Showcase
Hello, and welcome to my page! My name is Valorie Spade, and I am a senior at Mountain View High School and Freestyle Academy. I am in the Animation elective at Freestyle Academy.
Next year I am continuing my education at Temple University Japan. I plan to major in art and continue to develop my artistic abilities, as well as branch out into more new mediums. In the future, I want to pursue a career in art education, as being a teacher is something I’ve been interested in from a very young age.
For my first showcase item, I chose photography. As part of our Digital Media class, we had monthly photo blog assignments. In shooting photos for the weekly prompts, I developed a love for photography. I soon learned, however, that taking good photos was harder than I had initially thought. I took a lot of photos in my two years at Freestyle using a variety of cameras and lenses. I even got into film photography, and purchased darkroom chemicals to develop my photos at home. Below is a collection of photos that I feel represent the variety photos I took with the various techniques and skills taught to us in our Digital Media class.
I feel that my photos utilize composition, framing, colors, and other techniques to make them interesting pieces, but I also feel that a lot of them may lack depth or emotion, which ultimately make them boring and hard to connect with. A lot of this may come from the fact that I am still unexperienced in photography and am too preoccupied with simply shooting my subjects, but I want to improve my ability to convey more with just a photograph.
For my second item, I chose my Zenith. The Zenith project is where everyone at Freestyle was truly able to do what they wanted, and even though I was an Animation student, I wanted to try something more design based. We dabbled in doll-making in junior year with our stop motion dolls and I enjoyed the process a lot, but I knew I could do a lot better if I ever attempted something similar again. And so, for my senior year Zenith, I did exactly that. The goal this time was not to make a doll for stop motion, however. This doll was more of a base for clothing and costume design, as that is something that I’ve been wanting to teach myself for a while, but never was able to.
I learned a lot from the trial and error involved in this process, and I’m extremely satisfied in the progress I made in learning a new and unique medium. I plan on developing this project a lot further in the future. Below is the recorded reflection of my Zenith.
Freestyle has helped me develop as an artist over the course of the last two years by giving me a variety of projects that all required me to push myself and try new things. I never would have thought to do half of the things I did here, nor would I have had the skills to do so. Everything I’ve learned has further inspired me in my passion for art in every form, and I am excited to continue developing that passion with the skills and experience I’ve gained here.