Table of Themes:

Forgiveness and acceptance:

[ retribution … clarity ]

Love

[ love … thick&thin ]

Outcast

 [ weird … scorned ]

Public vs. Private

[ expression …  erosion ]

Motif's

[ runners … habits ]

Colors

[ red … maroon ]

Emotions

[ anger … disappointment ]

Birthing life

[ imp … hospital ]

Relationships

[ knowledge … peace ]

Since this is a creative project I wanted to take some thing normally bland and show it in a different light. Word art seemed to be a good fit for the idea I had. I choose a guitar because I thought it represented expression and that was a main theme throughout both texts. The reason the guitar isn’t too colorful is because of the combination of the puritan times and the indie/soul of Juno.  choose themes such as; Love, Outcast, Forgiveness etc, because they show the brunt of the media without going into detail. Branches of the themes are the words, which associates with the theme through different angle and perspectives. I choose words that were on a level that anyone can understand it, while trying to go advanced with other words. Overall, this project is shows expression through words using different themes.

The process of creating this project was tedious, but not too much. The themes represented, were some of the many of things we discussion about when reading/watching The Scarlet Letter and Juno. The words are what I associated with that idea, or what I what I would feel in those situations. The only real problem that happened was trying to put the words into an image. It was difficult trying to find something that can represent both media, but I’m happy I choose the guitar.

I am most proud about how all of the pieces fit together with each other and building on each other. Everything has a purpose and each part rely’s on the whole. Although, maybe the words I choose where a bit too mundane and should have opted for more complexity. If I was to do this all over again I would probably change the representation of it. My original idea was to do a stained glass window, but that seemed too time intensive for the amount we had. As a whole I feel this creative piece is a well portrayal of the themes in The Scarlet Letter and Juno.

The theme of my creative project is “secrets and their consequences.” I got this point across by making a succession of heart drawings that could represent how secrets could affect a person. The first is a heart that has a lock and chain on it. As a caption for the picture I have, “Hold them back, seal them away.” This symbolizes someone who has a secret; they would try to hide it from the world, and in the process, they would hide themselves and their true feelings away. The second heart has a lock pointing towards the lock and chain. The caption I have is, “Prying eyes see through the lies.” This symbolizes people who may try to see past the exterior of a person and potentially find their secret. On the third heart, the lock is unlocked and the chain is falling. The caption is, “Collapse in character, lapse in security.” This symbolizes what happens when someone is afraid that someone may know their secret. They may become paranoid and start acting out of character because they are afraid they could not hide their secret. The fourth heart is on fire. The caption is, “The guilt burns; the heart’s an inferno.” This symbolizes the guilt someone would experience while holding the secret. It would feel like the secret is burning them from the inside out. The last picture is a pile of ash. The caption I have is, “Destroyed from the inside out, scorched soul, blackened reputation.” This symbolizes someone after they have held their secret for so long. Either they would feel terrible about holding that secret or someone would find out about their secret and no longer trust them; it would ruin what others think of them. 

The first thing I drew was the heart. I didn’t mean for it to come out as detailed as it did, in fact I only wanted it to be a simple line drawing, so I would be able to draw it over and over again. Since it came out as shaded as it did and I didn’t feel like I would be able to replicate it, I had to find another way to produce my transitional pictures. On a separate piece of paper, I drew an outline of the heart. I did this for each different drawing. I drew the object that would lay on top of the heart or around it; the chain and lock, key, and fire. I cut the pictures out and lay them on top of the drawing to take pictures of them. The corners of the little pictures kept curling up, however, and it would have been difficult to scan them with my scanner because the pictures would fall off. This caused me to have to find another way to get the pictures onto the hearts. I thought about tape, but it would show up in the picture. So I decided to try using plastic wrap. I pulled the plastic wrap taut around the heart picture and glued the little pictures on top. It still showed up a little in the pictures, but it looked better than I though the tape would. 

I think, despite all the challenges I had to overcome, that the heart drawings came out well. They were not what I had pictured, but I am still proud of how they came out and how I figured out a way to overcome the challenges.

