Sophia Henninger

Sexuality & Society

For the second quarter project, we had to demonstrate a theme of the Scarlet Letter creatively. I chose to do this by using color symbolism. My project consists of five drawings, each is an eye that the irises of are colored to represent certain aspects of the person’s personality and condition. Each eye is meant to be a different person; each being viewed differently in society. I wanted to show how people are not only what the majority labels them as. All people have a side that is not known by the public and aspects of themselves that not everyone can see.

Actually creating the project was a good experience because it was very independent. I enjoyed being able to do almost anything I wanted. My process involved more brainstorming then I had initially anticipated. So much so, that I went through about 4 different mostly formed ideas before deciding on the eye series. I chose to do this because I have always loved drawing eyes and when I realized how well it would fit into the project, it was simply settled. When beginning to sketch each eye, I tried to build a character in my head that may not be completely understood by others. After I had drawn out the basic shape of each eye, I tried to imagine their personalities so I could color their eyes appropriately. Every color has a certain meaning behind it and I attempted to use that, along with other physical characteristics of the eyes, to form a complete story for each person. 

Overall, I am very proud of the ending result even though I do think it could be improved upon in a few ways. I think that the drawings alone are too simple. Without the explanations, they are only cute little doodles. If I were to do this project again, I would change a few things. I would have made the eyes themselves larger. It was difficult to fit all the colors I wanted in some of the irises. If I had made them larger it would have been much easier to get a point across. I also would have stuck to one medium. For most of the project I used pencil, graphite and colored, but in a few pieces marker was used and it only makes the drawings look sloppy, in my opinion. But I am truly proud of the detail I was able to achieve on these pieces despite the size. I think with the explanations it is very easy to picture these people. At the end of the project, I am happy with my result and look forward to more opportunities to use creativity in class. 

This eye is meant to show a man who is visibly agitated, shown by the exaggerated blood vessels.

  Red - intensity/passion

  Pink - love

  Beige - shame/sadness

Men are sometimes depicted as emotionless beings, but this eye is meant to show that this man is actually suffering from his struggle to express love.

“Living Child”

This eye is meant to belong to a child who is in every way, a free spirit. The large eye and freckles show youth.

  Green - life

  Light Green - liveliness

  Yellow - energy

  Purple - independence

Sometimes children can viewed as naive and simple-minded but there is a certain understanding that comes with their youth.

This eye depicts a woman crying, shown by the tear and irritated blood vessels. 

  Brown - stability/endurance

  Bright Red - anger/power

  Navy Blue - strength

In society women are often shown as vulnerable and emotional. While this woman is externally expressing feelings, it is hidden that within her she feels powerful. 

“Old Secrets”

This eye is meant to belong to an older person. The heavy wrinkles both above and below the eye show this.

  Lavender - nostalgia

  Beige - shame/sadness

  Burgundy - maturity

  Gray - timeless

Older people are often shown as wise and all-knowing. But as with all people, they have regrets and their perception of the world has changed because of them. 

“Her Own World”

This eye is meant to be the eye of someone who is on drugs. The dilated pupil and exaggerated veins are meant to show their intoxication.

  Fuchsia - excitement

  Orange - vibrance

  Light Green - liveliness

  Red - intensity

Though many people look down on others that use drugs, users often say they feel enlightened when under the influence. 

From the beginning, I had plans to shoot a short movie, which I may or may not still do. I had a concept since day one, and I had ideas shooting through my head like gatling guns. So, I put together a small, little script, got a monologue together, and even had a few shots done right off the bat. It felt like I was on a roll. But then I got lazy. I underestimated the amount of time I had left, and when I did eventually get around to recording the rest, it was all tragically lost due to software issues. 

So, with time already gone, and me being too lazy and frustrated to do it all again, I decided to do the one thing I knew I could do best: I wrote a short story. But again, I ended up botching it all up. Because my priorities were terribly out of line, and because I had a truckload of other work waiting for me, I constantly either put off the story for a later date, or forgot about it entirely. It was not a pretty picture. It was a mess through and through.

But then I did eventually find time to write, and write I did. My theme was focused around loss and inner self-destruction, which I feel I (hopefully) represented well, given the story’s actual length. The tone itself was actually pretty experimental. It was one of the few times I’ve actually written a story in a first-person narrative, and the very first time I wrote it using that sort of time. I feel it gave the story as a whole a sort of darkly humorous tone to it, with the narrator being a wreck of man with little left to lose.

