Fireside Chat

Artist Statement            

            Opening up about my life on a non-superficial level has always been a source of anxiety for me. I wonder about how I will be received, how I will be perceived, and most of all how the listeners will use my words, because once uttered aloud they are no longer just mine and people can use them however they want to. So, within the vague parameters of the Fireside Chat assignment, I felt that I was walking a balancing act between revealing too much, and not enough.

            The assignment called for a discussion of my beliefs, which seems simple enough, but underneath is such a striking idea. What better way is there to learn about someone intimately than to listen to his or her most closely held values? I thought of all the basic beliefs that I have, my religious persuasions, my political ideals and my cultural limitations could all make for an interesting and completely superficial discussion about myself. So, then I thought about what I hold deeper and closer to my heart. I thought of all my health problems, my recent challenges, and my hardest trials and then as I traced each of these back to their source I found that stunted emotions were at the epicenter.

            Armed with the concept for my speech, I then found a physical way to describe my utter lack of any emotional capacity by dressing up as a fictitious figure with zero emotions, a zombie. This conceptualization provided me with a literal and figurative mask that I could still hide behind while discussing something that is actually so personal it makes me shrink at the very idea of allowing the world to hear it. I could use pop culture and the recent zombie frenzy to help others understand something, which is, in all actuality, impossible to comprehend without experiencing. The recent film Warm Bodies provides an excellent backdrop to my discussion as it comically explores the idea that zombies may actually be just like us, but trapped inside their imperfect bodies that cannot experience emotion and empathy the way living humans do. I didn’t feel that I had to specifically refer to this film, but simply implied that meaning when I adorned my undead makeup.

            Never the less I worried that I would become an anomaly similar to the victim of gross misunderstandings found in Tillie Olsen’s short story I Stand Here Ironing. This story beautifully examines the life of a girl through her mother’s eyes, a mother who saw all the pain and hurt that her child went through, but was unable to help her. While I feel that some of those same circumstances have been true in my life, I didn’t want to be seen by my peers as some broken girl. Thankfully, some of the anxiety of revealing too much of myself to an audience was alleviated when technical difficulties arouse during my presentation, forcing my focus to shift. While this was an unforeseen complication, I think that it may have worked to my benefit by calming my nerves and allowing me to just say what I needed to. Then as I watched the other students perform, I appreciated the ones who chose to go to that deeper level and allow us to see what is just behind the walls we so carefully construct. The realization that we all have those things that we vigilantly protect and hid from the world, allowed me to view my own presentation in a different light. Perhaps it will be meaningful to others that I was willing to put myself out there, or perhaps it was only a learning experience for me that no one else will remember. 

Fireside Chat

Artist Statement            

            Opening up about my life on a non-superficial level has always been a source of anxiety for me. I wonder about how I will be received, how I will be perceived, and most of all how the listeners will use my words, because once uttered aloud they are no longer just mine and people can use them however they want to. So, within the vague parameters of the Fireside Chat assignment, I felt that I was walking a balancing act between revealing too much, and not enough.

            The assignment called for a discussion of my beliefs, which seems simple enough, but underneath is such a striking idea. What better way is there to learn about someone intimately than to listen to his or her most closely held values? I thought of all the basic beliefs that I have, my religious persuasions, my political ideals and my cultural limitations could all make for an interesting and completely superficial discussion about myself. So, then I thought about what I hold deeper and closer to my heart. I thought of all my health problems, my recent challenges, and my hardest trials and then as I traced each of these back to their source I found that stunted emotions were at the epicenter.

            Armed with the concept for my speech, I then found a physical way to describe my utter lack of any emotional capacity by dressing up as a fictitious figure with zero emotions, a zombie. This conceptualization provided me with a literal and figurative mask that I could still hide behind while discussing something that is actually so personal it makes me shrink at the very idea of allowing the world to hear it. I could use pop culture and the recent zombie frenzy to help others understand something, which is, in all actuality, impossible to comprehend without experiencing. The recent film Warm Bodies provides an excellent backdrop to my discussion as it comically explores the idea that zombies may actually be just like us, but trapped inside their imperfect bodies that cannot experience emotion and empathy the way living humans do. I didn’t feel that I had to specifically refer to this film, but simply implied that meaning when I adorned my undead makeup.

