Saturday night

On Saturday night my friends (Erica and Maria) and I went to a place that we do not normally go to. We usually hang out at a local bar in South Philly, which is our neighborhood. We know everyone in the bar and feel very comfortable there. We decided to go to a bar in Port Richmond where we do not know anyone. When we first arrived at the bar, we felt a bit uncomfortable because everyone was looking at us. It seemed as though they all knew each other and we were outsiders. As the night went on we started to feel more comfortable and danced to the music. Eventually, people started to come up to us and we would go up to them. They no longer stared at us like outsiders, and treated us like we had been there plenty of times before.
We really enjoyed ourselves there and will probably go back this weekend!

Labyrinth project

I was not sure what to create when we were assigned to create pop-out portrayals of our neighborhoods in reality and labyrinth formats. First of all, I did not know where to start creating a pop-out. Second, how was I to show the difference of reality and labyrinth of my neighborhood? I started to work with plain copy paper. I decided start cutting out house shapes for the reality portion of my project. I soon found a way to fold them down and attach them to a flat piece of paper so that they would pop out. Four rows of houses created my neighborhood, which is a simple and non-lively place. I drew the houses and streets in black and white to show the blandness of everything. For the labyrinth portion I cut out similar house shapes but put them in a circle. I colored the houses in bright pink, yellow and blue to show excitement and happiness. I drew some circles within the circle of houses. I also included a pop-up portrayal of me. I put this in the middle of all of the circles. This was to show that I was in the center of the labyrinth of happiness that I had created.
I enjoyed viewing everyone's labyrinth because everyone had such great ideas and they were all so different from one another. Everyone's creativity was out and we got a peek into where everyone is from.

Shirt project

We were given the project of creating a map of our week on a T-shirt. Maps can portray many different elements and ideas. I took the idea of mapping my week differently because I did not feel the need to depict every single thing I had done in the past week. I had been working every day for a week and although I did go out and go to class, it felt like work consumed my life. I decided to start my shirt off by putting the name of my workplace around the collar of the shirt. This showed that work was sort of choking me and taking over my life. Next, I decided to place names of customers I had helped during that week on the shirt. I help people all day in work, so it is fitting that they would be placed on my map. As the names went on down the shirt I drew them larger. This would show that as the days went on I became more and more aggrivated and just wanted to leave. Also, in between the names I used colorful lines to portray that when I did get away from work I was happy.
I enjoyed this project because I felt that I could be creative and expressive with an assignment that did not seem to broad at first. I like the fact that we can show whatever we are feeling and everyone embraces that and takes our creativity seriously.