Kyle Laffey

B

L I

N K

By Kyle Laffey

Connection

Conjunction

intertwine

network

Bond

relationship

You interest me. You perplex my thoughts. Your exposure, your nakedness, your secrecy. I have a name for you. It’s wrinkle.

I like you wrinkle.

REGRET

Why don’t you like eggs?

Because they’re a sign from aliens.

What?

Freewill

Trust me. One, they’re gooey. two, they’re oddly shaped. Three, they hatch little creatures. I’m not a scientist but if you ask me that adds up to alien involvement.

Change self Change world

With every which way I went, with every which turn I took

Thought

Attraction in space without time

An eternal, abstract concept

All my other homes sank into the earth

So I will rebuild

It will be my favorite home.

You will be invaded tonight

Isolation

Solitude

Everyone has their own place A zone of complete comfort when it is breached When the world leaks into that comfort Our minds are clouded

Possibility

The blink project was an amazing experience that I will remember for the rest of my life. It taught me spontaneity and the true power and creativity of our unconscious minds.

I responded very randomly in my early prompts, from a random narrative of a frog to a poem about astronomy concepts. However, as time progressed my writing became more focused and related to the prompt.

The sixth prompt of a snake shedding its skin inspired me to build a 3d structure of different colors, which I then went on to write about in my piece. I told the story of a frog who had four homes of different colors and it turned out to be one of my favorite writings of the unit!

My favorite prompt was the second - regret - because I really subconsciously put a lot of thought into both my art and writing. Even though I wrote a playful and abstract letter of a king writing to a new citizen of his planet, it had strong underlying themes and I had a lot of fun doing it.

I loved putting together the collage from magazines for the art portion of blink because I’m not very good at drawing and this allowed me to piece together others’ artwork to create my own piece.

This blink project allowed me to take a lot of risks. We weren’t given a lot of time and were told to do whatever came to mind, so I did exactly that, and what resulted was often not my favorite work. However, a few times I came up with art I would have otherwise never produced, and I loved this project because of that. For example, I wrote a beautiful poem from the point of view of a zoo keeper.

Normally when I write poetry it’s either very serious or it rhymes. This zoo keeper poem was much different because although it was fun and lighthearted, it obviously had a lot of thought put into it and was a wonderful metaphor for the prompt - isolation vs. solitude. The art piece

that accompanied this writing was a jumble of animals (and dinosaurs!), never ending roads, and misplaced office chairs all spiraling into the middle of the page.

For the writing portion of the blink project, I often used only a few different forms of writing - poetry, letters, and narrative. While I dabbled in different angles of these forms, only twice did I do anything different, where I wrote a list of words that came to mind as well as a random dialogue that played in my head.

I really struggled with the art because although I did get very creative and did not care how my art turned out, I have a hard time using new artistic techniques when I draw. My mind just does not come up with them so easily and I struggle with that, although the ideas I explored were often very thoughtful.

After looking through my art I noticed I like to connect everything together, and noticed a very strong theme in that. I really enjoy the relationship between animals and humans and my art showed that as well.

When the prompts were finished and I had my nine art and writing pieces, I found some very interesting common themes throughout my workEverything is connected in some way.

Relationship of animals and humans Humans’ comfort zone Home Being an outcast Choice vs. Opportunity Exploration Infestation The mind of a child vs. mind of an adult The perception of time

By Kyle Laffey