Monologue Critic

Basically, my table mates said my topics were really strong and they liked them. However, because of the severity of emotional appeal in "F*** You So Called Father", they said I should go with the lighter homophobia topic. I agree because I don't think I can talk about my father anymore without breaking down into tears. To make my video better, they suggested I have more rainbows around and write out stronger points to make. But that overall it was eye opening and a strong topic. They especially suggested that I do the "Does My Rainbow Flag Scare You" bit. So I think that's what I'm going to do. Should be interesting.

THANKS TABLE 8.

Mark Making!

"Cleaning Out My Closet" by Eminem

"Tetris" Dubstep remix

"It Takes Two" by DJ EZ Rock & Rob Base

For all of the above, I used paper towel to wipe away the art.

"Paparazzi" by Lady Gaga

Dryer Sheet

"Holler Till You Pass Out" by 3oh!3

Cotton ball

"Butterfly" by Jason Mraz

Bra (because it's a sexual song)

"NO HOMO"

Does my Rainbow flag scare you?

F*** You So Called Father (take 2)

Those are real tears.. I began to get emotional.. Maybe this wasn't a good idea. lol

F*** You So Called Father (take 1)

This is a true story, so no jokes please.

(I removed the video shortly after the critic because I didn't want any memory of talking about this.)

Lecture Lists

So I'm not sure if I did this correctly, but here you are anyway. Just a heads up, a lot of this really is personal. I chose to share it all because I feel I have nothing to hide. My past makes me who I am today, and if anyone chooses to judge me because of any of the information disclosed, then it's their problem, not mine. Sorry if that was rude. It's quite a bit of information but here you are:

Lived locations: (all Texas, no specific order)

Dallas –I don’t remember much except wanting to leave.

Richardson –I had a cat named Jazz, she peed on my bed and my mom put her out.

Duncanville –I remember going to see my aunt perform with her HS dance team

Detroit –This was the same as Dallas, I just wanted to leave. My school experience wasn’t all that fantastic. I threw my desk at my teacher, and punched a boy in the nose. I was only 5 and 6 years old.

Plano –I loved Plano. I miss it a lot. I made a lot of great friends. These were the happiest years of my life. Ages 7-14. One of the main things I still remember about Plano was my 8^th grade science teacher at Bowman Middle School. Mr. Boyd said to our class one day “Life sucks, then you die”.. I remember this because it’s so true. The majority of the memories I’ve had stick in my mind forever are ones that just sucked. Life really does suck, and we’re just going to all die one day anyway. So why dwell on the all the bad? I don’t think we have much of a choice. I really can’t remember too much about my childhood even though its still going on. I have a bad memory, but I also block a lot of things out.

Melissa –This is where I currently live (when I’m not at school). It’s boring, there’s nothing to do. I went to school in McKinney. I did everything in McKinney. I had good and bad times, mostly bad. But I blame it on myself. I think I went to McKinney with a bad attitude mainly because I missed Plano, and I didn’t know anyone. I hate to be alone, and that’s what I was for a while. But I made one very amazing friend, Desiree Hamlin. She had just moved to McKinney from Colorado, so we were both new and needed friends. I still consider her one of my best friends, 5 years later.

I’m going to separate my experiences of loss and absence from the rest because this is where things get extremely personal, and heartfelt.

Skipping to Plano, which is where my first memory of loss, absence, joy, AND belonging happened all around the same time. At Memorial Elementary, I had the time of my life. I made lots of friends, I was always having fun, and I was rarely ever sad. 2^nd grade I found a love for singing. 3^rd grade I realized how good I was at math. 4^th grade I had imaginary friends that I convinced my teacher to meet, and thinking about it makes me smile every time. 5^th grade I realized how much fun I had acting. I’m going to stop here at 5^th grade. I had 3 close friends, Sohana Islam, Clay Johnson, and Bailey Wood. Together we would put on short plays for our 5^th grade class in the gymnasium. My favorite one that we did was “The Window Washer”. These were good times. Much simpler times. Moving on to 6^th grade, I had my first serious boyfriend. From there I can’t remember ever being single all through middle school and high school. I don’t think that was a good thing, but I can’t change it now. When I was 11 I experienced the feeling of loss and absence together. My grandfather died that year.  And on top of that, my biological father whom I had never spoken to, or met, showed up at my family Christmas party. If you ever talk to me about my father, I might say I’ve never met him, and this is because at the party he promised me he’d come visit every Saturday from then on. The next Saturday came around, and I waited on the couch all day for him to call or show up. But he never did. From that day forward I promised myself that I would never forgive him and I don’t count the time I met him anymore because it’s a memory that’s not worth it. Skipping ahead to 9^th grade, I moved to McKinney ISD. I went to McKinney North HS, and I immediately hated it because it was not Plano with my friends. It was completely different territory, and a completely different curriculum. I had a tough time freshman year. It was the first time I’d ever had a depression problem, and ever though of suicide. I’d attempted it a few times and had to be carefully watched. It wasn’t all because of school though. There was trouble at home. My mom and step dad had been together for about 5 years by that time I think. But something I always knew about my mom that she didn’t was she’s a lesbian. I could just tell as a child, but I never said anything to her. But my freshman year is when she started to come out. First she just said it was experimenting, but I knew a divorce would be coming soon. I didn’t take it well because my step dad was as close to a father than I’d ever had. I didn’t want to lose that. By the end of my freshman year, the divorce was settled. It wasn’t official yet, but my mom had moved out and moved in with her Partner, Jay Moore. I call her Mama Jay, and I love her so much. My depression wasn’t over though. I felt alone in the house without my mother because she’s like my best friend. Not only that, but my step dad started seeing someone else, Shaneka. They were getting serious and she moved in. I didn’t take that well either. They got onto me for having a bad attitude about it. My attitude only got worse by senior year and I was completely moved out of my step dads house and into my mom and mama Jays house. In a way I preferred this, but I hate that I ruined my relationship with my step dad. But I slowly got so much happier and now I love being at home.

