In today’s class, we first talked about the final project that is with the mask we made last week. I had no idea what to do with the mask, but I guess I got some idea. Trina showed us the pictures of the masks her former students made. In the pictures, there was a student who became a male at the end of a semester, and Trina talked about how the situation for bisexual people was in the past. It was heartbreaking. I have some friends who are bisexual, and the story made me think about them.
I think today’s situation for bisexual people are better than before, yet my friends have told me that they still have a hard time sometime. They also had to move out their country and started a new life at a new place. I think everybody should have equal rights no matter if one is heterosexual or bisexual. Like the marching in Korea that actually changed the accessibility for wheelchairs in the youtube video we watched for homework, expressive art might be able to change the situation? Then, we did an activity. We had to choose one mask out of six and write about a story.
For the story, we needed to pretend to be a mask maker and include 1)What is the mask made of? 2)What was the process you want through to make it? 3)What is the mask’s function? It was a little bit difficult to think an imaginary story because I haven? t done story making before. However, regardless whether it’s good or bad, I enjoyed writing the story. While I was writing, I started seeing the picture of my story in my head. I chose a round shape mask. I was going to choose feather one, but after looking at all of them, I felt something from that round one. I imagined if I were a mask maker.
I wanted to make this mask for some ritual. To collect the material, I thought I would need help from others, so I wrote my friends coming with me in my story. I thought it is not fun if I just wrote what I collected for the mask, so I wrote what I saw during the journey as well. After writing the story, we shared the stories in the class. When we shared the stories we made, a person next to a speaker had to use the mask and express the story with movements. First person who shared a story was Tina. Her story was creative and Gale was expressing the story well.
I could not express Stacy’s story, but I could not do well… I was not able to crack my shell to free myself. Sharing my story was a little bit embarrassed because a part of me was comparing my story with others and worried if I made any mistakes in the story. However, Jillian expressed my story very well. I want to be able to express the story with my movements like her. I was impressed by the qualities of the stories classmates created. In such a short time, everyone created stories like a novel. After we took a short break, we did gift words collage.
We cut a word, words, or phrase that illustrates classmates from magazines and give the words to him/her. Then, we had to create own collage from the words classmates gave me. I enjoyed collecting words for the classmates. Interestingly, when I saw words, I knew which one goes to whom. For instance, when I saw “Perfect Harmony”, I thought of Tina. Also, I thought of Maria when I found a picture of a bear doing yoga since she drew the bear with sharp teeth for the animal drawing, and it left me a huge impression. Making collage was a little bit difficult.
I didn’t know how to make a poem. Also, I got two words that I had a hard time to put together; those words were “crime” and “flatten. ” However, I got nice words that I liked: journey, family, true color, artistic, etc… I was surprised that I got two “journey”s from different people. I haven’t talked about my “journey” in the class, but my favorite quote is “Life is a journey with love and peace. ” Moreover, Trina and Yuko gave me pictures. Trina gave me the picture of colorful birds. I felt a sense of movement from these birds. Yuko’s picture was a jewely.
She cut the paper a heart shape, and I thought it was sweet. I did not have much time to think how to place the words and pictures because I took too much time to create a poem. We shared the poem in the class as well. I did not know if I did this project right, but I personally liked my piece. I liked the words and pictures that classmates gave me. Furthermore, I loved watching the classmates’ creativities. Some people told me that they are not good at art, but I feel like everybody in the class is artistic and talented. I also like that everyone is respecting each other in this class.
