Sophie's 4D Intermedia Blog

PORTRAITS OF THE CLASS: For my generosity assignment, I wanted to shift and provide a gift that everyone would benefit from, professional portraits of the entire class. I loved doing this, and had a few take aways. 1. Speed running portraits is difficult. It takes skill and practice. 2. Instead of allowing everyone to choose their ideal portrait spot, I wish I would have previously chosen a singular properly lighted space for portraits, without giving the option.  3. Not everyone is comfortable in front of the camera, and it takes practice to teach them how to be more comfortable.  Below, I'll leave several of the results!

EXPLANATION:  For my five day series, I wanted to go on a long walk daily around dusk, and turn around once my adrenaline raised (from the dark or other reasons). Every day, I would set out for a decent length walk around relatively safe areas (Mountain Drive) and see how long it took for me to get "spooked." On the walk back, I would rely on prayer to keep me calm for the remainder of my walk.  DAY ONE On day one, I wanted to keep it simple. I set out near campus, and walked for a while. The sun was quickly setting, and it was fully dark about a mile in. by mile 2.2, I got spooked by a moving animal in the bush, and turned around. On the way back, I prayed out loud and made it safely to campus. Praying out loud helped my fears, along with playing worship music DAY TWO On day two, I drove a few blocks down to the base of Gibraltar Road. This time, I started an hour earlier and hiked almost to the summit. While there were many athletes and bikers out in the beginning, by dusk ...

Elena and I live in Van Kampen dorm on opposite sides, so our meet in the middle is in the VK courtyard on a palm tree. We pondered for a while about how we were going to make this palm tree into art. So, after lots of thinking and re-planning, we decided to make this the "Giving Tree." Since this Giving Tree would be passed on the way to class or after a hard shift at work, we wanted to make it encouraging. We wrote around 200+ notes, some Bible verses, some encouragements, some challenges. Throughout the week, we saw many people grabbing notes. And, many people putting new notes back into the basket. This was fun to watch different residents participate in passing!

I come from a very minimalist family. Our home has always had simplistic and clean decorations with minimal clutter. And with this, we have always kept on to very few sentimental objects and traditions. However, we do have one yearly tradition that requires very little space in storage.  My grandma, who is 100% Swedish, passed on a yearly tradition from her mother and her mother's mother. Every Christmas, they would bake traditional Swedish cookies for all of their neighbors and close friends. And, she would keep butcher paper on the wall to write down recipes, make grocery shopping lists, and create to do lists, displaying it to everyone in the kitchen. After she didn't need the list anymore, she would tear off the paper and write down something new. So, in this project, I wanted to do something similar by displaying her recipes on butcher paper as an art piece. 

  Windows allow us to see into or see out of a space. When translating this to something of meaning, I question "how can a window allow me to see into one's life and perspective? In our piece, we see the animals being transported in boxes across seas, referencing the movie, Madagascar. But, when we created this piece, we wanted to touch on deeper issues, our current crisis at the border. By adding humans into these spaces or boxes, we are representing how these humans are being treated like animals as they're "shipped" out of the country during the immigration process. Our piece invites people in passing to look or step into these boxes, imagining what that experience would be like. By looking through these "windows" we can see into the inside of what is really happening, and reconsider our thoughts.