6Riann

Verbal Abuse I chose this theme because I hate it when people are bullied and verbally abused, especially if it's by someone that claims they “love” him or her. If they loved them, they wouldn’t constantly put them down, lowering their self-esteem bit by bit. I also have a personal connection to this theme, that’s the main reason I picked it. The school I was at before this one, I had always been called names, everyday, and it never stopped, that’s when I decided to move here. People would call me things like “penny” because I was worthless. I never believed them but it did hurt. There were problems I encountered while making this piece. At first, my plan was to make a collage of hurtful words all over my background to signify verbal abuse. As I started hot gluing them all over the sides of my box, when I had one side covered, I looked at it and realized I didn’t like it. So I tore it off and had to cut a new black sheet to fit the side of my box. Then, I had decided to paint quotes and statistics on my box. I put a quote about kindness on the top, and then on the sides I put statistics on it. I felt like it needed more, so I put pieces of glass all over it to symbolize brokenness. I felt like my piece needed to be more symmetrical so I used fish line to hang from one side of the box to the other and make words hang from it, so it tied it all together. I think this piece is successful with the point that I’m trying to get across. The words definitely helped make it easier to determine what I did my social issue on. One thing that isn’t really working is the inside of the box, on the sides; I didn’t cover it with anything. I thought the picture in the inside would stand out more if I didn’t make it all black. If I were to do this differently again, I would instead of printing out words and cutting them, use a stencil with a white out pen and make words using that. I think that would make it look neater and more creative.

Final Writing I chose this piece to do writing on because I’m against smoking, because it does nothing but bad things to your body and health. I think it’s saying that the more you smoke, the more it kills you slowly and the things around you. Hence, the man with half of his body in bones, and the old looking environment.

Smoking is bad for the environment also, that's why it shows an old rotted out tree with no leaves on it. It shows the sky being all-dark too because it darkens the world around you. Every cigarette you smoke shaves off 8 minutes of your life.

My opinion of this piece is that it was done very well; the point I thought the artist was trying to make came to me very clearly. I believe that it was a very successful piece and that it should be displayed when groups come into schools and explain how bad smoking actually is for you. The painting does a good job explaining what smoking will do to you in time.


 * ART.VA.II.HS.1 || **// I can create and modify artwork through the critique process. //** ||


 * ART.VA.II.HS.5 || **// I can reflect on the process that led me to my final, successful piece. //** ||