Introduction

The Reflections unit focuses on “Who am I?” by leading students to insights about themselves and their experiences. These insights are then developed into works of art, writing, and other expressions of creation. In English, I wrote an essay in the form of a poem to express vulnerability revolving around a personal experience. In Design, we made a PSA about a social issue we were passionate about. Then, in Digital Media we made mandalas that held meaning to us and also used Adobe After Effects to create a video about our values. My work reflects a lot on my value for expression and connection, and I also feel like that value is expressed in some of my essence objects:

1. A pen (For doodling)
2. An amethyst necklace (A gift from my best friend)
3. Ambassadors shirt (From a program I help with that encourages expression)
4. Mexico-Pride Flag (A big part of my identity that I tend to be loud about)
5. MVHS black hoodie (A gift from my Ambassador’s teacher)
6. Ariana Grande “Thank u next” Perfume (A perfume I wear because it holds meaning to me)
7. Rose quartz (Crystals that are meant to welcome love in, I like to express my love for my friends often)
8. Cat made out of yarn (A gift from a friend of mine who knows I love cats)
9.  PS4 controller-style wallet (An expression of my love for games)
10. Ambassadors’ friendship bracelet (A reminder of my connections in Ambassadors)
11. Fallout plushie (Another expression for my love for games)
12. Cup of noodles (One of my safe foods)
13. Enchiladas (My mom’s cooking)
14. Chorizo & potatoes (My dad’s cooking)
15. Laptop (My gateway to games)
16. Ticket to “Curtains”
17. Picture of my best friend Valentina
18. Pack of incense 
19. Big Freddy plushie
20.  Notebook

Digital Media

Mandala Project

For this project, we used Adobe Illustrator’s tools to create a repeating and rotating pattern that would make up the whole of our mandalas. One slice of our mandala would be dedicated to lines we made, and those lines would be copied a certain number of times to create a circular shape. Once made, these mandalas could be colored in to serve as our colored mandalas, or engraved on the material of our choosing. A machine was used to print via a laser for the black and white mandala to be engraved. I, personally, chose an LED display as it showed my interest in electronics and complimented my mandala’s theme.

A Wired Mess

B&W Mandala

This project is very dear to me. As a lover of video games, robotics, and anything remotely scientific or fictional, my biggest inspiration has come from recent media I’ve engaged with, particularly the game Needy Streamer Overload and the anime Serial Experiments Lain. Common themes include the online world, electronics, computers, and complex love. I’m incredibly proud of this project, as it has allowed me to explore my thoughts through art involving circuitry, computer monitors, and hearts. It has confirmed how much time I spend online, often in a negative light.

Both Needy Streamer Overload and Serial Experiments Lain involve storylines that blur the lines between reality and the online world. Ame-chan and Lain, the main characters, have someone in their lives they rely on emotionally. However, their attachment to being online interferes with these bonds.

These works have profoundly influenced my artistic vision. My intent was to subtly portray connection in the online world. This project has helped me grow by making me aware of how I divide my time and encouraging me to take better care of myself. It has pushed me to use my phone less and live more. The perspective this work has given me is something I want to continue exploring in my future projects.

Electric Dreams

Colored Mandala

This colored variation of my mandala uses vibrant, loud, and even shocking colors. Inspired by the game Needy Streamer Overload, I incorporated pink and purple, reflecting the game’s abundant use of pink and pastel hues. These colors starkly contrast with the main character, Ame-chan, who is depicted in black, red, and pale tones. I adhered to a strict color scheme, blending blues, pinks, purples, greens, and yellows to create striking contrasts. My intention to invoke shock was to draw attention to the various elements of the piece.

The inclusion of cats, circuitry, computers, and hearts might seem unrelated, but they are significant in the context of the game. The pink cat represents P-Chan, the character you play. In the game’s true ending, you discover that you are a figment of Ame-chan’s imagination, despite being the object of her affection and obsession. Through the internet, she seeks to fill a void in her heart, achieving this by creating the P-Chan character, who becomes her fictional love while she pursues internet fame.

