Stormy Weather

Oh yes, it is raining and storming in Michigan. The sun has hidden behind these disgusting nimbostratus clouds and it is humid and muddy outside the confines of my house. I guess it's good for my plants, egh.

This next week is the definition of crazy: wrapping up high school (complete with prom, senior skip, senior project, finals), a visit from my big brother, graduation parties, and finally graduation. Even though I am in the process of reconstructing some old t-shirts and trousers into summery clothes and preparing some photo equipment for later in the summer, I don't have much time to sit down and create. So I guess I'm cheating a little, by posting art that I created earlier this year. I am by no means discrediting it but I am supposed to be making new art, not just posting old stuff. Oh well, enough apologies.

I wanted to be in film for a long time. The curiosity of exploring cinematographic art led me to take two film courses and spend late nights with Truffault, Hitchcock, Wells, De Sica, and Coppola. (On a side note, I must mentioned that as much as I tried to enjoy French film, I could never really wrap my head around it. "Breathless" and "Rules of the Game" didn't impact me the way I expected them to, who knows maybe I'll see them differently in a few years).

 I finally took a shot at making my own, short film. Titled "Self", it is essentially a demonstration of my visual aesthetic. Like Hitchcock, I like to focus more on visual components and montage rather than dialogue or plot. As for its interpretation? Even I am not sure of "Self's" full dimension. As a couple of guidelines, it is based on the duplicity of one's nature, how there are socially orthodox personalities we display to the outside world that can sometimes be a repressed version of our true selves. Sometimes the pressure of keeping within the "standards" of society lead to a breaking point where both personalities meld together bringing one back to square one in terms of defining one's identity. The theme is both circular and like a pyramid, building on a basis of taking two steps forward and one step back in order to achieve a common goal. However, these are just guidelines: the correct interpretation of the film is your interpretation, nothing else. Enjoy.

Self

Victory Gardens

Pickles have always been a favorite of mine. I used to invite friends over for movie nights just as an excuse to chomp on a pickle or two... or five. Come to think of if it, I'm pretty sure the day of my sixteenth birthday consisted of three girls watching a terrible indie film, each with their own jar of Dill pickles.

Having recently acknowledged a love for food and cooking delicious meals, I've taken on experimenting with different recipes for my favorite foods. So far, I've baked, fried, and broiled through dumpling, spanakopita, sugar cookie, bread, and lemon bar recipes. Every few weekends or so I decide to try something new, inspired by some "Good Eats" episode or Hungry Nation TV on Youtube. Working Class Foodies is a Youtube favorite of mine, and when they aired their Pickle Episode a few months ago, I put in on my list of "things to cook" in the near future.

Spring is here and frosty weather is gone, so it's time to start planting! Of course I could go out to the supermarket to buy cucumbers and other things to pickle but I decided it would be more fun to grow the vegetables (well, actually fruits) myself. My mother and I picked up some Bush Pickling Cucumber and Sweet Banana Pepper plants along with some Sweet Majorum, Cilantro, Basil, Jalapeño, and Finger Hot Pepper plants to create out little Victory Garden. Here's to you, Michelle Obama.

I am testing out my brand new Fujifilm point and shoot digital camera, fresh from it's packaging!

Three little basils, standing in a row

So this post is really the beginning of my extended pickle project. It's a bit more far fetched than painting or drawing or other mainstream types of art, but in the end it's creativity with food which is delicious for everyone. Sharing this on my blog might remind me to water my plants more often... oops. Whenever I experiment with horticulture it really is a matter of survival of the fittest because I perpetually forget basic things like water, sunlight, and general attention to my plants. Hopefully things will be different this time. 

All this talk about food is making me hungry. Over and out.

A New Beginning

Ah yes, the infamous blog. The "fad" of the new century, a reformation of the written word. You see, sitting here staring at my computer screen and trying to think of witty and insightful things to say is much harder than what the movie "Julie & Julia" made it seem. Where do I start...

I graduate high school in approximately one week three days thirteen hours and forty five minutes. Upon discussing plans for this summer with my mother we came up with this blog project. Each of us picked a theme and decided to give it a try. Oh yes, I've had my experience with the social networking/blog-type sites, from Xanga to Fotolog to Myspace to Facebook to... all that junk that's out there. I found that ongoing rants about my hormonal teenage life are not only embarrassing upon reflection but of no interest to anyone except the occasional Degrassi fan.

So I've decided to create this page dedicated to my creative process and how it eventually turns into some kind of art. "The Science of Creativity" is actually the name of a course I am hoping to take next semester (yeah college!) but is also an accurate description of what goes on inside my head. I have always been a very expressive, "crafty", and creative person but have also fallen in love with the sciences. Every day I jump back and forth between both hemispheres of my brain connecting things as obscure as the baro-reflex in the carotid artery to aperture settings on my old-school Minolta. And even though I've checked all the boxes on my college application that say "Pre-med" and "Biological Sciences", I want to simultaneously continue being an artist and ultimately find this creativity within science.

Hopefully this blog is like a package deal, serving as motivation to keep being creative (not to mention clearing up the big "to do" list of projects that I currently have on hold), improve my writing, keep me busy during the summer, publish some thoughts, and have some fun. I plan to include photographs, videos, music, and texts that inspire me and hopefully whatever anonymous person happens to stumble upon my page. Most importantly, I am excited to embody creative thoughts in any way possible: photographs, paintings, drawings, doodles, writing, films, food, music, etc.

Enough with the introductions. The photograph above is from a student-led event called "Rock the Arts" which took place in May, 2009. It is a youth empowerment organization that holds an annual festival in downtown Ithaca, NY to promote the artistic expression of teens in the community. The girl standing third from the right is myself, and this was an organization and group of friends I miss dearly. To learn more click here. I include this in my introductory post because I enjoyed attending and participating in this type of event and am on the lookout for more like it. Here's hoping Ann Arbor has the brains to offer this kind of culture.

Previous bits and pieces of my artwork:

(displayed at Grassroots, the painting to the far left)

Things that inspire me at the moment:

"Baby mine, don't you cry"

Photo credit: Robert Blake, taken at the San Diego Zoo

-This is what I am craving right now. With extra lime juice on the Maftoul please!

Sianara, Cyberspace. See you soon.