Final Stretch
For this semester’s final stretch, we had to manage our time to pursue three projects in parallel. It was for sure a challenge to juggle three creative processes at the same time. At the end of the projects, I started noticing overlapping areas between the projects, like color palettes and formats. In my opinion, this is the product of working on things simultaneously, which inevitably feed off each other and leave a footprint on the next one.
The first project was Liminality and Transition. Liminality refers to that in-between space, physical or mental. Right now, I’m an MFA student based in Boston, leaving behind my family, friends, and culture. I’ve been feeling like I’m in a liminal space in-between Peru and Boston. Perú represents everything I know, like the back of my hand, and Boston represents everything new and my learning journey with design.
For this project, I took different Peruvian mythological creatures and mixed them with some new tools that I’ve learned to create a plexiglass puzzle through my design education. This experience is a mixture of both worlds and, thus, my liminal space. That mixture between the old and the new, the known and unknown.
The so-called “3rd” project was one that we had to design for ourselves, and we had to find our starting point and inspiration to lead our own creative process. Through this exercise of authorship and self-direction, I decided that I wanted to embrace embroidery as a storytelling technique. Peruvian pre-colonial history was told by embroidery and weaving because Quechua, the language spoken mainly in Peru before the Spanish conquering, is not a written language.
The slow learning process of the embroidery merged with the known illustration technique, made me approach a cultural expression in a contemporary way.
Last but not least, we had to reflect on our creative process in a publication where we could show how we approach different projects to notice our workflow and design decisions. Since I explored a lot of materials throughout the semester, I wanted to include pieces of the different materials in the book and actual process pieces that I had as test prints and tryouts.
Since I help myself with post-its all over my apartment and studio to keep track of projects due, mark process pieces, point out things that need fixing, and organize my practice, I decided to introduce smaller sized colored papers to mark different projects alluding to the post its and the captions as post-it tabs.
This semester was a lot to juggle, but it taught me to be organized, tackle one thing at a time, and trust my instinct.