This piece represents the character and the enlightening experience I had while playing the game. Doing this part of the project with this game in mind, confirmed how much this game had changed my perspective on myself and the internet.

English

Personal Essay

When writing our personal essays, the purpose was to explore and demonstrate our core values in our writing. We had two options, write for our college essays or write an alternative essay that still explored our values. I chose the alternative essay, as I wanted to express my core values while being houseless. I landed on an essay that followed a poetic format that would go over my value for expression. I focused a lot on the emotions associated with homelessness, talking about frustrations, issues with money, and other topics that embodied how I felt alongside my values.

Design

Summer Collage

For first-year seniors at Freestyle, our summer collage project focused on following a certain amount of objects while also making something surreal. This was our introduction to the Adobe Photoshop program, its tool, and our first project using it. We were supposed to have a portion of food, a house, and other things like foreground and background.

PSA Project

Our PSA project focused on our passion for social issues and current problems. We were encouraged to make a PSA, Public Service Announcement, based on a social issue that we were serious about.

“A PROPER Home”

My PSA is a blue and yellow poster with a simplistic art style. It depicts a biracial family of three at the center, with a dark blue house behind them, and a blue background behind that. The mother’s yellow dress is complemented by the yellow border of the poster itself, which also matches the tagline. The tagline is a yellow, bolded, and shaded text with the statement “A PROPER HOME IS A HUMAN RIGHT” and under the family is a light blue QR code with the text “SCAN TO GET INVOLVED” beside it. I’m a homeless student making this, and my idea behind my PSA is to create one about homelessness that isn’t the norm of black and gray with aggressive colors. I wanted my PSA to be less intense, while still spreading the intended message to my audience, that being the general populace. With this in mind, I used blue and yellow, calm yet attention-grabbing colors.

I made this PSA in Adobe Illustrator. My main techniques were the pen tool, gradient, text tool, and shape tool. I started with a mood board with a few inspirations, a color scheme, and a font selection. Learning how to utilize the pen tool to make fluid and unique shapes was a challenge, but I feel much more comfortable with it now. The text tool was used to write the tagline and other text. I used the shape tool for the border and the house’s silhouette. Finally, I used the gradient tool on the family to make it look like they were emerging from the bottom.

Aboriginal Project

Our Aboriginal project was supposed to be something quite personal. The “Aboriginal” part of the project is the dot art, inspired by the culture of the Aboriginals. There was a lot of focus on symbolism, and what those symbols meant to us. We would choose two symbols from Aboriginal culture and three more symbols related to our star sign and element.

My symbols were rain, star, earth, tiger, and Virgo. Its a lot of things, but the main focus was putting all of these into one cohesive piece, using everything that had some form of significance to us.

“Into the Clearing”

I chose several symbols to represent me, my emotions, and my interests. For starters, my spirit animal was a tiger, giving me a sense of strength and independence. I’ve had plenty of bad experiences that took a unique form of strength to work through them, making me pick a tiger. For my constellation and sign, my birth month is September so I’m a Virgo. It does carry significance to me, it’s a theme in my family that most of us are Virgos. The element associated with Virgo is earth, shown through vines that spread out from the center. Then, for my Aboriginal symbols, I chose rain to represent emotion and growth. I say emotion because rain is used in emotional scenery, like in movies. Rain also means new growth to me, such as growing crops after rainfall, or turning a new leaf. I also chose a star, simply because I have a fascination with them and like to incorporate them into my fashion specifically.

My piece was made using Adobe Photoshop and primarily the brush tool. I used the brush tool to make dot art by making each dot individually. I also used the brush tool to make outlines to give more shape to some of the symbols in my art. I had my layout figured out through sketches prior. The constellation for Virgo became the tiger’s stripes, and the Virgo sign itself became the center of the Aboriginal star symbol. I wanted the symbols arranged in a way that felt open, and serene. The star was part of the focal point, and the vines were used to fill the negative space. One problem I had was the rain symbol, as when I first tried to use it as stripes for the tiger, it was unrecognizable. I fixed this instead by using the rain symbols as corner pieces of the frame and alternating the orientation of the symbols to add interest.