            Never the less I worried that I would become an anomaly similar to the victim of gross misunderstandings found in Tillie Olsen’s short story I Stand Here Ironing. This story beautifully examines the life of a girl through her mother’s eyes, a mother who saw all the pain and hurt that her child went through, but was unable to help her. While I feel that some of those same circumstances have been true in my life, I didn’t want to be seen by my peers as some broken girl. Thankfully, some of the anxiety of revealing too much of myself to an audience was alleviated when technical difficulties arouse during my presentation, forcing my focus to shift. While this was an unforeseen complication, I think that it may have worked to my benefit by calming my nerves and allowing me to just say what I needed to. Then as I watched the other students perform, I appreciated the ones who chose to go to that deeper level and allow us to see what is just behind the walls we so carefully construct. The realization that we all have those things that we vigilantly protect and hid from the world, allowed me to view my own presentation in a different light. Perhaps it will be meaningful to others that I was willing to put myself out there, or perhaps it was only a learning experience for me that no one else will remember. 

Fireside Chat

Artist Statement            

            Opening up about my life on a non-superficial level has always been a source of anxiety for me. I wonder about how I will be received, how I will be perceived, and most of all how the listeners will use my words, because once uttered aloud they are no longer just mine and people can use them however they want to. So, within the vague parameters of the Fireside Chat assignment, I felt that I was walking a balancing act between revealing too much, and not enough.

            The assignment called for a discussion of my beliefs, which seems simple enough, but underneath is such a striking idea. What better way is there to learn about someone intimately than to listen to his or her most closely held values? I thought of all the basic beliefs that I have, my religious persuasions, my political ideals and my cultural limitations could all make for an interesting and completely superficial discussion about myself. So, then I thought about what I hold deeper and closer to my heart. I thought of all my health problems, my recent challenges, and my hardest trials and then as I traced each of these back to their source I found that stunted emotions were at the epicenter.

            Armed with the concept for my speech, I then found a physical way to describe my utter lack of any emotional capacity by dressing up as a fictitious figure with zero emotions, a zombie. This conceptualization provided me with a literal and figurative mask that I could still hide behind while discussing something that is actually so personal it makes me shrink at the very idea of allowing the world to hear it. I could use pop culture and the recent zombie frenzy to help others understand something, which is, in all actuality, impossible to comprehend without experiencing. The recent film Warm Bodies provides an excellent backdrop to my discussion as it comically explores the idea that zombies may actually be just like us, but trapped inside their imperfect bodies that cannot experience emotion and empathy the way living humans do. I didn’t feel that I had to specifically refer to this film, but simply implied that meaning when I adorned my undead makeup.

            Never the less I worried that I would become an anomaly similar to the victim of gross misunderstandings found in Tillie Olsen’s short story I Stand Here Ironing. This story beautifully examines the life of a girl through her mother’s eyes, a mother who saw all the pain and hurt that her child went through, but was unable to help her. While I feel that some of those same circumstances have been true in my life, I didn’t want to be seen by my peers as some broken girl. Thankfully, some of the anxiety of revealing too much of myself to an audience was alleviated when technical difficulties arouse during my presentation, forcing my focus to shift. While this was an unforeseen complication, I think that it may have worked to my benefit by calming my nerves and allowing me to just say what I needed to. Then as I watched the other students perform, I appreciated the ones who chose to go to that deeper level and allow us to see what is just behind the walls we so carefully construct. The realization that we all have those things that we vigilantly protect and hid from the world, allowed me to view my own presentation in a different light. Perhaps it will be meaningful to others that I was willing to put myself out there, or perhaps it was only a learning experience for me that no one else will remember. 

