Sophie's 4D Intermedia Blog

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.