I feel like I could have found a better way to add the pictures onto the heart. Though the plastic wrap was efficient, it still shows up a little in the pictures. If I would’ve had more time to edit, I would have tried to add the pictures on digitally, so they still had the stand out effect that I aimed for after the heart came out very realistic (cartoonish vs. realistic), but so that it looked much cleaner than it does.

If I could do it all over again, I would try to make a simpler heart drawing, so it would be easier to replicate it and add things onto it. If I were not producing the heart drawings, I would make a succession of different drawings instead, this way I would not have to be worry about the sizing of the picture and how similar they look to the others, as I had to do with the heart drawing. 

Contemporary dance is a term that combines many dance forms such as modern, hip-hop, Jazz, African, and ballet. The techniques are expressed with the music. It follows the beat, which can change at anytime also speed; rhythm and direction are mostly used in this form of dance. We chosen this category from the list because it would be unique to express the feelings in the book with the modern day music that we all listen to. Each song in the mix goes directly to all of the main characters in the book. The mix starts off with Rihanna song Unfaithful. We start it off with this song because in the Scarlet Letter Hester was not faithful to her husband. She had sex with someone she was not married to and got pregnant. In the song lyrics mention that one unfaithful girl is cheating in her relationship, and her spouse knows something is going on. He stays because he is loyal to her even though she is not to him. If Chillingworth were to leave the society would have been against him for leaving his wife. Our Second song, which is Daddy’s Little Girl by J-Cole, we dedicated to growth of Pearl. She was a reckless child that even her own mother couldn’t handle her. She was an outcast; nothing was normal with her. No one could tell her what to do due to her being in her own world. She would rather do that then to be in the world of a society that judges her and her family. In the mix our last song is Save me By Nicki Minaj for Hester and Pearl. They have both lost something in their which was each other and Dimmsdale. They are all asking for forgiveness at the end when the y finally realizes that they needed each other In the long run.

            We created our piece by first picking the songs that we thought would fit the type of dance and the themes that we wanted to include. The actually used three which are movement, internal destruction and responsibility in relationships. We chose these three because each one of them fit each of the songs that we chosen to do. One did come to one problem, which was trying to find a clean version to our J-Cole song. Unfortunately, we didn’t so we tried our best to choose the best less explicit lyrics in the song to dance to. We also ran into difficulties when we where trying to find a way to set our dance to the audience. We overcame this by working together to agree on a set up that turned out to actually be easy.

            I feel so good about this project. We have spent a lot of time on this dance for the last week. Working in all class period and even staying after school to make sure our dance was polished completely. I feel very confident and comfortable doing this dance. Even though I feel this way I know that I will have some bubble guts to try to get over before the show. Something that I would have like to do different is choosing the songs. They are great for the project, but when looking back at it I know there where other songs that I could have chosen to use.  I am very excited to perform this dance and hopefully everyone will be delighted to see our final piece. 

Self-Reflection

            Recently, in Sexuality and Society, we read the interesting tale of The Scarlet Letter, about the complicated relationships of Hester Prynne during colonial times. Shortly after reading The Scarlet Letter, we watched Juno, about the struggles that a girl named Juno has with being pregnant. Our project is loosely based upon both of these stories, mainly the themes we pulled from them. Matt and I chose to base ours off of theme of the main character finding it hard to change, while the world is rapidly changing around them.

            For our project, we wanted to create something that could show our theme very well, and what came to mind was making a stop motion film. Making a stop motion film showed one person (me) staying the same throughout the entirety of the video, while everything else around me, was changing very fast. The process of making the film was rather tedious, but in the end it was worth it.

We didn’t want the film to be the only aspect of our project, so we spent a good amount of time searching for songs that would relate to our topic. At first, we were thinking about using the song at the end of Juno, but that would be too closely related to the movie, so that song was scratched from the list. But, after much more searching we came upon song via Pandora, called Tire Swing by Kimya Dawson. We believe this song was just what we were looking for, the lyrics strongly related to our theme, and the beat was similar to the one at the end of Juno.