Fireside Chat

Artist Statement            

            Opening up about my life on a non-superficial level has always been a source of anxiety for me. I wonder about how I will be received, how I will be perceived, and most of all how the listeners will use my words, because once uttered aloud they are no longer just mine and people can use them however they want to. So, within the vague parameters of the Fireside Chat assignment, I felt that I was walking a balancing act between revealing too much, and not enough.

            The assignment called for a discussion of my beliefs, which seems simple enough, but underneath is such a striking idea. What better way is there to learn about someone intimately than to listen to his or her most closely held values? I thought of all the basic beliefs that I have, my religious persuasions, my political ideals and my cultural limitations could all make for an interesting and completely superficial discussion about myself. So, then I thought about what I hold deeper and closer to my heart. I thought of all my health problems, my recent challenges, and my hardest trials and then as I traced each of these back to their source I found that stunted emotions were at the epicenter.

            Armed with the concept for my speech, I then found a physical way to describe my utter lack of any emotional capacity by dressing up as a fictitious figure with zero emotions, a zombie. This conceptualization provided me with a literal and figurative mask that I could still hide behind while discussing something that is actually so personal it makes me shrink at the very idea of allowing the world to hear it. I could use pop culture and the recent zombie frenzy to help others understand something, which is, in all actuality, impossible to comprehend without experiencing. The recent film Warm Bodies provides an excellent backdrop to my discussion as it comically explores the idea that zombies may actually be just like us, but trapped inside their imperfect bodies that cannot experience emotion and empathy the way living humans do. I didn’t feel that I had to specifically refer to this film, but simply implied that meaning when I adorned my undead makeup.

            Never the less I worried that I would become an anomaly similar to the victim of gross misunderstandings found in Tillie Olsen’s short story I Stand Here Ironing. This story beautifully examines the life of a girl through her mother’s eyes, a mother who saw all the pain and hurt that her child went through, but was unable to help her. While I feel that some of those same circumstances have been true in my life, I didn’t want to be seen by my peers as some broken girl. Thankfully, some of the anxiety of revealing too much of myself to an audience was alleviated when technical difficulties arouse during my presentation, forcing my focus to shift. While this was an unforeseen complication, I think that it may have worked to my benefit by calming my nerves and allowing me to just say what I needed to. Then as I watched the other students perform, I appreciated the ones who chose to go to that deeper level and allow us to see what is just behind the walls we so carefully construct. The realization that we all have those things that we vigilantly protect and hid from the world, allowed me to view my own presentation in a different light. Perhaps it will be meaningful to others that I was willing to put myself out there, or perhaps it was only a learning experience for me that no one else will remember. 

Concerned Citizen

            

Artist Statement:

            Walking around BYU campus, it’s hard to escape the millions of messages LDS women are exposed to. Young LDS women at BYU are supposed to be top students, they’re supposed to have a great social life, an active and important calling in their church, an involved group of friends. They’re supposed to be physically and spiritually fit, beautiful because of their righteousness. But as girls desperately try to achieve all of these things at once, menacing murmurs are heard: “I’m not thin enough,” “I’m not smart enough,” “I’m not good enough for a boyfriend.”
            Both of us were already aware of the negative self-talk that poisons the views of a woman’s self-worth, but were completely surprised at how magnified this is at BYU—especially when this group should be more aware of their value than any other group of young women. While Goldbard focuses on the positive effects of Storyland, the stories these young women tell themselves are skewed and hurtful, and the culture that is a result of it hampers their ability to progress. Perhaps the checklist of things women are “supposed” to be corresponds more specifically with Datastan, where people are expected to mathematically fit into a single mold.
            Such an idea is set on its head when one considers the words of Dieter F. Uchtodorf:

“We can even make the mistake of thinking that because someone is different from us, it must mean they are not pleasing to God. This line of thinking leads some to believe that the Church wants to create every member from a single mold—that each one should look, feel, think, and behave like every other. This would contradict the genius of God, who created every man different from his brother, every son different from his father.”

