PAGE - Research & Gather Reflection

When I first decided to chose the topic of using totem poles for how they bring peace through art, I didn't understand anything about them. I initially thought that totem poles were just artistic sculptures made by native american's, to symbolize their families, and in memory if loved ones who have died. After reading up on totem poles from different websites and articles, I realized that they bring so much more meaning then what I thought. Some totem poles symbolize the great number of rights a person has aquired over their lifetime, to record and incounter with a supernatural being, or to symbolize the generosity of a person who sponsored a Potlatch ceremony. A Potlatch ceremony is a great and complex feast with deep meaning to coastal First Nations. I think the only trouble I really had with my research was getting different explanations for totem poles from different websites. They all told me different things, so I just used my judgement for which sources I trusted the most.

PAGE - My Driving Question

The topic I have chosen to base my Driving Question on is Totem Poles and how it brings peace through art. Totem poles are made by people in native tribes. They are symbolized for different reasons, some being for cultural beleifs, to recount familiar legends, notable events, to show the great number of rights a person had acquired over their lifetime, but mostly for artistic presentations.

My Driving Question is: Distinguish between how art brings peace to our lives, compared to how totem poles bring peace to native tribes.

PAGE - My Driving Question

The Face of Others

I made many changes to the origional image i selected. I first started off with a woman's headshot, then found other pictures and cropped them and added them to her face so there are many different people and colours to get the message across for racism. I think what pleases me the most about the technical quality of my work is that I have different sizes and shapes of the different facial features. The part that displeases me most about the quality of my work is that I used the same tool over and over again. I didnt use any of the more challenging tools like the lasso tool, I only used the crop tool. During this task, I learned how to scale down the sizes to match the image as close as possible to make it seem more realistic. I also had to find the right angle of the people's faces when i was looking for images so i could crop something out so it didnt look like it was on the wrong part of her face. The message that I hope to convey in this collage is that there are many different people around the world and different religions and inside we are all alike so we should't discriminate others for what we see. The emotional response I hope to elicit is to get the word across that we really need to do something about the way we look at others. To improve on this image, I would have liked to find a chin with a beard or something to make it more interesting.