Career- Well I got my first job the summer of 2009 at Cinemark Movies 14 of McKinney. I still work there as a seasonal employee. I love it there! The people are fantastic, I love working one on one with customers, and my managers are so awesome. All the friends I have today, come from that place.  I really miss working almost every day. I’ve had some of the best times of my life at the theater. Sure there are some rude customers that make my life a living hell, but I just brush them off my shoulder and move on with my day. In the end, I end having a great day. The best memories are when the whole crew gets together after we close up (at midnight) and go out to IHOP. There has been many times where we almost get kicked out, but it just adds to the fun. I see midnight shows with everyone, and we go to Six Flags almost obsessively during the summer. I just love my job.

Spiritual Evolution- I don’t think I changed much. I’ve always been religious, but not a crazy Christian that tries to force my beliefs down every ones throat. I believe in God, but I also believe in many other things. I don’t go to church by choice. I used to love it as a child, but as I grew older I realized that I don’t agree with everything the Preacher talks about. So it’s just easier for me to study the Bible on my own time and believe what I want to believe.

Sexuality or gender evolution/path or relationship to the body- Well first of all, I’m bisexual/pansexual. I believe people should be able to love who ever they want no matter what gender they are. I definitely knew this when I was 7 years old and I had my first girl crush. But I also knew I liked boys. I never had a denial period. But I didn’t come out officially until the summer of 2010, right before Fall semester started. Since then I’ve been completely open about it. I say that I’m pansexual because I don’t care what the body looks like but what the mind looks like. For me it’s definitely more about what’s on the inside than the outside. I’m not sure if this is what you wanted, but it’s how I interpreted it.

Acheivements:

Many solo and ensemble medals for choir

4 in VASE competition

A picture I took was “May” in the McKinneyISD academic calendar

I got a medal for making 3^rd place in the district for best sidebar in yearbook

This is as far as I got before I started getting a little confused again. It may be because of the time. I definitely should have started earlier. But I'll come back to it tomorrow and hopefully have more to say.

Mark Making With Ink

Battle of the Popsicle Sticks

I chose the following three because I felt like they were the three things I worked off mainly as I went through the process. I worked not knowing about the questions that would have to be answered later, so when I saw the choices they just spoke to me. 

Craftsmanship:  I started out with a basic structure for my piece, however, I realized that it would have been time consuming to continue on the way I was going. So I changed the way I wanted the final product to look. I decided to continue with the basic structure for a little while longer to show that there was some order to the madness. But in the end, it’s still all a mess. Purposely done because all I could see the entire time was a battle scene. And at the end of a battle, things are pretty. So neither is my piece. All the faces that you see are both representational and not. I’m not sure what face a stick would be making at the end of a bloodbath, so I chose to just put different faces on them all. I don’t think it’s distracting because of the effect I was going for. It’s madness, but it works at the same time.

Process/Ambitiousness: I think I was ambitious when it came to the number of popsicle sticks I had to use in the end, it was just about 1300. Though I do feel it could have been more ambitious. It changed a lot from the initial imagining to the final piece. I initially wanted to build a 5ft tower, but after 4 hours of work I only had an 8inch tower. So I changed what I was going to do since time was quickly running out.  I think my initial idea was definitely more ambitious, in size especially. But I also think my final piece is pretty ambitious in meaning.

Presentation: I chose to put my piece here because I wanted it to be by something colorful. Since popsicle sticks have no color, I didn’t want it to “blend in” to other neutral colored pieces. It’s actually ironic that I chose to put it next to color considering that the sticks on the floor leading away from the color have dead facial expressions. So in a way, Alexandra’s piece impacted the impression of my piece.

Mark Making with Pencil

I recorded myself and others at my table making our marks. I thought the process was interesting and worth blogging.

I'm not much of a story teller, but here it goes.

