Chicago Sees the Light

In If These Walls Could Talk, Unit 3, our groups were tasked to design and create a large scale mural in the new GCE space. In unit 2 we created a sketch of what we wanted for our final mural and over the period of a couple weeks we had edited the mural and worked towards completing the prep work for the mural. We had faced many difficulties throughout the project, mainly the communication and the constant changing of the mural and its meaning over the course of the weeks we worked on it. However, despite these difficulties, our efforts payed off and the mural, although not our original message, turned out great. I'm very proud of all the hard work my group mates and I put into this mural because it turned out to be captivating and expressed our general message: that Chicago is more than it appears. Please enjoy the mural, the video of our progress, and my artist statement below.

   The purpose of our project was to show the many hidden gems of Chicago in order to reflect what we have learned in this course. The mural we created shows multiple different tourists of all shapes and sizes, that span across the length of the wall, walking by three different cracks in the wall that had collages that depict different images that represent the city: culture, art, and buildings. Most people who aren't from Chicago view the city as a corrupt and violent place that only has a few select beauties; such as the Bean, Willis Tower, and the Taste of Chicago. The media and techniques we used to create this mural were spray paint and stencils, used to create the people and cracks, and laser print images with wheat paste, used to put together our collages. The stencils had been created by tracing images onto a paper, via projector, and then adhesive glued onto the chipboard to be cut out. We used original photographs to create the collages, each with its own themes: art, culture and architecture, that were then laser printed to wheat paste into the cracks. We chose the background color of the wall to be grey so as to represent the skyline of Chicago without the skyline actually being there. All of the stencils had been spray painted black in order to stand out against the grey background. The bright eye catching colors come from the collages of the mural, which draws the attention of people to our main purpose: to show that Chicago is more than just violence and corruption. The mural is able to transform and impact the space by making it more visually appealing and by the fact it was created by students. This mural opens the eyes of the viewer to the real Chicago and what it has to offer.

Everyday each group member had a different role, which played a key part in completed the mural. Each member got the chance to partake in each role. There was the mule whose job was to collect all the materials group members needed to complete their tasks for the mural. The documentarian was in charge of taking pictures and videos in order for each member to create the reflection video. The artistic director had to make sure all the work that was done went along with the mural and made sure it was good quality. The last job was the director of operations who was responsible for keeping the other members on task and for cleaning up the messes made during the work time. My favorite role had been the mule because I was quick with the tasks I was assigned making me the perfect person to help assist others with their needs. My least favorite role had been the artistic director because I'm a very indecisive person especially when it comes to art and it is very hard for me to envision a piece that has not been completed or drawn on paper. However, I did understand the importance and need for the role because without it we would not have a a nice looking final mural. If I had the ability to change parts of the process and experience I would want better communication among group members so there would be less confusion and stress for everyone and more time within the new space to work on the mural. I also would want to have it so that we wouldn't have needed to constantly change the looks and message of the mural throughout the whole process and have made all the edits in the very beginning. The final piece did achieve our original goal of showing that Chicago is more than meets the eye while creating a beautiful artwork. However it had not turned out, visually, how we originally pictured it with the skyline idea being completely removed and the addition of people walking by the cracks. Due to our hard work we were able to create a gorgeous artwork that had impacted the space we worked in.

Book 101

In Book Bound we studied the relations between a reader and a book, on the tool used to read it, and the layout and systems of libraries. My class was assigned to read The Great Gatsby, a famous novel of F. Scott Fitzgerald that is in the literary canon. I have mixed feelings about the book since the writing is superb and really captures the readers attention, but I strongly dislike the characters. I believed that this book belonged in the canon, despite the annoyance the characters brought me, because of Fitzgerald's unique writing style. We went on many FEs to different libraries in order to get a sense of how a library is designed and organized. Each library had its own layouts and book log processes that added to the unique atmospheres, which shocked me. Originally this class was designed to create our new school library and the books that would be included inside it, but our contribution to the construction of the space is not as great as planned, however our ideas are still considered. I imagined it with bean bags, computer and work spot, and plenty of book shelves with a large variety of books. For our, only, action project we were to choose four of our best works, that we did throughout the term, to put into a portfolio. I enjoyed the portfolio because we are able to showcase more than one piece of work we did in the course, which gives a greater insight into how hard we worked. My favorite assignment by far, which is included, is the Literary Journal.

Literacy Poster

In this assignment we had to design a poster based off of a guiding question we chose about or related to literacy and/or reading. We needed to then do research from valid sources in order to include factual information. This assignment was created in hopes to inspire people to read, mainly the people in our new library space. I wanted this project to be part of the portfolio because it shows the facts of people who are literate and illiterate. Those who are illiterate have a tougher time in everyday life and it is a problem that plagues the majority of the world. I wanted to inspire people to read by showing the consequences of those who don't, won't or can't. I had designed this poster on a site called canva.com in order to make it look neat. It was difficult to properly size the images and texts in a way that could be read but at the same time visually appealing. Despite these difficulties I am happy with how it turned out. Originally I had a bunch of quotes about reading surrounding the book, but decided that instead of attracting people it would turn them off. To fix this I got rid of the quotes and added a pile of books, a panda chibi, a world, and a clock to be more visually appealing. I am proud of how the final product turned out because of its eye-catching designs, with an adorable panda, and the information I included in it.

Slideshow

In this assignment we each chose a book that we believed should be added to the literary canon and defend our reasoning behind it. This project is related to and about the literary canon, an important concept in all literature world wide. I chose to add this to the portfolio because of how ecstatic I was about this assignment and how I want others to read, and recognize, this great book. The book Unwind by Neal Shusterman is the first of an entire series and brings up topics that are prominent to discuss. I created the slideshow that includes all parts necessary to teach others about it. It was extremely difficult finding a video about or relating to the book since Shusterman hasn't had an interview about it and there is no good quality trailers, which are all fan made. In order to post this in the portfolio I fixed any grammar mistakes and edited my works cited slide. I'm very proud of this project because I'm spreading the word of one of my favorite books of all time. The class was really enthusiastic about Unwind constantly asking me questions which prolonged my presentation from five minutes to about forty minutes. Many of my peers agreed with me that this book should be added to the canon.

Literary Journal

In this assignment we were put into groups of three to create a literary journal with a theme of our choice. For this project we needed to include original images and writings along with some external submissions. Due to the wide range of literature from poems to short stories it relates to our course. I selected this project for my portfolio because it is by far my favorite since we created it. We had split up the requirements among the three of us and set up a timeline for the deadlines. It was difficult to communicate with my other group mates and publishing the journal also proved difficult. Since this was a group project I was unable to make any revisions without the two other members. I'm extremely proud of this assignment since it turned out nicely and the contents are enjoyable.

Literary Canon Essay

In this assignment we had to write about whether The Great Gatsby should remain in the literary canon. This is well known book that schools read nationwide and it deals with the literary canon, which determines a lot of what middle and high schoolers read for class. I chose to add this assignment to the portfolio because I enjoy writing argumentative essays and I want people to understand the great writing style in The Great Gatsby. I created an outline of the essay with a completed intro paragraph. It had been difficult finding good supporting evidence from the book for my claims. I had fixed the grammar and spelling errors before adding it to the portfolio. I am proud of how well I wrote this essay, especially the introduction paragraph.
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