Putting the project together on the computer went without toil. But, taking the pictures was extremely tedious, getting the angle correct, working around the city folk, etc. When we had to take the pictures in the night time, the camera acted as if it hadn’t had sleep, and kept capturing blurry pictures, which prolonged our night, but was not a major setback.

With the minor setbacks that we had, I believe we crafted a well put together project, showing our understanding of our theme, as well as making an interesting visual. The project should show via the pictures, how much time we put into this project. The only part I wish we could have done was rather than choosing a song off the Internet to play in the background of our video, was Matt and I each playing a guitar in the background, like the ending of Juno. I believe that would’ve been much more personal, and much more powerful for our project. We couldn’t complete that aspect due to the fact that I have never played a guitar before, and we did not have enough time for me to learn it. And, if we could do it again, I would’ve taken the time from the start of the project to learn at least how to play the chords on the guitar so that we could have added that in, but that’s about it.

My creative piece is about a combination of themes between the scarlet letter and Juno. What we had to do for this project was to come up with a creative idea that represents at least one theme present in the book and the movie. The idea that I chose was to create two-canvas painting, which represent two themes. The two themes that I chose were “Forgiveness & Acceptance” Also “Freedom and the cost of your true self”. To get my point across I went through different ways that I could express each theme and I believed that painting was a bold choice that would convey what I wanted to express.

While I was going through the process of brainstorming and trial and error for this project I hit a lot bumps along the road, but the end results show how much I worked on it. First thing was to figure out how I would represent each theme, which required understanding what the theme meant and looking for possible examples to further my ideas. For the first theme that I tackled was “Forgiveness & Acceptance” which is a little broad since there were a lot of things that I could draw for this. But I wanted something that would stand out and look well, the first idea was to be two people hugging which didn’t go to well because the proportions were incorrect. The next thing that I tried was having two people holding hands but the proportions were incorrect again. The last idea that I really like was to have a girl kneeling on the floor and crying, then I though about the fact that I would need someone to forgive and accept her. So I then drew a male putting his legs and arms around her, which represent the theme though at first the proportions were incorrect. So I asked my uncle who was more experienced in drawing and he told me to have models pose in the way that I wanted them two snap a picture and draw them. The last thing that I have which look ten times better as well as a lot more natural.

I believe that the aspects of this project that I did well was choosing two themes and finding ideas that strongly represent them. Also trying new things when it comes to realistic drawing as well as painting and researching ways to prefect them to increase the aspects of the overall project, while at the same time boosting my skills as an artist.

I don’t believe that there was much about this project that I had trouble with and I feel as though I expressed my opinions to the fullest. So I don’t regret anything I created so I feel confident about this project because I don’t feel as though I was lacking in any area. Some of the thing that I had trouble with was centering my ideas as well as choosing a theme.

If I were to do this project differently I would start a lot earlier and would have drawn more pictures to correspond with more of the themes. Other than that there isn’t really anything that I would change if I were to do this project again, since I am pretty proud of it as it is. Though some things that I would change would be to have more experience in realistic drawing, as well as painting on canvas. So that I wouldn’t have made the small mistakes that I did. Overall I am really happy with the work that I did on this project, because it shows all of the hard work that I put into perfecting my skills as an artist. I learned knew techniques such as how to paint with acrylics on canvas. Also I was able to improve my skills in drawing realistically since I always draw things that are anime based.                      

For this project, I wanted to create something that was out of the ordinary. I figured that the obvious choice would have been to make something like a Keynote, but I wanted to challenge myself to be more creative. So, the idea came to make something that people could actually touch. At first, I was unsure of how to go about this. I considered making something out of clay but realized that this would be too time consuming. Finally, after watching a commercial, I came up with the idea to make a voodoo doll. I knew that this would well represent a theme from the novel and movie involving pain.

            After I figured out that I wanted to make a doll, I had to figure out what specific themes I wanted it to represent. The best choice seemed to be sin and punishment, which occurred through much of The Scarlet Letter and Juno. The toothpicks that I wanted to put in the doll could be labeled, each with a different type of sin present in the two works that we studied in class. When all of the sin-representing toothpicks were put together, it would show how more sin equals more pain. This then led me to another theme shown in both the movie and book, self-condition. I realized that the toothpicks on the doll could also represent how the aftermath of added sins can take its toll on a person, as the doll seemed more uncomfortable as more toothpicks were added. This was much like the characters in the book and movie getting increasingly uncomfortable as they committed more sin in the eyes of the elite.

