My screenshots of the work is in this document.
Archives for February 2023
Talismans writing – Mia Ranello
Some things I want are love and good health and fortune for me and my family. I want to avoid people who drain me of my energy or doubt me. But most of all, I want to feel fulfilled, which I think can encompass everything I’ve ever wanted or thought I needed. I yearn to feel complete which instead of involving happiness, involves contentment and acceptance. I just want to be the most at peace as I possibly can be in such a tumultuous world. Obstacles that I am aware of include racism, sexism, prejudice, bias, self-deprecation, and self-esteem issues. I wish to highlight the more introspective obstacles that I put myself through. I also want to include some sort of reminder about staying present and moving on from hang-ups which I tend to overthink. These aspects can be represented by some cultural elements, like a Chinese dragon (for strength and health) or Chinese knots and locks (for prosperity and protection of the self). Certain elements can also be represented by flames or plants to represent regrowth and renewal. Self reflection and enlightenment can also be represented by locks and keys, and completeness could be represented by sets of organs, or Chinese infinity knots.
Keywords:
- Completeness
- Contentment
- Prosperity
- Health
- Introspection
- Enlightenment
- Peace
- Strength/confidence
- Presence
- a litte defiance
Lily FauntLeRoy – Project 2 Part 1
I’m not sure which of my two ideas I like so I will be doing a write up for each.
- My health – mental and physical
One of the things I want more than anything is my health. I have struggled with my mental health or physical health or both for most of my life. Health struggles have been crippling in my life and have affected things that are important to me. The thought of waking up every day with a body that isn’t in pain and a head that isn’t overthinking is something I can hardly imagine. Physically I have spent the last 10 years dealing with hormonal and reproductive health issues, only in the last year was the word endometriosis even brought up and treatment still hasn’t come into the picture. Mentally I have struggled with depression, anxiety, ADHD, and some mood instability, as well as the mental effects of my ever-changing hormones since I was about 12. This is important to me because I am often debilitated by physical pain or plagued by intrusive thoughts that bar me from doing what I truly want or need to be doing. Our time on earth is so finite and the thought of spending so much of my time as a shell of myself scares me. There are a lot of obstacles for me in achieving my health:
- finding the right doctors (which has been very challenging)
- finding the time to drive how my doctors’ appointments
- lack of treatment
- finding the right medications
- it requires taking incredibly good care of myself
- learning disabilities sometimes make my mental health worse
- I had childhood epilepsy which led to a discovery of an overactive lobe in my brain which has been associated with my mood
- the looming thought every month that there will be 4ish days that month where I will likely be in excruciating pain
In my talisman I want to highlight:
- reproductive health and my hopes to have kids
- mental illness and the constant battle it is
- routine, and how much is helps me to maintain my help
- how far I’ve come with these struggles, how much more I could do without them
Keywords:
- health
- mental illness
- hormonal inbalance
- hopes for children
- imbalance
- feel the same every day
- pain
- resilience
- routine
- even
- help
2. “Perfection”
I have always had an imperfected, skewed version of what perfection is to me, and I have always strived for this ideal of mine. I am a perfectionist, which isn’t always great, but I have very high expectations of myself that I always aspire for. To be the “perfect” life I imagine begins with me being the “perfect” version of myself, to me that means being intelligent, successful, interesting, funny, passionate, loved, attractive, and challenged. I always strived to be an “anomaly”, someone who is unlike others.
There are many obstacles to this goal of mine:
- there is not such thing as perfection
- health and mental health issues
- unforeseen circumstances
- life happens
- the breadth of my goal
- my capabilities
Aspects I want to highlight in my talisman:
- success
- love & family
- finically stability
- that my version of perfect is imperfect
- learning
- challenges
- meaning
Keywords:
- perfection
- imperfection
- passion
- love
- intelligence
- success
- security
- happiness
- satisfaction
- future
Talismans Main Idea – Angela Ziganshina
Something I profoundly want is to have a career where I’m able to help people, but have freedom for myself. I really enjoy working with others, but I don’t like being tied down to one thing. This is important to me because as much as I believe it’s vital to be a considerate and unselfish person in life, I also believe it’s just as critical to not lose sight of yourself in the process. This is an obstacle I’m aware of because I think it is in fact easy to lose yourself, especially with outside influencing factors such as salary and reputation. I don’t know exactly what I want to do or the exact job I want to have, but what I do know is I want to be successful without ever having to settle for something or giving up my own goals or dreams. This particular aspect of my desire is something I’d like to highlight in the design of my talisman. This may be physically represented in sculptural form by creating many different forms/sculptures to show all the different aspects of my life. 10 key words that can be used to sum this up are: freedom, success, health, business, confidence, people, unity, leadership, creativity, decisions.
Venerations of Phenomena – Gibbs
[1] Since discovering a love of athletics, I have always been in awe of the greatness achieved by athletes all around the world as they reach the highest levels of their sports. Growing up playing just about every sport available to me, I never truly found the one that clicked with me. Baseball, basketball, lacrosse, and soccer all had team components which were infuriating when you couldn’t control the individuals in the game. Physical limitations held me back in many of the sports I played, including the one that I ultimately found the most joy in. Throughout middle school, I started running. I barely hobbled through races and was greatly limited by my mental strength and physical endurance. Once I reached High School, however, the mentality changed from a sport to a privilege. Running became something that I get to do, that made me feel good about myself. This reaffirmed itself as I started to progress in my running career, dropping my times and building friends in the process of working towards goals. The love that I found for running carried heavily into my college decisions as I looked for a space to develop my athletic career further still. Since coming to college I found an even further love and appreciation for running in the Steeplechase discipline. Now my sights are set on a time barrier. Breaking 9 minutes in this event cracks onto the top 10 all-time list at Bucknell and it has been in my periphery since my first race in this event.