            Which brings us to this lovely opinion, found in an essay entitled “All and Sundry” on AspiringMormonWomen.org.

“I’ve seen enough of God’s creations to know that He values diversity and variety. Mountains and plains. Deserts and oceans. The giraffe and the platypus. Universes and molecules. Our God is a very open-minded God.”

            This essay was written by Hadley Duncan Howard. As a mother living in Provo, UT, Hadley does not fit too many of the stereotypes laid out for LDS females. She has had a very successful career, and has not hesitated to work and actively pursue career and education, even while having children. She contributes as a concerned citizen by often writing articles on AspiringMormonWomen.org as a way to help her community and society see a different side of the Mormon woman mold. Merritt, who went on a Study Abroad when Hadley (as one of the professor's wives) was "camp counselor," was impressed with the way Hadley acknowledged that it takes all kinds, and that a woman, with the help of the Lord, must find her own path.
            Hadley has spread these ideas because, as she says in the video, she has something to say. Though she has been criticized before for her parenting style, and expects to be criticized for some of the things she has written, she feels these are messages that need to be shared—something that will end up providing women with more intrinsic worth.
            Hadley is a great example of this. While she is “non-traditional” in the sense that she has had a career, she is still an excellent homemaker. We decided to film her there, as her home shows much of her personality. Just like Agnes Varda in The Gleaners and I reveals herself most beautifully in her home (filled with artistic mold and souvenirs from her travels), Hadley’s home carries artifacts of her life. The walls of her home are lined with books and her children’s artwork is on the table. We tried to let our camera movement and overall style be unobtrusive and organic. Because the best part about this is what we experienced—sitting down and enjoying friendship, as real, adequate, and wonderfully diverse daughters of God.

Protest Poster

Artist Statement

It is not news that women have been under attack for centuries; sometimes we are targeted as objects of lust, or subservient to men, or as unimportant and dismissible. Today women are gaining more rights than we have ever had, we have independence, we can vote, we are able to work and provide for families. This is progress, however, looks can be deceiving. Women themselves are less and less the target, as the bulls eye has fallen upon the institution of motherhood. In a shocking recent study, Satoshi Kanazawa says that people with higher IQs are less likely to want children. The study then sights some famous people with the captions like “clever and child-free Cameron Diaz and Lucy Worsley have both said they don’t want to have a family,” or another caption showing famous women who are “unencumbered” by children. The stigma of motherhood being a silly choice, or taking the easy way out of a job was reaffirmed in Hilary Rosen’s interview with CNN, in which she suggested that because Ann Romney was a stay at home mom that she “never worked a day in her life.”

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has quite a different stand on the decision for women to make the huge sacrifice to be a mother. On LDS.org I found Elder D. Todd Christofferson’s approach to the swift change that is taking place in the hierarchy of the importance of motherhood. He warns, “A pernicious philosophy that undermines women’s moral influence is the devaluation of marriage and of motherhood and homemaking as a career... We do not diminish the value of what women or men achieve in any worthy endeavor or career…but we still recognize there is not a higher good than motherhood and fatherhood in marriage.” This recognizes that there has been and continues to be immense achievements by women, but that the greatest will always be the good that can be done within the home.

Being a mother is work, it’s hard work and often doesn’t get the recognition that other jobs receive. The poster’s slogan “When do you clock in” is meant to signify that being a mother is just as, or maybe more, prestigious than being in the work force, and that mothers don’t get the perks like breaks, a paycheck, or days off. In fact, with this poster I’m suggesting that being a mother is more than having a job, she doesn’t clock in, she doesn’t get the limelight, but she gets so much more than any normal job satisfaction, I am suggesting that being a mother is the ultimate job and is more important, and more work than anything else we could do. However, this poster is also a salute to working mothers. Again, any kind of mother cannot clock in or out of a job, and once she’s at work she also is trying to attend two full time jobs, and one of them may lack. So, whether it is more important to attend to the sad child on the right, or to look the glamorous job in the publics eye on the left, is up to you.

