Map Of Me

Yesterday our task was to make a mind map of ourselves and include all the things that make up us as people and also our practise. I quite liked this activity because the last few projects we've had have been a bit more personal and independent which I think has given me time to think properly about what I want my practise to be.



I identified the main parts of my personality and practise to be:

Sentimentality:

• I collect old things like books, photos and general nik naks
• I keep all my old birthday cards
• music is the biggest source for all my memories, I think this mostly refers to the lyrics in songs but sometimes its just the period of time when I was listening to a song triggers really strong memories
• I keep every book I've ever read and owned- I thought about this one and I think thats because I love each of the imaginary places the books have taken me to and the worlds they've conjured up feel a bit like they belong to me because I keep them after I've read them

Reflection:

• I think way too much about everything, to the point where I get myself down about things I shouldn't
• I have too many feelings
• when I need to make sense of these feelings I write them down to help them be clearer, sometimes in a list but often these thoughts end up turning into poems or stories, sometimes scripts
• I like to give these thoughts narratives because it helps me to remember them clearer, like you can remember how you felt in that exact moment (evocative)
• Its like a bit of a therapy to me

OCD:

• I have all these rituals and superstitions that seem normal now to me but I know they're not, like very particular ways that things need to be done (OCD) but that also feeds into my practise
• The list making helps me tackle and rationalise my OCD too because it gets it all down and out of my head
• I fear messiness both at home and in my work, I'm too afraid of making a mess by experimenting to actually change things up in my practise
• My mind tells me that mess equals failure and as I'm scared to fail I wont make a mess and just stick with what I know
• I find it comforting to work with illustration with a narrative because this follows a chronological order and storyline so therefore "makes more sense" and seems less messy to me
• I actively try and give everything I do a narrative or back story, building little worlds behind projects makes things easier for me, but also harder because then I get lost in them
• I need to experiment more in order to develop

Home:

• I've moved house a lot of times (15 times to be exact) and this means that I'm really used to change
• Although I don't like mess I do like change because it makes things fresher and easier to look at and make sense of
• I get bored easily if I'm stagnant for too long in home and work life, in terms of work life this means that I can be really enthusiastic about a project at first but quickly get bored of it if it goes on for too long
• Experimenting with materials is one way I've found to help this because it gives me the challenge of working out how to use the materials as well as focusing on the project
• This also explains why I feel so passionately about finding home in yourself first before you call anywhere else home

Feminism:

• I like to encoorporate feminism and feminist issues into my work
• A lot of this is influenced by the media I consume whether that be books, films, TV shows or podcasts
• All of this media which I consume could be considered escapism, I am a big reader and watcher and I think I do a lot of that to take myself out of myself sometimes. This escapism is something I really try to feed into my practise, I love that idea of creating new worlds
• Listening to podcasts that look at the world through a feminist lens and also those that talk about sexuality have spurred my interest in feminist issues and the human anatomy and sexuality in my work
• This subject also goes hand in hand with the body positivity movement which I've become more interested in through feminism, I really enjoy portraying bodies in general in my work and think they're something that we shouldn't be so scared of showing 
• This is maybe where my penchant for more graphic styles of illustration comes from, I think penises, boobs and bums make illustrations striking and normalise them/ start a conversation
• I also feel the subject of feminism goes hand in hand with the subject of reflection, I write a lot of my poems etc through a feminist view and also watch a lot of feminist poetry on Youtube

Although I think I can see some links starting to form here already I think I need to work more on how these things all match up, I also need to review which things in particular are the most central to my practise because the lists quite long at the moment.