In my design, I hope to convey this growing desire to put my name in the record books in this event. I don’t necessarily have a specific audience to cater to as I truly want this piece to be a reflection of an insatiable need to work hard and get as close as I can to my version of greatness. I feel the need to communicate the difficulties and struggles of the event itself in my work but I am wed to a general amount of ambiguity to allow for multiple interpretations of the piece.
Evelyn Pierce – talisman
I profoundly want security in the thought that everything is going to be okay. Growing up, my mom always told me that everything happens for a reason, and that the universe has a plan for me. Since these ideals were instilled in me from a young age, I have grown to use them to stay secure and stable when life takes unexpected turns. I pride myself on being able to handle hard situations, and I owe it all to my trust in the universe and my confidence that it will all work out. I want to keep this aspect of my thinking, and my worst fear is losing it. For my project, I want to embody my want to preserve my line of thinking, but connect it to my Jewish identity as well, since that additionally shapes my outlook on life. Within Judaism, there are many forms of talisman already. One of the most notable is the evil eye. This eye serves to protect against negative energy and overall ward off bad spirits. Another example is the hamsa, or the hand that represents hospitality, generosity, or the power of God. Within my project, I want to take my own spin on one of the established talismans in the Jewish religion. It would represent the power of the universe that I want to have hope in, and tie it to the religious ideals I grew up with as well. I do not know exactly what I want to do stylistically, but Joe said that it’s okay that my idea is still “a soup.” Further evolution to come…
Ten keywords:
- Hope
- Trust
- Stability
- Need
- Connection
- Universality
- Something.
- Purpose
- Identity
- Alright
Talisman Ideation Ben Kaller
My absolutely number one goal in life is to be able to financially support my mom in the future. As a single mother she has done absolutely everything for me and my two siblings. She is truly the most caring and dedicated person I know, and has dealt with more terrible obstacles in her life than ever deserved. I want to be able to partially return the favor and be able to fulfill a dream of hers. One of her dreams is to live at her favorite place on the planet, Nantucket Island in Massachusetts.For me to make this happen for her I must be very successful in my occupation, which is easier said than done. Years ago we used to go to Nantucket before it became so expensive and popular. I want my object to reflect both my memories growing up and my gratitude to my mom. Some keywords are: beach, house, nantucket, memories, success, gratefulness, relaxation
Talisman Research Cory Sanderson
- Healthy lifestyle and growth
- I think that to live your best life you need to be open to changing who you are. You can also always learn more about yourself and how to live a healthier life. A big obstacle is realizing what things in your life aren’t good for you. It is even more difficult to change those things and it takes a lot of work. Taking the steps to correct the problem and sticking to it is a difficult thing to do. You may recognize the issue, but changing your lifestyle is a huge thing to do and it changes your identity a lot. Recognizing is difficult enough, employing change even more so, and sticking to the change is the hardest. I want to highlight change and growth. My entire life my parents have talked to my siblings and me about this with the physical form of a butterfly. There is at least one butterfly in every room of our house. What my parents believe a butterfly represents is new life. The change from caterpillar to butterfly expresses that the butterfly knows truths that the caterpillar cannot even imagine. The butterfly would represent my future self who has further grown and lives a healthy lifestyle. I think it would be interesting if only one of the wings of the butterfly was really developed with the other one plain to show that there is always more room to grow even when you have grown a lot.
- Growth
- Stability
- Change
- Different
- Knowing
- Learning
- Metamorphosis
- More
- Incomplete
- Healthy
Talismans Research – Tas Csikos
A fear that I recently became aware and anxious of is the thought of receptive bilingualism. Hungarian is my first language and it was the language that my family used to speak at home. Since I grew up in the states, this language barrier made it difficult for me to learn English in elementary school, so overtime we transitioned to speaking English at home. Recently I became aware of the toll this has taken on my Hungarian. During video calls with my grandparents, I’d always answer their questions with a simple ‘igen’ (yes) or ‘nem’ (no), and would ask my mother to help me formulate more difficult sentences. Concomitantly, I would understand exactly what they were saying but would struggle to translate my english thoughts.
The main obstacle I can think of here is that this is a mental and intangible fear and I would need a physical way to articulate it. I would like my project to represent someone talking to me in Hungarian and then represent me trying to respond. This could be physically represented with a head that is receiving dialogue, but not responding to what it is hearing.
Keywords:
- Translation
- Speechless
- Confused
- Anxiety
- Response
- Bilingualism
- Fading
- Lost
- Hungarian
- Grandparents
Christina DeLuca: Talismans (writing and visual research)
Write about the main idea:
The main thing that I profoundly want to avoid in my future is a broken home/family. This is important to me because of how I grew up. I grew up in a household where everyone was close, my parents, brother and I were always together. There was never a distance between any of us. On top of being close to everyone that lives in my household, I also grew up all around my cousins, uncles and aunts. We are a very close family that gets together all the time. It is important to me for things to stay this way and to avoid a broken family in the future because some of my cousins are now living in different states and my brother is in the Marines and will be stationed in different areas. I want to keep the closeness alive even if we are apart and I don’t want to lose that connection and drift apart. Some obstacles that I am aware of is where I will be living in the future after I graduate. I want to be back in Pittsburgh, where most of my family is, but I know that there is no guarantee. the main aspect of this desire that I want to highlight in my design is the brokenness. I could represent this by creating my pieces and cracking it down the middle and setting them apart from one another.
ten words that sum up my want to avoid are:
- separation
- quietness
- broken
- unfamiliar
- travel
- barrier
- jobs
- communication loss
- time
- crack
Visual Research:
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