Beautification Final

Ariana Hernandez

Final Period ½

United in Culture

The documentary, “The Barefoot Artist” was impactful to me because Lily was making a change in different communities through art. Lily explored and found places that needed to be beautified and she took action by creating works of art in those communities.  However, she also did something that is unique by included the community members to help create the art piece and be a part of the impact in their community.

My piece relates to the community by building a bridge between all the diverse cultures in our community to create unity. Our community is filled with numerous cultures. Some cultures are a bit more dominant whereas, some are not acknowledged enough. So, by creating this piece of a world surrounded by people of different cultures will display an equal acknowledgement of all cultures in our community.

This piece will relate to the culture of our population because it has a diverse group of people around the Earth. This represents the diversity of our school and community. This piece will not only make the community feel a part of our school culture, but also non-kcaa members will feel included through our art piece, “United in Culture” because the piece is open and not directed to a certain group of viewers.

As we moved along with the process, we encountered many difficulties such as weather, size and not having the necessary materials. Multiple days it was very cold and it made it hard to work because our hands began to cramp up. The weather caused us to finish our piece later than we had anticipated.  Also, sizing was a challenge because there were more people around the Earth than we expected. Our initial plan for how many people were going to be around the earth was 14 however, after outlining all the people that would be around, that number increased to 21. That was a lot of people and we had to make sure that all cultures were included due to our diversity. Lastly, the wall that we painted on required us to go on latters but we thought it would be a waste of time each day to call a facilities person to get us the latters. Not only would calling for latters each day cut from our work time but it would also take away from the facilities job being that they are very busy every morning. So, instead of latters we used chairs to reach the high areas. We managed to push forward through our challenges. All in all it was worth it because our piece is amazing.

One way that I wanted to create a sense of unity through culture was to have different ethnicities holding hands. Years before, African Americans could not ride on the same bus as Americans however, today we see less prejudice and discrimination. Through this piece I hope to convey the concept that racism does not occur in our community. Our community is welcoming to everyone.

We decided to represent the different cultures through the clothing of the people because clothing is a substantial part of one’s culture. We took some time to analyze the cultures that were most dominate in our school and depending on the culture, we did research of their clothing and recreated the look as best that we could. In addition, we also talked to students to tell us about their nationality and my partner and I decided to also include cultures that were not as dominant but kept being repeated within the students. Our piece consists of multiple cultures that we see in our school but also relate to the cultures in our community.

The documentary, “The Barefoot Artist,” encouraged me to also create an impact in my community through art. I can definitely see the impact that we made in our community because even younger students understand the concept of the art piece. I hope that in 25 years our art piece will still be viewed the same as this year that all cultures come together instead of having social barriers. We live in a world that believes that it is normal to separate cultures but this piece is meant to unite all cultures and not exclude.