January 9th-Class Commentary

Concept studio started today. The first thing that I noticed is that Malena brings alot of energy to the classroom. I think a lot of times, or in my past experiences, artists or professors try and overtalk. Meaning they purposefully talk up or use unecessarily large words that you basically never hear in every day conversation for the sake of sounding intelligent. I don't think anyone needs to do this. Half of the time people aren't going to understand what you are speaking of anyway. So talking becomes irrelevant. Malena doesn't do this. I like and respect that. She speaks to you as an educator should. I can tell that she attempts to get down to the students level to see eye to eye with them. She doesn't boast about her intellegence. An admirable quality in any professor.

I find it very interesting that our class is being held in the Storrs building. I have history with this place that exists in every hall, every square inch of thhis building. I studied Architecture here for a couple of years. It brought back some old memories, good and bad. When Malena told us to go see what some of the architecture students were doing, I smiled on the inside. I had been there. I been one of them. Each learning process is different, but in art and design, fundamentals and simple principles apply the same across the board. My mind quickly jumped back to some of the early projects I had worked on while studying at Storrs. Hopefully I can carry over some of those ideas and principles to this class and program.

I am very interested in our projects as described by Malena. Especially the Accumulation project. The gears in my head started turning, and ideas began to form about what I would collect. Over the past 2 years I have been very interested in self discovery. Basically a personal quest to find my identity not only as a person, but also as a designer. I've come to realize that there are two sides to me. A ying and yang of sorts. Everyone is somebody to someone else. So how do I portray myself? Do I portray myself as "me"? Or rather what I have defined as "me"? Do I portray myself as someone or soemthing else? I think with my accumlation project I am leaning towards this idea of self and secondary discovery. I want to collect 100 things that I think embody or represent me, my beliefs, my personality, morals, etc. And then I want 10 family members and friends to collect 10 things each that they think represent me, my beliefs, my personality, morals, etc. I want to compare and contrast the two at the end of this journey.