Overcoming the Mural

For our final action project in the course If These Walls Could Talk we had to bring to life the image in our groups’ swatches, and turn them into a mural inside of our school’s new building. For our entire last unit we focused on making plans to enlarge our mural and make those plans happen. We looked at all of the different options and tested out our different ideas to see what would be best for the area we were given to work in. Our options became more limited when it ended up that we couldn’t work in the actual space until 3 days before our project was due, so we are still in the process of finishing our mural, but we expect a great looking outcome, and for everything to be finished this week.

This mural is a tribute mural to GCE as well as a revolt mural showing GCE’s mission to reinvent education. It depicts a golden boat with 3 people inside going towards a huge wave. The boat is made out of a banner and has the words “Overcoming the Wave” written in it. There were a lot of steps going into making our mural into large-scale. We first made a sketch on a regular piece of paper, then we projected it and traced it on paper, piece by piece, for a total size of 112 x 352 inches, then we mixed paints to get the colors we wanted and painted the pieces of paper, as well as spray painting part of it. We currently still have to wheatpaste the papers onto panels in the new building, as well as add acrylic media as a final touch. For the paint we used mostly blue hues, with a touch of green. We kept a similar color for a lot of the mural and only changed the value and intensity. We also made our boat a shimmery gold to stand out and show victory. Our mural gives a strong and powerful representation of GCE, which is perfect for our space because it is in the entrance, so it is the first thing people will see when they walk in.

Working on the mural was a challenging but very fun experience, there were many bumps along the way and things to work through, but I was really glad to get to work on this amazing project because I think in the end it will end up looking great. There were four different roles during our process-- Artistic Director, Director of Operations, Mule, and Documenter. I had each role at least once, as did the rest of my group members, but in general I was someone who often organized things and kept people on track with what they were supposed to be doing. Throughout the whole process I was also always a part of the cutting, sketching, painting, and pasting. My favorite role was director of operations because I was managing what people were doing and making sure everything was going smoothly which is something I’m good at, because I’m someone who is good at organizing things and managing people to make sure they’re doing what they are supposed to. My least favorite role was being the mule because I don’t like doing the dirty work of running around and fetching stuff, I felt it was an ineffective use of my time because it would be more useful of me to help more with organizing and planning.

We hope that in the end our mural ended up looking as amazing as we planned. I would have preferred to get to work on the space directly instead of having to paint of paper and then wheatpaste. There are four panels in the space and working directly on the walls would have probably looked neater and we would have seen exactly how what we were doing would look, instead of having to wait and hope for the best. On paper you get a thinner paint look, and when you wheatpaste you can tell that the art was done on paper and not directly on the surface. Both options can look really great, just different.

Literary Portfolio

For the elective term of my senior year, I decided to take the class Book Bound, which is a course that explores the relationship between the reader and the materials used to read in this day and age. Many people these days read online or not at all, and we looked into how this affects our society. My class was assigned to read The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, a very well known book that is in the literary canon. I personally am not a fan of the book, simply because I strongly dislike many of the characters, and I am someone who prefers to read a book where I like and make a connection with the characters. I didn’t believe this was a book that belonged in the canon, but I understood why it was there. We also talked about libraries, because we were supposed to design our school’s new library. I pictured it with bean bags, work spaces, and hundreds of books. Unfortunately, we are no longer getting to be a part of the construction process as much as we had planned, but our suggestions are still being considered. I enjoyed the field experiences we went on because I got to experience all different types of libraries; there was a huge variety and they all strongly differed, which surprised me. For our action project, we put together a portfolio of our best work that we did throughout this course. I liked the fact that we are showcasing a digital portfolio, because it shows all of our work throughout the term, as opposed to just one assignment that might not be the best reflection of how hard we worked. I included my favorite project in my portfolio, which was the My Choice for the Canon Slideshow.

Storyboard

For this assignment, we were told to create a storyboard that tells a story about us reading, and more specifically, learning to read--it had to include at least 5 frames and captions. This related to our course because it had to do with reading, and it helped us make connections between us as individuals, and the act of reading. I selected this assignment to showcase because not only did I think I did it well but also due to how much fun I had with it. I think this was one of the assignments I enjoyed the most. When I began my project I struggled with what exactly to show in my story. In the end I decided to show my reading progression over time, from when I was a baby until now. I later also made revisions to perfect the images and add captions to help explain the story shown. I really love how it turned out in the end.

Made with Storyboard That 

  

Literary Journal 

For this assignment, we were put together in a group and told to create our own literary journal. This included pieces of writing from all group members, as well as images, and some external submissions. This related to our course because it has to do with all different types of literature and shows the huge variety. I selected this assignment because it shows not only the work I have done, but also my peers’, which I think is just as important as my own. When going about this project we began by splitting up the different tasks among members and making a time frame for deadlines. There were some challenges along the way - as there often are with groups - about miscommunication and timing, but in the end we got everything we needed and published our journal. I was really proud of my entire group for getting to that point. To get it ready for our blog there were some final touches I needed to make, and some page setup changes, and afterwards it looked as great as we had planned.

Literature Poster 

For this assignment, we had to make a poster based upon a guiding question we created about literacy and reading. We then had to research the answer to the question using valid sources. This poster is to help promote reading and literacy, especially in the new library space, which is what our entire course was about. I thought this was a very important thing to add to my blog because it brings up the issue of illiteracy which is shockingly still a big problem in our world right now, and because I gave a lot of facts and data that I think people should know. I want to encourage reading to everyone as much as possible and I think this assignment helps to do that. I decided to make my poster on a design site called canva.com. At times it was difficult to size everything and make it look the way I wanted, but I overcame that and made it as perfect as I could. I’m proud of the final product because it all looks really neat and eye-catching in my opinion.

AG Literature Poster 2016

Slideshow

For this assignment, we had to chose a book that we believe belongs in the literary canon, explain why, and present/defend the book as best as possible. This project was about the canon which is an important concept in literature. The reason I chose to publish this assignment to my blog is because of how enthusiastic I was about both this project and the book I chose. I want to get the word out even more about this series because it really is amazing, in my opinion. I chose the book series The Night World by L.J. Smith and made a slideshow about it, including all of the components that were required to teach others about the book. I struggled very much to find a good video to add to my slideshow because there were very few that related to the series and the audio books don’t portray the books very well. To get my slideshow ready for the blog, I just perfected it as much as possible by fixing any typos and grammar mistakes. I’m really proud of this project because I’m helping to spread the world about a book I love very much. The audience seemed to really like the series and asked a lot of questions about the plot and characters, many of them agreed that it should be included in the canon.