Lauren B reflects on Oxbow's Place Project:
In our
first few weeks at Oxbow, we have undergone rotations of three different art
classes, with our time in each studio lasting about one week. Each rotation had an
assignment based on three themes: “Observation,” “Place,” or “Narrative.” I just finished my time in New Media (a combination of video and
photography), where we chose a place to tell a story about in a film.
The
assignment entailed recording sounds, both natural and self-generated, filming
different aspects of our chosen ‘place,’ and assembling our final product using
Adobe Premiere. The project was extremely open-ended in the sense that we could
depict a feeling behind a significant memory, tell the story of us using place
as a metaphor, the story of a place as we see it, or the story of something important
and transformative occurring in said place. I decided to opt for the last
topic, and I chose The Oxbow School as my place.
For my
project, I wanted to showcase the changes that students undergo upon arriving
at Oxbow, as I have already seen it clearly in both myself and my peers just
within the past couple weeks we’ve been here. When we go somewhere new, we are
completely unaware of what is to come. Along the way, we absorb everything we
learn, much like a blank canvas being painted on. To get this message across in
my film, I put together footage of the campus, the studios, students working on
their projects, and gathered several people as my subjects to demonstrate the
analogy of blank canvases being painted on.
New Media
has been my favorite art class so far, because I feel like I have learned so
much in such a small amount of time. I am an avid photographer, so I knew I
would enjoy the course, but I am becoming increasingly interested in film after
spending time putting together a video with a concept I am passionate about!
