Spring 2015 by ROCKET Magazine

THE COLLEGE OF WILLIAM & MARY WMROCKETMAGAZINE.COM MAGAZINE.ROCKET@GMAIL.COM

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Kelsey Rook Editor-in-Chief Danny rosenberg photo chief brooke larue bookings director madeleine golden marketing director Brenner Brinkley style editor gladys shaw beauty editor dan arsura video editor julia kott features editor vail prior art editor nic querolo promotions director Isabella Arias, Shiva Minovi, kathy shi style team Adeola Adesuyi, Makayla donigan, bella kron, ellen penn berry beauty team cindy centeno, fiona essiam video team sarah collier, amirio freeman, sloane nilsen text team lillian zhao Art team caroline creasey PROMOTIONS team

EDI T ORS NOTE We’re a bit different this semester, but we like where we’re going. We’re ditching the theme. We’re Spring 2015, but not just Spring 2015. We are without limitations – dropping the labels to be more imaginative than ever. We’re focusing on design. For the first time in ROCKET’s history, the cover is multi-media. It’s one step to embrace creativity in new ways. ROCKET’s founder chose the triangle emblem because it is a symbol of creation. We want to keep that central to what we produce. You’ll see our logo used in ways it never was before throughout our magazine. Layout too has been reimagined so it’s both harmonious and imperfect. We’re letting our content speak for itself. We’re explaining ourselves. In the past we relied on the overall theme to clue our readers into our minds. Scrapping the one word tell-all has allowed us to open up about the thought process for each shoot. Accompanying each title and credits page is a note about the photo spread. We hope you form your own interpretations, but we don’t mind giving you a place to start. We’re more thoughtful. We’re taking inspiration from Pantone’s Color of the Year, Marsala, and doing more style looks per shoot. More fashion, more art: this is where we’re heading. We’re online. You’ve seen us on Facebook and Instagram, and now with the publication of this issue we are launching our new website, wmrocketmagazine.com. The site will be expanded next semester to include constant content, from behind the scenes footage to sharing the fashion, art, and photography we immerse ourselves in all semester. Here’s to another collection of the art, fashion and photography all made possible by the students around you every day. Enjoy!

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of things unknown but longed for still This is the beginning of change: realizing the entrapment of your mind and struggling to escape what is holding you back. Breaking free from any cage is harder when it is your own.

credits Photography by: danny rosenberg beauty by: gladys shaw, makayla donigan style by: brenner brinkley, Shiva Minovi, kathy shi model: allee cox

ROCKET Magazine

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ROCKET Magazine

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ROCKET Magazine

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UG H

O T A H

TD S

N W O DS R

The Art in artifice by Julia Kott

“People say sometimes that Beauty is superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” -Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Gray

We live in a world where we are judged by our appearances. That’s better than being judged by our invisible ‘essence’. Style is form of self-expression, and clothes enable me to express who I am. Clothes, when taken seriously, cease to be vanity and become art. Why is it that one is uncomfortable in clothes that don’t match what one normally wears? Wearing clothes made for the other gender, wearing styles one generally avoids, can create a bizarre almost out of body experience. A person dressed in strange clothes looks in the mirror and does not see herself there. Because I can’t see my clothes as I walk around, clothes are an expression of how I want to be seen. I can only see them through the eyes of others and can Spring 2015

only be judged from the outside. Aside from the physical sensation of clothes – fuzziness for example – clothes don’t really exist for the person wearing them. Perhaps that is why when we wear something that is opposite to what we are used to wearing, we feel changed. Now to any observer, we are put in a different category of people than the one to which we feel we belong. External difference creates a change internally. My own personal style has changed this year in a futile attempt to escape the necessity of expressing myself through cultural norms and trends, which are intensely gendered. Looking around my Physics lecture hall I realized just how gendered our clothes are. Generally, I noticed that girls wear certain things (dresses, fitted shirts) and boys wear other things (looser pants, looser shirts) and I hated that I felt trapped in a femininity defined by my clothes. I went home and realized that all my clothes were made for girls and would probably only be worn by girls. It’s not that I don’t like wearing dresses and feeling

feminine --I just felt stuck. So I went to Goodwill and bought men’s Levi’s and men’s flannels and tried to dress more masculine for the rest of the semester. It was useful to allow myself to feel less sexualized, to feel like I could exist outside of being a girl. It wasn’t a rejection of my womanhood but I wanted the ability to step away from it, to not have it define me. To have my clothes not cohere with myself would make it less performative, I thought. To mess with this idea that there is a continuum from self to clothes felt important, but proved to be more difficult than I thought. Finding strength in clothes is possible precisely because they are so powerful. To take control of one’s attire is to reaffirm strength in oneself, to become autonomous in how one presents oneself. Wearing ugly clothes has the opposite effect. It means giving up the power to feel powerful. The common notion that clothes are superficial is false. Clothes are outside of us, but speak truly about the person wearing them.

