Statement of Purpose:

What questions can you formulate about your theme (at least 4)?

My theme is growth and thinking about growth, you can formulate these four questions:

1.)What is growth?

2.) How does growth affect you personally?

3.) What causes things or human beings to grow?

4.)Where does growth take place?

How does your theme connect to your life?

My theme connects to my life immensely. I feel like through the past 2 years to a year, I've gone through a great amount of growth. I've of course grown physically, but more so emotionally and as a person. I think my own personal ideas have grown. I've been able to truly see what ideas I believe in and which morals I hold strong and close to my heart. Throughout the past year especially, I've had to overcome a lot of adversity with family and illness, but I believe because of my hardships, I've been able to test and grow my own personal faith. I'm become more connected with my spiritual self and my Catholic identity. Besides my spiritual identity, i've become more intact with my cultural identity as an African American women. I know that growing up has truly helped me to be able to accept myself as who I am. My sense of reasoning and understanding has also grown. While attending Beaver, and truly getting involved in different programs and opportunities, i've become a strong believer in open-mindedness and being able to see different views. Because of this, my understanding of compassion and people has really, REALLY, grown.

How does your theme connect to the world around you?

Growth can be find all throughout the world around me. It can be found literally, as you plant and watch a flower, fruit or vegetable grow. It also can be found physically, as you see the innocence of a child disappear as he or she grows into a beautiful adult human being. You can see it culturally, as one nation grows its population, racial acceptance, success and wealth. You find it in the media, when rumors and stereotypes grow and spread like wildfire. And sometimes you reflect on your own personal growth, when your relationships, friendships, and understanding of yourself grows. Growth is inevitable, it happens all around the world.

What kinds of images come to mind when you think about your theme?

When I think of my theme of growth, many things come to mind. I envision a flower growing its roots, stems, leaves, and pedals each day. I also see a population or culture doubling its size. I see disaster, like a tsunami, growing in size and eventually growing in the amount of land and tragedy it takes over. I see a fad growing from person to person because they saw the celebrities doing it on tv. I see a girl looking into the mirror trying to find something beautiful about her self to help grow her own self acceptance. I see Barrack Obama siting in the white house, because the growth of acceptance of a Black race is finally prospering and growing.

What kinds of art or visual information (advertising, tv, film) have you seen that relates to your theme?

On the news, I've seen video clips of a tsunami growing in size, take over Hawaii. I've seen millions of videos on Youtube where teenage kids reenact the popular show Gossip Girl. On TV, I saw the Dove Soap commercial that shows women of many different physical backgrounds and with diverse physical features "Campaigning for Real Beauty." In biology class I watched a movie on the mystery and beauty of flowers and how they grow. In history class I've watched a documentary on Jamaica and how their pride as a culture has flourished and grown. I watched crowds of people with all different racial backgrounds cry tears of joy during the Inauguration of President Barrack Obama. Many things on TV and films have shown me that growth is all around.

Why did you choose this theme and how can you envision exploring it through works of art over the course of the term?

I chose this theme for many different reasons. I chose growth because I knew that it would be something that would challenge me to think. I also knew that it would challenge my execution as an artist. At the same time I also chose growth because I knew it was all around us. I knew that growth could be something that other people would over look, and that as an artist I can stop people from over looking. I took into consideration what growth meant to me at this stage in my life. Being a teenager and becoming a young adult, I knew that I've been through a lot of personal growth that i'd have a passion for expressing.