil mustache all fall into this lonely, reflective mood. Strangely enough, my pieces that were not compositionally simple, muted, and solemn were crazy, bright, and spazztic, like my collage, my marker fish drawing, my acrylic painting, and my bird of paradise photo. These examples tend to have little regard for compositional elements, bright, jarring colors, and take on a quirky feel. I really enjoy the balance between these two styles and think that they are very indicative of my personality.

Blink. Themes.

Lonliness Exploration of unfamiliar ideas Faith in what you do not know for sure Loss of innocence Changes between childhood and adulthood Failure Reliance Opposites Self-understanding Fear of what we do not know