Many people on Facebook agreed with my stance, and many saw different unintentional messages enlaced in the image as well. I am grateful for the debate that ensued about whether working women are hurting their families, or about the stereotype presented here that childrearing is only a woman's duty and, as Andrea Wojick commented, can often perpetrate "both gender pay gap and the glass ceiling." While these are all aspects of the issue at play, my poster was meant to be more based on the fact that in today's society, childrearing is often seen as something that is not quantifiably significant in society. Megan Shea perfectly summarized this issue in her comments saying, "this is the inherent problem with capitalism, only goods and services which fit within the neoliberal economic structure are considered valuable... but who says that childrearing isn't part of productive society, when in fact taking care of children and raising them to be productive members of society... could be seen as one of the most important aspects of creating and maintaining the class system capitalism is based on." I chose this medium to explain exactly Megan's point that childrearing is work and it is possibly the most important work, because I feel that black and white images are powerful, and focus the attention more on the message than the details, it also is a way to signify how so many people have such a black and white stance on an issue with many grays.

Social issues are often told as single stories, that is to say generalizations are created based on one side of the issue. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, an author and speaker hosted on TedTalks said, “the single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.” I agree with her analysis because judging issues based on one story creates a barrier of an ‘us’ verses ‘them.’ The media pushes single stories because it is so much easier to cover just one scenario in a three minute segment, and then the other sides of the issues, the other stories, are then treated as anomalies and unimportant. Media suggesting that only stupid or lazy women have children and the church’s stance that motherhood is the most grand calling are both single stories, but together they create a more broad picture from which to center ourselves. Where do you stand?

Webspinna Battle

Robots Vs. Aliens

(although it's not really a fair fight when we all know aliens dominate)

Links:

UFO Sounds

E.T. "Phone Home"

Independence day "Welcome to Earth"

The Day the Earth Stood Still music

"Space Man Still at Large"

"Take me to your leader Earthlings"

UFO Sounds

Independence Day speech

Independence Day "Die"

Beat

"Ship comes from another planet"

Signs alien sounds

"Large object in the sky"

Artist Statement

            Aww, the ageless tale of good verses evil, light verses dark, love verses hate, aliens verses robots…? Okay, so not every opposition is timeless, but they are always interesting. Things that perfectly mesh don’t tell a story or drive a point. Who would read a book where everyone got exactly what he or she wanted and never had to fight for a single thing? Of course we wouldn’t, because that’s not what life is really like. For this Webspinna Battle I played with the idea of juxtaposition to make something more interesting and unique than that could be accomplished by itself.

            Representing aliens for my side of the battle, I found juxtaposition within this single topic when I chose to use sound clips from old movies and new movies. This union was fun to create because sound in films has changed drastically from 1951 when The Day the Earth Stood Still was filmed, to the creepy clicks of Signs, 2002. But together it formed a historical story about how our films deal with ‘aliens.’ Then, combining all the alien sounds with the robot sounds, Caitlin and I found a brand new story.

            Similar to DJ Spooky’s Rhythm Science our smattering of sounds don’t make a ton of logical or sequential sense, but give more of an idea of something. Spooky’s music was similar in that it didn’t make any sense to put together words like theater, cool, and vector, which have no correlation to each other, except that now Spooky has placed them together in time, consequently giving each more meaning than before. The same can be said for Pogo who put down a beat, then mixed in sounds from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but together they tell a brand new story.

            Picasso was a master at combining many small elements together with other normal elements to create something nonsensical or some kind of new story. For example, Guernica is a masterful exploration of the bombing that took place there. But the reason that this work of art has paid memorable homage to the incident, rather than just something that was lost through time, is the way he makes the viewer interact with the art. On a small scale, we see the individual shapes like triangles and squares, or we can see the individual faces, hands and animals, but that is not the point of this art. The point is the emotion being conveyed. I believe that even if we can’t always understand how something is created, why it’s created or even what is created, we can still be influenced by not only it, but also the emotion and opposition within it. 

Picasso's Guernica