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Six Letters, Four Syllables by Amirio Freeman

Michael. James. William. Growing up, those were the kinds of names I wanted to have. Something simple. Something conventional. Something that wouldn’t strike simultaneous panic and wonder into the eyes of White substitute teachers as they took attendance. Something that could be found on tacky keychains sold at Disney World. Something that wouldn’t prompt me to reflexively say “Freeman” when Starbucks baristas asked me for my name. Something that wouldn’t hold me hostage to the preconceptions and stereotypes of new acquaintances. Matthew. Chris. John. Those were the names I wanted to call my own. Instead, for my first birthday gift ever, I was given the name Amirio. Six letters, four syllables. Spring 2015

A name that forces the tongue and mouth to be stretched and pulled, expanded and contracted. A sort of oral acrobatics. A name that has been contorted into several mispronunciations and misspellings (Amario? Amiro? Amarillo?). A name that has been approached with extreme caution and care and also haphazard clumsiness. A name that I hated for a portion of my life. “But, your name is so different. You’ll never have to worry about someone else having it.” “And it sounds so beautiful.” “What if you become famous? Then you’ll be able to be known by just your first name. Like Beyoncé. Or Oprah.” “I mean, it rhymes with Cheerio.” As I struggled with adolescence and with embracing my name, those were the things that I was constantly told by well-meaning family members and friends who attempted to help me find the beauty in something I found undesirable. Yet, even as I was reminded of my name’s “uniqueness” and its ability

to be rhymed with a British farewell, I couldn’t shake my distaste for it. I felt as though my name was incompatible with who I was becoming and who I wanted to be. They say, like your clothing or the lines on the palm of your hand, that your name is an indicator of who are. A clue or hint used to provide a glimpse of yourself and what you represent. Throughout elementary school, my name had come to be associated with strangeness and otherness, as others questioned me about its origins (and mine) or requested that I repeat how it’s pronounced. Once, after meeting the mother of a close high-school friend for the first time, my name was outrightly described as “ghetto,” a term, for my friend’s mother, that was synonymous with “unrespectable,” “undesirable,” and “too far away from the ‘norm.’” In moments like those, my name had come to be burdened by the meanings of others, meanings that I didn’t necessarily want to inherit or cage myself in. As a result, I felt as though my name and I were two separate beings that couldn’t coexist.

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However, as I neglected the thread between myself and my name and allowed it to become more and more tenuous, I slowly found myself participating in a form of self-erasure. Every time I thought about going by just my middle name, every time I gave permission to others to shorten my name to varying degrees, and every time I planted and nurtured seeds of hate for such an essential part of my identity, I saw myself dying. I’m not sure when (maybe during my last few years of high school? or near the beginning of college?) and I’m not entirely sure why (was it because I started to slowly shrug off the cloak of insecurity that many wear throughout adolescence? or was it because I wanted to eradicate the dissonance one feels when one rejects a part of their self ?), but I began to undergo the process of reclaiming my name and linking it with meanings and significations of my own making. Through exerting some personal agency, I started to see my name as an extension and reflection of myself, allowing me to accept, welcome, and embrace it. Today, I see my name, a gift from my parents, as an expression of love and a reminder of my belonging to a group, a lineage, and an ancestry. For me, it’s a representation of the linguistic ingenuity and playfulness that has been observed across the African diaspora for centuries. My name, birthed from pure creativity, is a name without precedent, allowing it to be a vessel for carrying my own meanings and fate. Spring 2015

My own desert places A shattered perception is overwheling without knowing how to move on. Trying to transform without being ready is like cleansing yourself without water. It is not enough to know you must change â&#x20AC;&#x201C; you must understand how.

credits Photography by: danny rosenberg beauty by: adeola adesuyi, ellen penn berry, gladys shaw style by: isabella arias, Shiva minovi model: sydney moondra

ROCKET Magazine

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ROCKET Magazine

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The crux of transformation is cerebral. We are dichotomized; here the mechanical and the natural are portrayed in the likeness of Brave New World. Too often, decisions are made for us; the ones that matter must be made by our own minds, or else we lose them. credits

Photography by: danny rosenberg beauty by: adeola adesuyi, ellen penn berry

ROCKET Magazine

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ROCKET Magazine

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GREAT IS TRUTH, BUT STILL GREATER, FROM A PRACTICAL POINT OF VIEW, IS SILENCE ABOUT TRUTH. ONE BELIEVES THINGS BECAUSE ONE HAS BEEN CONDITIONED TO BELIEVE THEM. NO SOCIAL STABILITY WITHOUT INDIVIDUAL STABILITY. MOST MEN AND WOMEN WILL GROW UP TO LOVE THEIR SERVITUDE AND WILL NEVER DREAM OF REVOLUTION.