At this point, it was time to start making the creative piece. Since I knew it would be impossible to find a real voodoo doll, I decided to make one myself. After seeing a sock monkey online, I instantly thought about making a sock doll, which I could easily stick toothpicks into. To do this, I gathered up the materials, followed an online reference, and carefully constructed the doll. Even though the process went smoothly, I was not pleased with the final appearance of the first two dolls that I created. I felt that the limbs were not proportionate to the head in the way that I had hoped. As a result, I created more dolls and selected my favorite. After this, I labeled a set of toothpicks (each with a different sin) and randomly stuck them in the doll, finally completing my goal.

Now looking back, I am most happy that the final doll came out the way it did. It is one of the most unique products that I have ever created. I was shocked to see that it actually did look like a voodoo doll when completed. In fact, I was so pleased with it that I actually preferred making the doll, as opposed to buying one. The reason is because since I made it, I could make every aspect of it (its size, colors…) the way that I wanted it to be. On the other hand, my least favorite part of this project was the fact that I did not get to utilize my class time as well as I could have. The reason is because I would keep my supplies at home for fear that I would leave them in school. It is my guess that if I had brought my materials to school, I could have taken advantage of school resources, like specialized paint. As such, I will do this the next time I have a creative project.

This Mixed Tape goes through several similar themes; identity, private vs public self, and being an outcast. As the tape goes through each song the listener is going through a musical journey of self acceptance and loving ones self.

The Logical Song - Supertramp

This song is going first in the mixtape. The first part is about how wonderful life is when you are little and that everyone gets along. As the song goes on the tone of the song is changing. My favorite part is the chorus about thinking late at night. Who am I? The ultimate struggle of defining your person and trying to be your own person and dealing with the ups and downs. This is an obvious theme of identity. 

People are Strange - The Doors

This song is about not fitting in. Each line is the stuff that people are fighting with in their heads all the time. Specifically not fitting in (When you’re strange). The line “Women seem wicked when you are down.” It touches on the fact that people feel unloved, unwanted, and insecure in the world. This song specifically resonates with the private of feeling judged by the public at large and how being different makes you feel alone.

Welcome To My Life- Simple Plan

Teen angst, no one understands me, this mixtape of identity would not be complete without this song. Each lyric is about getting by in life and how everyone feels like they are going about the world on their own. Of course all the themes in this song “To be hurt, to feel lost, to be left out in the dark, To be kicked, when you're down, To feel like you've been pushed around.” The basic I am feeling left alone and forgotten. This goes into all of the themes with ideals of not fitting in as the identity and the personal self.

Shout - Tears For Fears

 Fun Fact: This song was written about political protests. 

I added this song after The Doors to keep a similar sound but bring in different ideas. “Shout let it all out.” This one is more about letting the private out, of course this does not happen often but it is letting your self let go of  the things that are messing with your head. Letting frustration and pain out about the things that ail you can help you relax. 

Failure By Design- Brand New 

This is more about accepting the mistakes that we are as people. Shout took the listener out of the stoic sad sounds of The Doors and Supertramp into the teen punk rebellion. Hating yourself and feeling stuck. “I’m another day late and one year older, It’s failure by design.” Stuck, stuck stuck. Stuck on the girl, on the things that help you forget about what is haunting you.This is more on the theme of identity and private vs public self. Really angst songs are a perfect show of private self vs public self.(Every single second that I pull this off is another lonely night I gotta race the clock.) The whole song is about just getting by in this shitty world after finally admitting that things are kinda sucky.

Who Are You - The Who

Done with the teen angst. Now in a drunken confusion still asking yourself who am I? Am I the person who I know I am deep inside or am I this persona that I hide behind? How does one change into this new person when they have been perceived one way? Still trying to find yourself , “I musta lost my sense of direction because I ended up a superstar.” of course for Pete Townshend he literally became a superstar most of the time people find themselves in other things like a dead beat job they never wanted or stuck with an ideal of them that is a public view. 

