Junior Conceptual: A Junior Design Student Conceptual Project by Jacqueline Ta (2016)

The line I focused on from my poem were ‘(Tricks and) treats I (traded), but I put it in my pocket, and tick tock, locket, I sought it, tick, prick. My finger bleeds, my vision blurs, something pours…’ These lines refer to something innocent that used to be given away. However, over the course of time, it was locked away by the person due to an unknown circumstance that is explained elsewhere in the poem. The person eventually seeks to bring this innocence out but is pricked by the realizations of why those pieces were hidden in the first place. The inspiration here is an imagined scene of a form of innocence that is surrounded by sharp instruments, creating a constricting barrier. It’s a purity that lends to further hurt. This poem was meant to reflect a first time introduction. The last phrase of the poem conveys words pouring from the mouth in emotional turmoil.

When I stumbled upon the specific picture I took, it was actually a mistake because the scene I’d created first had fallen over. I snapped shots of it and rearranged it anyways, and finally realized how it worked better with the poem. It was the way in which the cat could be ‘shielded’ from the microphone, which is the object reaching out solely to the cat. Having just the head of the cat instead of it’s entire body was to symbolize the personal thoughts of a person. Apples represented the classroom as well as public thinking, which is why they’ve been either stabbed or cut in half. The most challenging part of the photo was the Photoshop process. At first, I was a bit wary of what kinds of filters or adjustments to place. In the end, I took a stab at highlighting certain features I thought were important such as the apples and pencils. I felt it took precedence over the cat as they are supposed to keep the head from view.