Enroot

My Manifesto

I created only one finished piece, my first semester of college.  

My love for art and design began before I was two with my first fingerpainting. I colored pictures of my house and family with markers and by kindergarten I had a binder of hole-punched copy paper to draw characters and animals that I kept through the fifth grade. In middle school I drew portraits which became increasingly realistic. Throughout high school, I developed my drawing skills and displayed a series of portraits of people that had made an impact on me.  

Then I started college. For the first time in my life, I was not creating anything. For four months, art and design, something that had been part of the person I was for so long, was not in my life. 

On November fourth, I decided to transfer to Milwaukee and moved out of my dorm at the end of that first semester. The day after I came home, I painted. I painted and I drew, and I sculpted, and I sewed, and I designed, and I created, and I have not stopped since. All I knew was that I wanted to keep going. Every free moment I was not doing science homework, I was nurturing my design skills for them to grow under the fluorescent lighting of my dorm. The Design program was mentioned in my gen ed art lecture and swayed my interests in biological illustration to a digital form of creating. I put aside my interest in science and traded my biology major for a BFA in design as I started the design program my second year of college. 

My first college art project was paper flowers glued onto my initials. 

I excelled my first semester of art classes, so I knew I wanted to keep going and growing. 

I don’t think I had heard the word serif before my first day of Type class, but the only solution was to continue growing this new branch of interests and keep going. 

I felt like I planted myself in the wrong garden when I started my third year and the feeling of being out of place began to set in, but I was determined to continue to grow and keep going. 

I took five studios at once in the fall of my senior year and cried every other day out of stress, frustration, and lack of sleep, but knew the only way through it was to reach towards the light to keep growing and going. 

I used an Adobe Program once before I was enrolled in college classes to become an expert in them.  When I reflect, I can visually recognize how much my design skills have improved, but I grew too fast. I completed the First Year Program in a semester and will graduate this spring having completed the rest of the design program in two and a half years. I feel like my stem is too tall and I am a flower that sways too much in the wind. Yet I hang on because I did not just stay where I was planted; I blossomed. In my every day, I am a flower that bloomed too soon, the rest of me must realize that. The only way to do that is to keep growing and going. 

I did not want to create more than one finished piece my first semester of college and I do not want to feel that way again. 

Skatch2.png
Sketch1.png
Sketch3.png
Sketch4.png
closeup1.jpeg
closeup2.jpeg
closeup3.jpeg
closeup4.jpeg
closeup5.jpeg
showcase2.jpeg
showcase3.jpeg
showcase4.jpeg

The Process

  • As I was nearing the end of my senior year, I was nervous to not be in school for the first time in my life, but I was also excited to see what I will make of my future. Without having the structure and curriculum of school, I realized I can dive in head first to whatever new project I would like to do. As a lifelong learner, this realization made my love for design overpower the unease of what comes next. As my manifesto repeats, all I know is that I want to keep growing and going.

  • For creation of my artifact, I wished to represent themes of wanting to keep going. Flowers immediately came to mind. As mentioned in my manifesto, my first college art project involved paper flowers, so it allowed for a full circle moment. Flowers are commonly associated with growth, yet I wanted to add an extra element to the final piece. Something better than symbolizing growth is the act of growth. In this case, I decided to grow my engineering skills. I taught myself how to wire, figured out simple electronic code, and learned basic mechanics of conduction. This project was inspired by designer and engineer Mattaniah Aytenfsu who motivated my crossing over into the engineering world while still carrying out a design project. This project confirmed that I like to push the boundaries of design. I thought I liked to combine fine art and graphic design, and while I do love to do that, I am ultimately most interested in incorporating design in every category I can.

  • Before I even began, I knew this project was going to take an excessive amount of time. I spent at least two hours everyday making each flower by hand out of printed copies of my manifesto. Once I had a good amount made, I started to glue the flowers to the large foam board. I had previously mapped out where each of the ten metal flowers would be and attached the paper flowers around them. I rolled hundreds of flowers until it was completely filled and the metal flowers I sculpted could be put through the board. Each of the metal flowers had a stem that went through the board and would then connect to a piece of copper tape. I mapped the copper tape all around the back of the board so that it would not overlap with another and end up at its corresponding electrode on the Bare Conductive Touchboard. The touchboard contained ten audio recordings of prominent lines of my manifesto. Therefore, when a wire flower is touched, a corresponding line is played from a speaker or headphones that the user is wearing.

  • In summary, I am very proud of this project. It was an ambitious idea that involved learning a few new skills during an extremely busy time in my life. I takeaway that it is so rewarding to have a zealous project turn out how you imagined. I would like to create something similar to this again and see what else I can do with my newfound interest in conductive art and engineering.