A Lifeless Ordinary (Need a Little Help) - Motion City Soundtrack

Continuing with the idea of change this song take witty words and strings them into beautiful poetic ideas. “I think I can figure it out but I’m gonna need a little help.” Is the chorus and is prominent throughout the song as searching for the person and just trying to be happy with the world, but still has the ever present darkness “I wish I was someone else.”. This ever present need for escape from yourself but being trapped and having to make the best of it. The singer is obviously trying to change though and make the best of his world while still saying he has bad days.

Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been- Relient K 

Okay finally a happy song. Well not truly, it is a I have changed song. This is an apoligize about the past and the mistakes he has made. The singer says a great line “And the things bottled inside have begun, to create so much pressure that I’ll soon blow up.” This is the tie into the earlier songs of keeping the internal problems and the personal self hiding to make room for the public self. The identity of one is partly hiding true feelings and ideas. 

Unstoppable- Foxy Shazam

Now our tempo is up. The world is feeling a bit better. WE ARE UNSTOPPABLE! Finally fighting the world that has been putting our spirits down we are stepping up to the plate for ourselves and for the things we believe in. Even though life has been spent harshly “Sticks and stones may hurt, but we don’t care.” The song is saying it is time to step up and fight back. Identity is finally coming out through the public self.

 Mixology of Tom Collins - Less Than Jake

This song is much like the last though more on a sour note. The song is accepting yourself as you are but more so just not letting others opinions get in the way “ Who the hell needs self doubt.”. This song is needed because it is not alway a great change but it is a change and the happiness with who you are.

The Middle- Jimmy Eat World

Cliche, I know, but this song is the last. Be yourself. Things suck but it will be all fine in the end which. This last song is one of assurance that always gets me pumped when I am down and is therefor required for this mixtape. Leave the listener on a good note that even if things suck now it is not as bad as you think and things will only get better.

Self Reflection 

My creative piece is a musical partner. As a teenager specifically the world sucks, it feel like everyone is out to get you and you hate yourself. I wanted this cd to say it was okay. That feeling this way is normal and that even though you feel horrible now it will get better. This mix is what has been going on in my head the last few years. I mean specifically relating to these themes of identity and private vs public. I kept the mix less specific to me and more obtuse so that more people can relate to the music and think back to that time in their life when everything kinda sucked at they felt stuck. Or when they were so sad and alone that things get better and how you think changes as you change and go through experiences.

I have been spending a lot of time on Spotify because of this Mixed Cd and I feel like my biggest regret of this project will be that I slowly find better songs to portray the point I want to get across. I had a mix of twenty songs widdled that down to ten and than swapped them out for better songs. I could do that for days though until it was perfect and still find something that means more. I think that I could of done the tape better I feel like there are songs hiding out there that describe what I want to say perfectly but the mix I have put together is still important to me because I know that one day I will need a pick me up and I can listen to this. 

Another thing I wish I could of fixed was my song analyzation. Some of these songs I could of ripped apart and told a whole story with it showing everyone of my feelings of the depth of some of the lyrics but I did not want to overwhelm the situation. Thinking about it now though I like that I gave a brief point to the songs because it forces the listener to see them with more of their own eye.

When I first started this project did this project I was not sure what I wanted to do. I really enjoy creative projects and I was so excited to make one I was not sure what I creative piece I was going to make. I first thought I was going to draw, or paint because I enjoy that as a past time. There would nothing better than being about to that kind of art work for a class I am actually going to receive a grade in. 

After a while I figured that I wanted to do a written piece, the only problem was I did not know what I wanted to wrote about or what theme I wanted to use within the piece. Then Manna told me she was doing a monologue and asked if I would like to work with her. I have always wanted to work with someone else doing a monologue(s) but that chance just never came up. I was excited and quite curious to see what we were going to create. Our biggest problem we seemed to have was trying to combine our ideas together. We both has a basic idea of what we wanted to put into the monologue but had a time struggling on the best way to combine ideas. 

