Introduction

Within the Explorations project, it was the most creative one so far. Within the project, juniors explore their interests and passions by helping develop 21st-century skills. In Design, the class I’m pursuing, we were given full creative control as long as it conformed to the 21st-century skills, and later developed a presentation to document our journey building the product. For my project, I chose to carve a spoon out of wood since it has always fascinated me, and I utilized the skills of High Productivity and Risk Taking.

The Process

I have always had an odd fascination with wood carving. But the learning curve seemed too hard, and I didn’t have a lot of free time to pursue such a time-consuming hobby. Yet, with the Explorations Project, it gave me the time for me to start woodcutting for the first time. I only utilized three tools for this project: the hook knife, a whittling knife, and 150-grit sandpaper. And for the project, since the other things I wanted to carve would be too time-demanding, I chose to carve a spoon due to its practical use, and due to the fact that I’ve always been fascinated by wood-carved spoons. My process was broken into three main parts: carving the general shape, scooping the bowl, and sanding and whittling down for a more defined shape.

Final Production

This is my final product, a spoon made of basswood, all hand-carved.

Reflection

From this project, I gained a general sense of what wood carving is about. I gained many valuable skills within wood cutting, which, while not the most useful outside the project, is something cool to know. Overall, I enjoyed the project with its creative freedom, even with my limited time to complete it.

Poetry

For English class, we spent several weeks learning about the art of poetry, honing our skills. We held discussions about different techniques common to poetry. A Poet-in-Residence came to help us learn, designing unique lesson plans and helping us improve our poetry through feedback. She taught me a lot about how to show emotion through both word choice and language, which came in handy for my own poem.

My poem is titled “Blind Creation,” and stems from the culture surrounding looks maxxing, a popular online trend. I made my poem dark in appearance to highlight the grim and unsettling nature of the topic.

With my documentary writing,  I was writing in a more traditional format, yet with poetry, it allowed my creativity to blossom with unconventional writing techniques I had not used for years. Even though poetry is one of my weakest English skills, I tried to incorporate poetic techniques effectively. More specifically, in my poem, I explored the destructive nature of artificial beauty, more specifically “looks maxxing”. So, when I wrote my poem, I wanted the audience to feel the physical toll of that culture by personifying the mirror. To personify the mirror, I gave it an insatiable hunger and jagged fangs to resemble a monster. I also made large gaps in parts of my writing to serve as an uncomfortable pause for the reader, and to serve as the cracks in the mirror. This large shift of creativity is something I haven’t seen since Freshman year, when my class spent a small segment of time on poetry. Moving from merely writing the poem and reciting it proved a challenge, with mistakes like reading too fast or too slow, not allowing pauses to set in, etc. The feedback I received was very nice, with many giving me positive comments on my poetry, even though I have rarely ever written poetry in general. Through this poem, I utilized both Creativity and Openness when creating poetry. Creativity allowed me to utilize untraditional framing, with odd breaks, improper grammar, and odd structures, beyond just word choice. With Openness, it pushed me to tackle a darker theme, rather than playing it safe, helping push me out of my comfort zone. I also practiced openness by being able to be vulnerable to my peers, in contrast to hiding behind my paper.

Overall, I think my production did a sufficient job conveying the spirit of my poem. Even with limited visual elements, the music and darker background convey a sad image.  And, I also used simple visual elements to abstractly represent the gold streams and the forbidden fruit in rivers, which helped convey the meaning of my poem.

I enjoyed the freedom of reading my poem aloud. Within my poem, I have awkward pauses reminiscent of the breaks within the poem. I made this artistic choice since those breaks are intentional and help represent the broken image the poem tries to convey. I also enjoyed how we could choose any copyright-free music we liked, allowing me to pick a sad piano piece, which helped set the mood of my poem as something grim.