2 posts tagged “miki downes”
Miki Downes
Initially I had trouble narrowing down my personal history in to one conceptual idea. my first thought was to base the project around my family history. i created the smaller circles first visualizing some type of mobile. . . after sifting through pictures, journals and my junk drawers i gathered materials that i found symbolic or importamt to me. . . I have been dealing with a lot in my personal life recently. Not getting in to my personal turmoil, the mounted stress has had such a negative effect on me inside and out. The mirrors symbolize a reflection of the angst, anxiety and illogical worrying. I framed my piece with them to symbolize my struggle to recapture the inner peace I have lost within in myself. . . The logical side of me is able to understand what is important but is so easily distracted and possesed by the frustration that lurks around me. Inside the frame is a picture of myself on a transparency which overlaps a flood of colors that symbolize the rich content that makes me who I am. Connected to a print I made of a heart I have images of the people who are most important to me: my boyfriend, my best friends and my family. These are the people who have really enriched my life and helped to mold me in to the person that I am today. In essence, this project became for me a desperately needed self-reflection.
Miki Downes
Project 1: Telling/Re-Telling
My project is based largely off of what I learned from one of the first readings we were assigned. The article introduced me to a Filipino history much of which was independent of the history I was familiar with. It gave an overview of the Philippines in regards to geography, colonization and American immigration from the Philippines.
Storytelling was the overall theme of my project. Since this was the introductory project, I felt it was appropriate to illustrate the history I had been introduced to. My idea was to create a book symbolic of both my overall theme and the title of the project Telling/Re-Telling.
The images I chose to incorporate in my project I see as a synthesis of people and place with storytelling. The images bring together the geography and environment with the people and their history. The images I used collaborated the depictions of the physical environment with maps, people and the text from the article that inspired my project.
Unlike most of the images I chose the text isn't independently as straightforward. I put this emphasis on the text because it was my inspiration for the project. I warped the images to symbolize how our education system has marginalized Filipino contribution in American history and the identity struggle of piecing together the fragments of a culture that colonization deteriorated.
