FAMILY

My life revolves around my family. Peter, my brother, has been a cornerstone of my life, always been there for me, through thick and thin. Of course we moved on with our lives, moved out of our mother's home, and started a new life creating families of our own. Peter married Rosa and they now have two beautiful children together, Aaron and Mackenzie. My niece and nephew have become my world, and so has my boyfriend Josiah. But one motto that I have always lived by is blood is thicker than water. I would do anything for my niece and nephew.

There are three parts to this design. The first is the large image of me; this is how I see myself. I dressed up in the clothes that I wear everyday to keep it real. I wore my sweatshirt hoodie and my jeans. I also decided to wear my Emmanuel College shirt because I am proud of my accomplishments. But this pales in comparison to the other part of the piece. There are images cascading from my hands. Images from when I was younger until close to now. Here I am trying to describe the fact that we are in control of our destinies. How we act through out our lives affects the future. But holding the images and letting them fall from my hands makes it seem that even though we are in control of what we do with our lives, these pieces will still fall where they may, leading us to our destiny. Right now, in this present time, my destiny is with my niece and nephew.

The third and final part of this piece is the video displayed in the net book below my still image. My still image is technically the past, you cannot go back and change it, it remains stagnate. But the present is what is moving us forward towards the future, and here is where the moving pictures come into play. I made a montage of a day in the life of my niece and nephew, and used the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." This song is significant to me because it ties in the past with the future. The past represented by the song is a time when I was a little girl and would watch the movie The Wizard of Oz over and over again. The future is my next generation, my niece and nephew. They are the ones that are propelling me forward, giving me reason for life. They are the future generation. I am the past generation, my brother is the past, and with our families we create a new generation for the future of us all.

Technically, to make this project come to life, I created two parts that came together. I placed the image of myself crouching in a blank document in Photoshop. I scanned in old photos of my family and placed those using layers in Photoshop, in my hands. The image of the scanned photographs and me were enlarged and printed on a 24x36 foam board with matte finishing. I made sure my image started 7 inches from the bottom. I then displayed the poster board using an easel, and placed the net book opened underneath my feet and played the movie of my niece and nephew that I filmed and edited earlier. My main still image would literally be crouching on the net book. The movie loops, making it an installation piece you would see at an art gallery. Sit, watch, and enjoy as life moves on to the next generation