ROCKET Magazine

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ROCKET Magazine

Spring 2015

ROCKET Magazine

Spring 2015

She Makes, Therefore She Is by Sarah Collier and Amirio Freeman Photography by Danny Rosenberg

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Her hands. When engaging in a conversation with Sarah Henry, those are the first things you notice about her. Contrasting against her easy demeanor, Sarah’s hands are constantly in a frenetic state, helping her narrate personal stories, punctuate witty, off-thecuff jokes, and express enthusiasm for one of her passions: ceramics.

After being introduced to pottery at an early age through her ceramicist uncles and a family friend, Sarah became well-versed in pottery-making, using art as a way to forge new opportunities and possibilities in a rural hometown – Little Washington, Virginia – that lacked both. ROCKET sat down with Sarah, now a junior art major, to further discuss what “artist” means, how she stays inspired, and where her self and art collide.

ROCKET: Do you identify as an artist?

Sarah: I’m coming to terms with it. It’s been a 10-year process of realization. People call me an artist and I’m like, “What? Me?” And then I think, “Oh, I make art.” And it’s more than just making art. It’s what I do. My life is making art, and so that makes me an artist. ROCKET: Is there any moment that stands out in those 10 years?

Sarah: When I graduated from high school, I moved to San Francisco for a month. I did an internship at an art-therapy gallery, and they had 30 to 40 artists that had mental or physical disabilities, and it was all about them making their art. Some of the things that they made, people would have looked at it and thought, “What?” – but it was so beautiful. The process was beautiful, just the way that they did it, the way that they loved it. That made me realize that really anyone can be an artist as long as they want to be, as long as they embrace it.

ROCKET: Do you think you ever hesitated with accepting the title because there can be negative connotations associated with it?

Sarah: It’s funny, I forgot who said it, but someone told me, “Did you know that in 1950 artists were the number-one divorced individuals in America?”, and I was like, “Cool. Great.” I think people think of artists as very unapproachable and “better than thou,” and I don’t think that I’m that way. I think that art should be approachable, something that you want to interact with and touch and feel. ROCKET: Is that why you chose ceramics?

Sarah: I’ve tried every medium, but I always run out of ideas. We were in my welding class, for example, and we had these objects to make a sculpture out of, and I was drawing a pot. Everything in my mind comes back to pottery and ceramics and the idea that art can be functional and beautiful at the same time,

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which is what I really like about being a ceramicist. The work I make is being used. You engage with it, hands-on. You want to reach out and put the pieces to your mouth and you want to hold them. ROCKET: Can you describe part of your artistic process?

Sarah: I do primarily wheel throwing. And I use a kick wheel, which is pretty unusual for students because there’s no electricity and no plugs. I wanted to be more fully in control of everything. It’s a cool idea: my bodily energy going into everything in a piece. ROCKET: How do you stay inspired when creating pieces?

Sarah: I find inspiration everywhere. Especially the mundane. I was home for Thanksgiving and my Grandma was carving out the eyes of potatoes in order to make mashed potatoes. And I thought, “That’s so beautiful,” how you take out the bad parts you don’t want anymore. So I used that idea to create carved bowl pieces to serve mashed potatoes in.

I have all these ideas I still want to churn out. And I love being a student because I can take the time to figure out the imperfections of each of my pieces. I look at my work, see I need to fix this and that, and then those ideas of how I need to fix my work spark new ones.

ROCKET: Is it hard deciding whether or not to put so much of yourself into your art?

Sarah: Yes, definitely. You spend so much time considering a piece of work. And then if you lose that piece, you’ve lost hours. I had this huge bowl and it was beautiful. I turned and whacked it off the wheel and it fell on the ground and cracked and broke into a million pieces. But I learned so much from that. I’ve made a lot of mistakes this year. And pottery made me realize that it’s okay to make mistakes. I’m learning from them. You can do something else – it’ll be okay. Even if something isn’t perfectly functional, it can still be beautiful and purposeful.

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For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always ourselves we find in the sea Awakening is a sort of magic. It rejuvinates and empowers. The exhilaration felt by a new life in an old self is unexplainable. Wonder is within.

credits Photography by: danny rosenberg beauty by: adeola adesuyi, makayla donigan, bella kron, ellen penn berry, gladys shaw, style by: brenner brinkley model: shannon callahan

ROCKET Magazine

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ROCKET Magazine

Spring 2015

ROCKET Magazine

Spring 2015

ROCKET Magazine

Spring 2015

thawed Finally, understanding. Contentment is when the harshness and the beauty of life coalesce into peace. There, in the soft imperfection of self, acceptance is found.

credits Photography by: danny rosenberg beauty by: makayla donigan, bella kron, gladys shaw style by: isabella arias, brenner brinkley, kathy shi model: andrew stephenson

ROCKET Magazine

Spring 2015

ROCKET Magazine

Spring 2015

ROCKET Magazine

Spring 2015

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