Final Project- Savannah Stevens

Reflection- open project

While brainstorming an idea for my final project I was stumped and felt very lost on where to start with my concept. I kept going back and forth until I decided on a series of manipulated photos of myself. After I decided that I was still very confused about my concept until I spoke with my mentor Leah Roper and my professor Kay Bishop and reached a concept about grief. A series of three images creating the individual stages of grief I went through when losing a loved one. I know I wanted to use a white rose that represented acceptance because there’s a photo of me and my older brother holding a white rose at one of the benefits after my father’s death. Before I had no idea that there were actual stages of grief, so I began to research and find out what particular stages I went through and when also what order. After coming to the conclusion that I went through denial, depression, and acceptance. I needed to figure out how to get that across to my images and also used text but not make it obvious. At first, I was just going to use black and white but then I decided that it would be better to use black-and-white photos on top of colored filters. I am playing around with things that made me think of acceptance and that’s where I want to include the white rose I took a picture of just my eyes and only left the pupils colored because I got my eye color from my dad and that is something positive and excepting of myself. I overlaid the photo with a white rose I drew in Photoshop. Next I took a photo of my face with a single tear running down my cheek and I used the to describe depression, but I was in first grade, so I feel like my depression has been lightly sprinkled throughout my life. I color blocked with dark-colored and sharp lines to describe how I felt. My next stage is denial and I had a picture taken of me with my hands over my face because when I found out I feel like that would have been an emotion that I had felt. I wanted to be dark and barely see able because out of all of the stages this is the one, I remember the most not believing that it was real and that I was just in a bad dream until I got out of the bed saw my grandparents and the fear, shock, and disbelief on their faces. Overall, I feel this project was tough to display my motions through my work when I hold my emotions so closely to me. I feel but if I wasn’t so close in this artwork maybe I could have been more creative.