Another thing that I really enjoyed was the initial brainstorming. Whenever I write a story, I always spend what could end up being sixty minutes just rambling to myself about what my characters will be, how the plot will progress, things like that. By the time I even sit at my laptop to write, I’d already have over half the story written out in my head. That definitely made writer this even easier. 

Now for the not so good parts of this project. Where do I even begin with this one? Like I already said, I completely mishandled what time I had and ended up cobbling something together at the last minute. I mishandled my initial idea of shooting a movie by waiting until the last minute to try recording it. Even after I switched over to making a story, I ended up messing up. I rushed through it and ended up making something more along the lines of an excerpt as opposed to an actual story, which is still bugging me. 

Not only that, but I can’t help but feel I lost sight of what I was originally trying to do. What I mean is that I may have lost sight of what I wanted to represent in the story; I was more focused on getting something in rather than focusing on keeping the project relevant to what I was supposed to do. Again, it was just a giant cluster of a mess from beginning to end. 

I really hate myself for not treating this project a bit more responsibly, because I know for a fact that if I did, I would have had way more fun whether of not I decided to write a story or shoot a movie. So, I guess if I learned anything, it’s don’t procrastinate. A good lesson to learn, I suppose. 

Choosing this type of creative project was very enjoyable for me because I really enjoy creative projects. I was sure wanted to incorporate my artistic abilities into a successful project that will reflect similar themes from both The Scarlet Letter and Juno. After developing a series of ideas for my creative project piece I narrowed my choices down and can with the conclusion of showing the theme of Identity through small cutout snowflakes that join together to develop one larger snowflake. Through this my creative piece would identify the uniqueness one snowflake has as it conjoins with others to display a connection.

After choosing the creative part it was my job to figure out how to incorporate a theme from both the book and the movie into a theme that can relate to my choice of choosing "Snowflakes". One of the things I find that really caught my attention about snowflakes was that not all snowflakes were identified with the same pattern of design and all had their own unique self pattern. Relating back to the theme "Identify - Definitions/Redefinition" it stood out to me as both a reader and view of both the book and movie that many of the characters within the story lines both symbolized "finding ones true identity" and "Uniqueness". I intertwined a red snowflake to represent the the color blend of uniqueness and how it makes everyone who they are.

In order to creative this project, I first sketched the outline of how I wanted my snowflake design would look like in my sketchbook. After several hours of coming up with different designs to show the trend of unique patterns in each individual snowflake I then ended my sketching process with one larger snowflake from the smaller snowflakes that I have created. Once the sketching process of the project was done I then began to use about 25-30 sheets of white printer paper and began to cut out about 20 larger origami snowflakes and cut different shapes into each one to make a each one different. One I have completed this I cut the red snowflake and placed it in the middle. After all that I attached all the snowflakes then I was able to have a finished project.

Overall, with the outcome of my project I am very delighted. I believe that my creative project portrays the aspect of being different and finding ones true identity and effectively conveyed a theme for both stories. 

For this project I worked with Alysha. We created a trailer to an episode of True Life in which we followed a day in the life of Alysha. In this video Alysha is revealing her true self by wearing a t-shirt which has all of her personal history written on it. To begin, we chose not to tell any of the students used in the video what the project was. That we received honest reactions, not fabricated rehearsed ones. When we did the interviews with students Alysha and I told the them what the project was and that we were looking for honest comments on how they felt about t-shirt. We never imagined that the students would say such harsh things however, it only emphasized our purpose which was to examine how harsh the high school environment can be and how to show how a high school student feels pressured to his their true self as a result.

Although I enjoy the range of approaches a creative project allows, when assigned to me I tend to stick with what I know best. Usually, that results in a written and performed monologue or some other type of theatrical piece. Two themes that I found to be particularly interesting throughout this unit were the confines of religion and culture and and fear of the "other". I noticed that these two themes can not exist without the other. Religion and culture create the "others" that are feared and that fear is then multiplied as the number of "others" increases. This became the foundation for my project.

Initially,  I was working alone. Because of that, I struggled to create a single character that embodied both themes. After some soul searching, I combined forces with Aja to create a dual monologue. Our first idea was to have one character who was a recovering drug addict, meet a woman who was struggling to find herself within the Baptist church, but that idea fell through when we began to loose sight of the themes. 

Figuring out how the characters would interact on stage was difficult;  considering that the two characters were the same person and at no point would be directly talking to each other.To close the gap, I decided that we would use space to show the progression of time and when a character required a physical being for communicate with, they would talk to the other actor who would be still and silent. Also we played around with the use of tense in the piece. As the characters shifted into their final positions in time, the tense of their dialogue changed as well.  Throughout the process of writing the dual monologue, I think that it shifted from being a story-like piece to one that was more technical and more interesting. 

In the past I had the opportunity to work with Aja, but never on this type of project. The two of us have completely opposite writing styles and there were quite a few discrepancies about the tonality and overall structure of the piece. Along with those discrepancies came busy schedules, confusion about what we were doing and why, and a bit of negative feelings toward each other. Despite that, I trusted Aja's ability to create and perform our  project. I think that it was the disagreements that we had that helped flesh out the ideas that were at the forefront and create something of which we were both ultimately proud.

If I could do this project over and was working alone, I would have used the technique of breaking the fourth wall as I had planned when writing a monologue. This technique makes the audience feel uncomfortable and I think that when dealing with a topic such as drug addiction, it is necessary for the audience to feel what the characters are feeling through dialogue, movement, or their place  in the room.  However if I were to redo the project with Aja, I think I would  add more lines for Past Emily, because her story about bullying and what lead her to using drugs. 

Overall, I think that I created a thoughtful, creative piece of which I am truly proud. I enjoyed the writing process, but the performance is what I am looking forward to most. 

Click here to read Silence.

The book The Scarlet letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the movie „Juno,” written by Diablo Cody, both explore the theme of internal destruction. To illustrate this theme, I decorated an old cigar box. The exterior of the box is decorated with a wood carving while the interior has the appearance of it being burnt. The box is meant to mirror the them of internal destruction because from the outside there is no visible sign of damage, however on the inside there is. 

In order to construct my creative representation of ‚internal destruction,’ I first had to find a box and plan out how to represent my theme. The design on the exterior of the box is symbolic because the cherub was a common design placed on puritan gravestones. The cherub was used to symbolise immortality, which I found paralleled both the story of the The Scarlet Letter and „Juno,” because while the character will eventually die, the story lives on forever. The idea for the roses on the exterior came to me because roses were a common symbolic theme in the The Scarlet Letter. The carvings on the outside of the box symbolise the continence of life or spirit, from the outside, nothing appears to be wrong. However, if you open the box, the interior is blackened as if it was burnt. The box symbolises ‚internal destruction’ because only after you look on the interior of the box, does it look like something is wrong with it. 

I chose to use a box to represent ‚internal destruction’ because the theme reminded me a bit of Pandora’s box. Pandora’s box was filled with everything bad in the world, so it embodies destruction. However, from the outside, the box could be very misleading. I had decided that burning the inside of the box would be the easiest and most effective way of illustrating destruction. To burn the box, I just used a candle and held it really close the the box, to avoid burning a hole in it. I chose to carve the exterior design because I thought it would look more polished in the end than if I had painted it. Carving the wood was much easier than I had originally anticipated, however, I did have to get a little aid from my mother when it came to the roses. I think that the exterior could have looked a little better, had I had more prior experience with wood carving. I’m sure that if examined more closely, one could tell which parts of the design I carved first because I definitely got better throughout my wood carving. 

Overall, I think my creative project went well and tat it represents ‚internal destruction.’ The interior of the box has the physical appearance of being destroyed by fire, while the exterior shows no evidence of destruction. If there was one thing that I would change, it would possibly be the wood carvings on the exterior. I had struggled to come up with a design for the outside, and I got my inspiration from puritan graves, which resonates more with The Scarlet Letter than „Juno.” If I was to do this project again, perhaps I would make the exterior designs more symbolic of the innocence of both Reverend Dimmesdale and Paulie Bleeker, instead of just Dimmesdale and his puritan community. 

I am satisfied with how the box turned out because I believe that it does accomplish the mission of a creative project that represents the theme ‚internal destruction.’ While there are multiple ways of showing this theme, this box is both a more literal interpretation as well as symbolic.

Our creative piece is about the meaning of showing public vs private self and showing the acceptance of difference. We went to crafting our piece by wearing a shirt of past things that happen. Our process was easy due to us knowing how judgmental our world is it was easier to catch people action. Only problem or issue we went along with was getting people first expression. Due to this school being a project based school People I’m assuming thats why the reactions was not as fully as we extended. I believed the aspects of the project that I done well is brining a message on what we was trying to do. Aspects of the projects I feel I could have done better was the way I spoke I could have planned it instead of freestyle it. If I can do it all over again I would have change the way I reactivated.