Final Project: Passage
The square components of this piece each represent 500 steps and the overall all total of the steps is how many I have taken in my first months in Italy. This is following similarly to a previous project I had worked on, but this time I wanted the individual steps to have less meaning than the actual structure that I have created. In the end, Passage has come to represent my personal passage through Italy. My process was not one of planning, because our lives do not stick to a plan. This piece embodies my experiences living in another country for the first time and the battle between the ups and downs of life, which can be seen with the both smooth and abrupt changes within the artwork. My process was very much to let the work do what it wanted. I took it step by step with no plan on its patterning, width, or length. The way we live our lives is very much unscheduled and planned and I wanted to bring in that aspect of spontaneity into this work.
Mid-Term Project Statement:
Reading Response to “A New Type of Flaneur Strolls in Search of Humanity“
Zomorodinia’s inspiration for her work is very interesting. Some of her pieces were based on “questioning of how immigrants find a sense of home.” Although I have not immigrated to Italy, I feel that living here for multiple months I can feel a similar feeling of longing that many immigrants experience. Sometimes the littlest things can remind you of home, no matter how abstract. Zomorodinia creates mood and feelings from her work that effect the viewer. Although the meaning of her work is not very explicitly shown, it can be felt. I think that the best art makes us feel a certain way, with out it explicitly trying to sway the viewer in that direction.
Reading response: Unstable Territories:
In response to Unstable Territory I want to reflect upon the idea of territory itself. The word territory usually associated with people, although it can also be used to talk about other animals. In our world land is power. The idea of territory is that a border has been created to enclose a person or a group of people. Territory creates a community, but because of this creation we end up creating another group composed of others. Communities will end up next to each other and will fight each other for the other’s territory. Some wars have been started based on the borders drawn between two lands. Each community will say that they need that land for their own people to live well, but will end up creating hate that will later on effect them again. There will always be tension with the idea of territory because we see it as our own possession for example the phrase “our god given right,” the ideology of the Manifest Destiny and in the debate about amendment rights in America. Territory is both freeing and chaining.
Reading response: Rebecca Solnit: “The Blue of Distance” & “The Shape of a Walk”
Although blue is not my favorite color I end up finding myself very drawn to certain shades, making me more intrigued by the way Rebecca Solnit has interpreted the color blue. She goes on to describe that blue defines objects that are distant from us, for example mountains look blue if you are very far from them although they really are not. She says that his idea of distance also goes hand in hand with human longing and melancholy. Then she uses different types of art to back up her argument. I know that the color blue is perceived this way for most people and as a child I was taught the same. But now my relationship with the color is different. I feel desire when I see certain shades, I am drawn to color. I don’t feel “blue” as in sad, but blue to me is curiosity and adventure. If I were to talk about “the blue of distance” I would say that it is a happily driven force that doesn’t care about the endpoint, but the lessons that are learned from the act of the investigation.
My name is Daria Rassoulian. I originally from Boston, Massachusetts. I am studying studio art at Mount Holyoke College and I have so far been exploring different mediums rather than having a singular focus on any one medium. Most of my work so far isn’t limited to one them, but inspirations that come in that moment. I am ready to learn to techniques and new ways of creating work while I am here.