Although the process of trying to figure out what we were going to do took longer than we expected. For the simple fact that we kept going back and forth trying to figure out what we were going to write. We kept working on it trying to prefect it and not giving up on it or separating from one another as partners. I feel as though we stuck together well because sometimes I was ready for Manna to just suggest something about us working separate as we started to but of course she didn’t So I was determined to hang in there to get the job done. 

By sticking together with this project we were able to, get our theme across enteral destruction. Once we figured out that was what we were going for it was their easier to connect what we wanted to do together. We know we wanted to explain our line of thinking by using strong words. To us, what better way to do that than using a monologue. Powerful and straight to the point. We wanted to touch basics on the life of  one person who has a strong addition and gets better overtime. The main focus in the monologue is the one person of course. We felt like if we put to many characters in the story then it would take away the important and the focus off of the main character. We would have then had to develop more than was needed, being so we made a monologue and not a play. The entire monologue is a presentation for our main character to share a part of her life that she has grown with the most. 

Something I think I could have done differently is decided sooner rather than later about how I was going to present this information with or without a parter because it would have been easier to work knowing what I was going to do. For the simple fact that I changed my mind so many times. So I feel as though that was something that I could have done better. I still think i gave myself enough time to finish the project I just don’t think I gave myself enough creative time. I was creative with my writing I just, sort of feel like there was something missing. 

Hopefully I am wrong. If I were to do this all over again I would just make sure that I knew what I was going to be in sooner than I did before. I probably would just paint a picture because the last times I painted with my oil paints was about four weeks ago. To me that seems like forever and oil painting tends to keep my very tranquil and my mind always at ease. I think if I were to make a painting, if I were to do this all over again then I would then feel as if my work is no longer missing the little something. But besides that, I invite you to listen to Emily telling about her strong addiction to cocaine between her past and present self. 

Chelsea Janette Smith 

The Scarlet Letter and Juno Project

Link to video http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11615626/DSCF4321.AVI

After reading the Scarlet Letter and watching Juno I decided to make my creative piece a dance. At first I was going to make a pregnant stomach out of paper maché, with a Scarlett A to represent how they looked at pregnancy both through the book and through the movie. But then I began to realize there was more to these stories than just portraying pregnancy as it was portrayed in this story. I then decided to look at the story as it changed over time and what it has become. 

By making a dance I was able to portray the time that has changed and how everybody was portrayed but in a more urban way. In the dance my partner (Loren Jenkins) and I decided to do a mix of 3 different songs. We choose to do Unfaithful by Rihanna, Daddy’s Little Girl by J. Cole and the last song was Save Me by Nicki Minaj. Through these three songs it shows how overtime there was something changing in between each stage in their life. Not only that but this also shows the relationships that has changed overtime and what they would have concluded to if this was done in our time and not back in the 18th century.

In the first song Unfaithful by Rihanna this is almost like the start of the book. The  song talks about how a women kept running to another man and wasn’t happy with the man she was with. It also talks about how she knew she was wrong and kept betraying his trust. This song related to the book because it starts off with Hester who we assume went to jail for adultery. 

Then the next song that is played is Daddy’s Little Girl by J.Cole. The reason this song was chosen was to represent Pearl but in a more urban way. The book states multiply times that she was a difficult child as well as she wanted to know who her father was. In this song its a rap representation of how the child would have been seen now. 

In the final song Save Me by Nicki MInaj this song was used as an ending for both the movie and the song. In this song she says she needs to be saved because she can feel herself giving up. In the movie Juno felt like she had no choice but to give up because she thought Vanessa was no longer going to go through with the adoption. So as soon as she wrote the letter to let Vanessa know Juno was still in it she was saved from that.

Through this project I think making a dance is a well representation of what I wanted to do through this project. It not only shows how creative we can be with such a hard text like the Scarlet Letter but it also shows how creative we can be and have more than just a project on paper. Another thing that our creative piece should be able to show is the movement we do and how this relates to one of the themes we decided to portray in our dance.