The last year of high school. I couldn’t tell if I was happy or not at the beginning of my senior year. My first AP classes were pressure and College Applications were always on my mind 24/7. As a non-native English speaker, writing 10 essays in a week was challenging for me. However, as I tried to develop my essays and think about the “Who am I?” question, I started to discover a lot of new things about myself. I am Aya who values diversity, community, trust, passion, and creativity.
Objects I found essential in English class:
- My car named “Mook”
- Lucky charm I got from a Japanese temple
- Squishmallow stuffed animals
- LED lights in my room
- Pandora bracelet
- Air pods pro
- MUJI black pen
- My computer
- My mother’s nail chair
- My dog’s horse doll
- My child pictures in my living room
- Spirited Away DVD
- My remowa suitcase
- Makeup dresser in my room
- Purple shampoo for my blonde hair
- Pink highlighter
- Power stones
- Canon camera my mother got me a few years ago
- Gucci sunglasses
- The electric bike my friend left me
Mandala
The title of this art is “Beauty of Nature“. I expressed nature as I drew this mandala.
Before and After
Laser Engraved Mandala
Mandala Reveal Video
The concept of this mandala is “Nature”. We are always surrounded by nature even without realizing it. Nature is the most important and beautiful thing and I wanted to express my personal perspective on nature, including leaves, ocean waves, humans, and the sun in the center. One of the struggles I had while drawing was balanced. At the very beginning, the center of the mandala was very dense which brought all the attention and the outer part looked very faint. I used different sizes of the pen to balance the density so that it won’t have a strong focal point. I am very proud of the concept application. Since I made my concept a “Nature”, I had difficulty expressing its concept and factors in the mandala. However, with my nature background music and pictures of nature, I could come up with many interesting shapes and drawings.
Photoshop Arts
These are my photoshop work. Throughout all assignments, I valued creativity in using Photoshop for digital art.
Pastel Painting
The title of this photoshopped art is “Pastel Christmas“. I chose to pastel paint a picture of Christmas because Christmas is the most favorite event of the year. One thing I struggled is creating shadows of four socks. Since there is a fire on the bottom of the socks, there were so many dark areas and bright areas. Blending those two different areas was one of the hard things. One thing I’m very proud of is the background. Since each brick had a different color, it was hard to separate each and draw the border. However, it turned out well.
Watercolor Painting
The title of this photoshopped art is “Life”. I used hydrangea and lavender as motifs for this watercolor-painted flower. Hydrangea has a meaning of “family” and “gratitude” and lavender has a meaning of “purity” and “grace”. I wanted to show the calmness in this painting so I used soft and pale colors overall. I named this art “life” because all the meanings contained in both flowers are necessary for life. Gratitude for family, purity, and grace.
Watercolor Painting Effect
The title of this photoshopped art is “Remembering memories“. I personally enjoyed this assignment the most out of all the work I have completed this semester. I chose three pictures from my favorite album. When I saw the example artwork, I thought it would be cool if I choose pictures of my favorite memory because this watercolor painting effect makes the picture appear from the middle, making it look like I’m remembering the memory. One thing I like about the edited pictures is the colors. Since I chose pictures that have good color variations and gradations, they looked very good when I edited them.
Compositing
Surreal Art
The title of this photoshopped art is “Equal Scale” This is my surreal composition art for world building unit. My story for the world-building unit is about a girl who seeks to improve her new community by making changes in gender unequalized society. Therefore I used a balance scale as a motif of this art. There is a man and woman with different backgrounds, on each side of the balance scale. This has a message of how society should balance the power and rights of men and women.
Personal Essay
This is my Personal Essay I wrote in English class. I read a book that gave me instructions on how to write a good essay and it helped me a lot to find my core values and how to express those values as I tell my personal story. This essay expresses my values on diversity, community, trust in relationships, passion, and creativity.
It was March 2020, and I was on a plane from Japan to San Francisco. As if she could read my emotions, a flight attendant handed me tissues. I thought about what my life would be like in my new home. The reality was much worse; for weeks, I saw absolutely no people in my new neighborhood in the United States.
The world was completely shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. My new school, restaurants, and even supermarkets were closed. I was isolated. After a few months, I saw people my age playing volleyball at a park as I strolled around. My eyes started tearing up; all the emotions I had hidden for so long naturally came out when I saw them laughing and playing together. I had no friends or opportunities to make friends, and I felt alone.
That same week, I lost a close friend who I had known for my entire life. The fact that I could not even say goodbye because of the lockdown multiplied my sorrow. My whole family went into depression. My loss, combined with my feelings of isolation, made me feel hopeless. Nothing inspired or motivated me, and I wanted to run away.
I knew I had to do something to face these challenges. I realized that I was isolating myself from the world and trying to escape my issues.
As an only child, I worked hard to build deeper connections with my parents because they were the only family I had. I had a tendency to hide my true feelings and thoughts from them because I feared judgment. I tried to be more open so that I could talk to them with an honest heart and an open mind. I believed my parents would do the same, and we could construct stronger relationships.
Since it was my first year attending a school in the US, It felt uncomfortable and scary to try to befriend new schoolmates online. I decided to join a jazz dance team to make friends outside of school. The team offered online lessons once a week and in-person lessons once a month, giving me the first opportunity to meet people. While stretching in pairs and starting casual conversations, I slowly built dependable relationships with my new teammates, step by step.
Dance became one of my biggest passions. After a few months, I started participating in dance competitions, local events, and recitals with my team. I began to take on a leadership role, dancing in the center as the tallest and leading my teammates as the oldest. Inspired by my teammates, I challenged myself to create the choreography for solo pieces I performed in front of a hundred people.
Pandemic isolation was mentally and physically the hardest challenge of my life, but it made me realize what I value most. After building connections with my parents, I realized that communication is important in making connections and building trust. I no longer block myself off; instead, I think with an open mind, sharing my feelings, perspectives, and expectations. When I open up to someone else, I feel braver, more understood, and more trusted. Furthermore, dance lessons and bonding with my teammates allow me to participate in a community and express my creativity.
Two years since everything changed, now I sit in front of the steering wheel and stare at the road in traffic, thinking about how my life would be in college. Because through these experiences, I have changed myself significantly. I learned how always to be passionate about something, making me want to explore and discover things I do not know yet, about the world and myself with my broad possibilities.
Film
This is my Personal Reflection video and my very first assignment in Freestyle. I filmed my story of how and why I am here today, as I follow the question “Who am I?”. The whole story started when I watched a YouTube video when I was in 5th grade. The video convinced me to go to an International School to study English, then the experience there inspired me to move here, to the United States. I used my first language, Japanese in the first half and English in the second half to show how I developed my English skills. Enjoy!
