Artist's Statement

While working on my final project and my service learning, I was able to learn a lot about the community and people who lived in the area. I was able to improve my skills in camera use and learn some things about video cameras. Overall I thought my time spent working on this project and my service learning hours was time well spent. My final project and participation forced me to go places I would never have gone, and use skills I didn’t know I had. At times it was frustrating and I had to overcome daily obstacles, but I really appreciate what I was able to take away from this adventure.
My entire final project documented my service learning hours. I was able to meet some really interesting people who live in the community and they were able to show me what they love about where they live. The two people that stand out most in my mind were David Boucher and Muneer Bahauddeen. Both these men were really cool people because they both shared a love for improving the community. Dave was focused on community health and eliminating the drugs in his neighborhood. Muneer was passionate about sharing his love for art and using it in a constructive way to help build a sense of solidarity for the people he worked with.
When putting my final project together, my camera played a huge role. I was able to capture all of my service learning sessions with pictures. These pictures helped tell my story about the people and places I went. Also as a group we worked on a video and I was able to learn a lot about the ways videos are put together. Since I had no prior experience working with video cameras, I was able to learn a lot about editing and recording footage from my fellow group members.
For my individual portion of my final project, I wanted to do something very different and I also wanted to have some fun. I put a lot of my photos that I didn’t necessarily use in my blog site, and put them in a scrapbook as a sort of brief collection of pictures and illustrations of my journey. I was happy to be able to use some of my own creative abilities to make something that I think represented the “story” of my experience in Film 150. I wanted my scrapbook to be simple but also enhance my photos.
Taken as a whole this project was challenging at times, but mostly was a good experience, and reflecting back on my small adventure, I am really thankful for what I learned. I did not know what to expect when I signed up for this class, and was apprehensive about any class that was focused on art. After reflecting on my entire experience I can say that the most important thing that I learned is that people who have a passion for what they do are the most content with their lives, and I hope to one day do something that makes me feel the same way.