I think I tell stories better in video form, so I have a couple videos for you all to check out! But first my story:

Lines In Traffic

We all have been in a car, driving or riding somewhere. And I’m sure we’ve all experienced some type of traffic. Slow, fast, average, none. I guess you can say I was in average traffic on my journey back from The Woodlands Mall with Emily.  It started out being stuck in the line to exit Mall. For some reason everybody just wanted to take forever to get on the service road that day. Emily and I waited for the longest time. When we finally got on the service road, traffic was so clear that I just didn’t understand the hold up earlier. As we got on I-45 north traffic got a little heavier. But it still wasn’t too bad and we actually made it back to Huntsville within the hour. The way to The Woodlands was a pain. There was a line of cars heading to a funeral holding up traffic. That sounds a bit rude, but at first we didn’t know why we were stopping. Anyway, back to the story. The tricky thing about driving is you have to stay in your line. Although I wasn’t driving, I like to look and see if the driver is in the lines. Emily was in her lane the whole time because she’s an excellent driver. I also observed all the lines that the cars ahead of us make. Even though everyone stayed in his or her own lane, the line was crooked because ever car wasn’t dead center. It’s interesting to watch how other drive. You can tell when they are keeping themselves centered or keeping the car centered. It’s funny because Emily asked me if I was going to use the traffic lines as my short story and I said no at the time because I thought I’d come up with something better. But as I recorded the lines in traffic, I started to like the idea more and more. Maybe it is because it was another opportunity for me to make a video for class. Nevertheless, this was the time that I had to stay in line.

Trailer!!!!

  

White Space and Negative Space

So I was not able to make it to the store to print out the pictures, so they will be in black and white on printer paper in class tomorrow. :( BUT I can show what they really look like here, and hopefully get some print outs later on.

I stopped a random girl that had a zebra bag, and asked to take a picture. xD

I thought the clouds made beautiful negative space. In this case the blue is the negative.

I just really enjoyed this picture because you have the clouds as negative space through the trees, but the sky is the negative space in the clouds. And I love that I got the building in this shot.

Popsicles: The Beginning (vlog part 2)

4 hours later, this is where I am now!

My editing is getting better.. no? :)

Also, I didn't say this in the video.. But I think I'm going to make my project wider than taller. Check back tomorrow for more progress, and I'll hopefully have this change in the works!

My Human Dot Compositions!!

So today was a lot of fun! My group decided to have a picnic in the park in order to show off our dot compositions. It was quite interesting. Especially towards the end when I decided it'd be more fun to play dead. xD But in the end we decided we were all zombies and that's why there's no food on our plates because we don't eat normal people food. We also all have vacant expressions on our faces. So that helps with the whole zombie feel. Over all it brought our table closer, and it was tons of fun! We climbed and trees as well! :D Here are my two compositions:
Since it wasn't on my flash drive I had to use my webcam to take pictures, so the colors aren't accurate.

Popsicles: The Beginning

So instead of taking pictures of my process, I thought I'd show you through a video. :)

Here are some pictures anyway though :)

 I went from this.... 

 To this...

What do you think so far?

POPSICLE STICKS!

   So the item I chose to get 100+ of was popsicle sticks. I decided on them because I remember using them in art way back in elementary school. Emily T said I should use water color and paint the ends of them and say I ate that many popsicles. But considering the weather, I doubt anyone would have believed that. xD

    First a brief history about popsicle sticks. They were invented by an eleven year old named Frank Epperson in 1905. So they're more than a hundred years old! Before they were "popsicle" sticks, they were "Epsicle" sticks. Epperson came by the idea on accident during a cold winter season. He had left his fruit flavored soda outside on the porch with a stir stick in it, but when it had frozen over and he tasted it, he thought it was a delicious treat. From there it took him 18 years to develop the idea of frozen ice on a stick. Soon it was named Epsicle Ice Pop. Later his children renamed it Popsicle as we know it today. He sold his Popsicle idea to the Joe Lowe Company of New York and Good Humor now owns the "Popsicle Rights".  (I got my information from: http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blpopsicle.htm)

   So anyway, here are a few things I came up with while "playing" with my object(s). We had TONS of fun!

I listened to my object..

Then I smelled it!

I tasted it...gross.

I examined it very closely!

Then we took a much needed nap!

This is the natural form it fell in.

But I had to push it aside. :(

I made a box!

Then a house..?

IDK

After all of this work, me and my sticks decided to have some real fun!

 First we went to the beach and watched the sunset. Isn't it beautiful?

 Next we went on a roller coaster at Six Flags Over Texas. This was so much fun, but we were both sooooo scared! :)

After that we traveled down to Cozumel, Mexico and scubadived with the fishes! :D

We ended the day in Paris, France.

What an exciting time we had! :D

We hope you enjoyed our photos!

Here are a few pictures of things other people made with popsicle sticks!

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I suggest everyone look at the website I listed for this next one, you can see the whole process!!

http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/playable-guitar-made-with-popsicle-sticks.html

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Next Cardboard Idol

I wasn't able to get a picture of everyone in my group, but I did get a few pictures of Keenan and Zach.