New Year, New Opportunities

I love New Years. People ask me what my favorite holiday was, and at one point in my life, Christmas would have definitely been the first thing to pop in my head. These days, that isn't really the case. Sure, I love Christmas and everything that its about, but there is something about New Years that seems to hold a greater value to me at this point in my life. People celebrate all other holidays that occur during the year differently. Whether it be Valentine's Day, and a couple goes out to the typical dinner and movie, or they do the anti-valentine date and decide to not support it at all. Or Christmas. With many celebrating Christmas day, or Hanukkah, or Kwanzaa, or decide against it all together. But New Years. New Years is for everyone. It doesn't discriminate. It's one of those holidays that doesn't have a grounding in some type of emotion such as Valentines, or based on a historic event such as July 4th. It's everyone counting down another year that they have spent as an individual in this world. It's especially important to me now because as each year goes by, the more I change and my life changes. I am now entering my last 9 months of graduate school which will close the educational chapter of my life for good. This time next year, I have no clue where I will be. Does it make me nervous or anxious, sure. But the excitement of the unknown and the adventure at hand is much greater. We go through really great, memorable times during each year, while at the same time, we endure dramatic life-changing events. Sometimes you feel like you made the right decisions that led you to where you are, and sometimes you make wrong choices, that again, leads you to where you are. New Years is another chance for everyone. It's a clean slate. What can you do differently this year to make it great based on lessons you have learned in the past years? Don't ever step into a new year with regrets or fear, but with the mindset that it will be the best yet. If it doesn't turn out how you like, well, it's only 12 months until you get another shot. Cheers!

I don't just photoshop...

One of my biggest assignments of the quarter and definitely one of my biggest challenges so far was my project for Environmental Design. Being assigned the architect, Louis Kahn, I was to create a concept for an 8'x8' mobile exhibit that could be disassembled and moved frequently. Naturally we weren't required to build the actual exhibit, but a scaled model set at 2"=1'. I decided, due to Louis' life being quite tragic and depressing, to focus more on the style he used, which was International (modern). The space is more about volume than mass, meaning big solid walls with little ornamentation. I also wanted to include representations of Kahn's water garden design from Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. The side windows are representations of illuminated water gardens filtering down each side of the exhibit. The back wall is a translucent glass panel with a bitmapped image of Kahn himself pondering, which I felt encapsulated the entire idea of the exhibit. All of his work came from his thought. As you begin to enter the exhibit, you will also notice his name engraved into the front two panels, which in the model I hand-cut with a utility knife. This model itself, along with a real-size panel from the exhibit which is backlit from a light box I built, and the drawing set book will be going into Museum of Design Atlanta on January 4th for 2 weeks. Its been quite amazing to work on something like this that was completely out of my realm and took me out of my Adobe programs, Apple computer comfort zone. Here are some images that one of the photographers from school did for me. Check them out: