Contextualization
The first thinking skill, as always, is contextualization. My first project of my senior year in apollo is learning how to stay true to myself and my home for when I move to another state. I made a journal for reducing stress when I perform music in new places for history, and I made prints of places in York that remind me of home for art.
Comfortable with Unfamiliarity
It is the beginning of my senior year in high school, and I need to figure out what I am going to do after high school. I would like to move to Nashville and hopefully go to college there. I am a person who is very comfortable in my hometown, and I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Until I visited Nashville, TN in July, my mind changed a little bit. I felt at home because of the bright, vivid, and musical environment. What I imagine myself doing in Nashville is playing music in front of small groups of people, and eventually, hopefully, large numbers of people.
In this first project, my main goal is to learn how to stay true to myself in environments I’m not familiar with, but hope to prosper in. I might not be able to visit Nashville during this project, so what I plan to do is play music in places away from my hometown or places I’ve never heard of. Before I begin playing my music, I will talk in a storytelling style explaining my music and why I am performing where I am. This will be a way I can stay true to myself in an environment I’ve never felt comfortable in. Doing this closer to home is preparation for when I move somewhere further away, like Nashville, so I know how to handle the situation.
Psychology Of Courage
The whole idea of me performing in a new space that I am uncomfortable with stems from courage. There is no courage without fear. Someone who does something out of their comfort zone will not feel naturally effortless or easy. Courage is the next emotion after fear that pushes someone to continue. Courage is about fearing what is ahead, but going through with it anyways because the results will prevail. Leon F. Seltzer (Ph.D.) of Psychology Today describes fear as a “prerequisite for courage.”
The reason why we stop ourselves from doing something risky is because we don’t want to risk failure. Our instinct stops us before we take on the risky act, so we never see the outcome. (Greenberg)
"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." —Nelson Mandela
I know that I cannot throw myself into a scenario where I imagine to do so well without growing and being courageous. It is going to take a lot of courage to move to another state and perform my music and eventually make a career out of it. I am scared to move out of the life I’ve been living for the past 17 years, but I am willing to take the risk to do what I love. I know that the results are greater than the fear I have to take the next step in my life.
Art
For my art portion of this first project, I plan to make prints of my hometown that show why I love my city so much. I want the prints/ to be taken with me wherever I perform so I can be reminded of where I’m from and other people can resonate with me and have a piece of my life when I perform. My process of these prints will be shown here.
One of my former art teachers, Mr. Wertz, has recommended my artwork to a coffee shop 20-30 minutes away from where I live. This at first was unrelated to my project, until I realized it would work in my favor perfectly. Mr. Wertz suggested that I ask to play my music at the coffee shop, and I figured I could use that for my project.
Printing Process
I hadn’t made prints since I was in elementary school until this project. I wasn’t sure how to go about it, considering it had been years. I looked online at prints of buildings for reference and noticed that the prints were not just slabs of black and white, they had depth. Many lines were cut out for shading and shadows. I tried to achieve that look in my prints, as I had carved buildings as well.
The first print I made was a lit up sign of Moonlight Cafe, an italian restaurant my dad and I love to go to. It came out bold black and white, but it looked good. This print was of a sign, not much of a building. The contrast was nice since the photo was taken at night. I worked back into the linoleum one more time to clean up some of the lettering.
The second print I made was the outside window of another restaurant, The Left Bank. It is located in downtown York. When I carved into it the first time, I had many cross like cuts in the linoleum. I didn’t notice it until it was printed out, and I went back into the linoleum and carved more random cuts. That way it can look more natural, not as forced or geometric. The photo was also taken at night, so it was difficult to carve the right spaces and shapes out.
After I had printed on paper, I then began to print on maps of where these places where located, relatively. Finally, I matted my prints for selling.
Contextualization in Art
Contextualization is used in this art project because ideally, I would be showing these art pieces to a crowd of people where I perform my music in a place that I have never been. I am taking artwork that is close to my heart and my home into a completely new space and shown to new people. There is also contextualization involved with the places being printed on a map. The map shows the context of where these restaurants are in relation to other cities around it.