Excellent Miles Per Gallon: A Junior Conceptual Project by Maxwell Evans (2014)

I am exploring the feeling of hatred when driving.

When I was first asked to create a piece of art that was both experimental and conceptual, coupled with the fact it required physical art, I was a tad worried. I was never good with metaphors in my previous English classes, and physical art wasn't my strong suit either. However, through the help of my Freestyle teachers, I think I was able to create a piece of art that not only satisfies the requirement for the project, but something I can also be proud of.

Because I am exploring the feeling of hatred when driving (something I have a lot of experience with), I wanted to make something that shows the dramatic changes of feelings I have whilst driving. Even though I can occasionally get really mad during my travels in my car, I am usually quite calm. The majority of the time when I'm driving, I'm relatively calm. It is only the few instances where something happens, and I immediately lose my cool. I showed this through the roller coaster, which goes up and down into the red and blue colors. The roller coaster was made with the pen tool in Illustrator, while the colored background was my fine art portion, being water colors. The roller coaster, which will suddenly go up and suddenly go down, shows that my mood while driving can change in an instant when something happens. However, even though my mood can change from anger to calmness rather quickly, that doesn't change the fact that I am still salty from what has happened. I represented through the red droplets that reach up into the blue area, showing that even though I am calm, I still have some feelings of anger because of what happened. The car that is going through the roller coaster is my trusty Toyota Echo, which usually feels the brunt of my anger.