Author: Feighbe Solano

Feighbe Solano

Professor Hall

Artist Statement

           This semester has definitely helped me grow and see “writing” in a completely different way. In my high school they had “majors” that would help them decide what group to section you off with. There was agriculture, RTC, and Center for Writing. My mom immediately put me into the center for writing and for my four years of highschool I took classes like Advanced Poetry, Advanced Writing, Creative Writing, and Shakespeare. Because of the consistency of these classes, I was shaping myself into a writer. I wrote poems and short plays and some of my best essays, but then highschool ended. I flunked my first college semester of English 101 and had to retake it. The professors I had didn’t challenge me at all creatively. One of my professors, throughout the entire semester, had us reading short stories and simply answer his questions in essay format, an entire waste of time. It made me lose my appreciation for writing.

          While looking through “Rate My Professor” I found Doctor Carrie Hall, she was rated very high and received so many comments on how she’s a great professor. I had to take her class, and I even rearranged my schedule multiple times in order to make this class fit. I’m not sure what I expected this class to be but it wasn’t what it turned out to be. By this time I only thought we’d be reading more books and short story’s but it was nothing like that at all. The projects that were presented to us through the units truly helped me get back into the hang of writing but not just through pen and paper, by using more creative outlets (Instagram) I was able to use my voice in a more effective way. My Instagram page on homelessness, MPNYC_ (Mission Possible NYC) is in my top two best works I’ve done for this class. I had never taken a writing project and customized it through an outlet where many people would be able to see and interact with it. Many writing projects simply get graded and put aside, for no one else to see and this is the complete opposite of MPNYC_ it is a public page for anyone to visit and read through and comment on, and the amount of productivity that I received on this page through likes, comments, and even followers, in the short amount of time that I had to put it together, was remarkable. On top of everything the subject that it’s based on is a REAL problem, while it doesn’t affect me personally it does affect the thousands of people who are of may become homeless, this project was dedicated to those people and in order to do that I had to step outside the box, remove myself from the equation, and instead think about the victims to this problem. This project shows my growth as a writer, from my first group project of the semester that was based on the education system, where I only had one slide and about two lines to say, which was also my least favorite project, unit two was definitely my best.

           As I mentioned before MPNYC_ is in my top two best works of done for this semester, the second project that’s also up there is my Bob’s Burgers project, this was unit three. What makes this project one of my best and favorites is the way that I took my all time favorite animated TV show, and I completely gutted it for its misconception on transgender women and men. When I say that this is my favorite show, I mean that I literally watch this almost everyday and have rewatched the series multiple times. In the beginning, unit three was a little hard for me to get on track with because we weren’t given the source, we had to look for it and choose for ourselves. I had gone back and forth between two ideas that I cannot remember right now, but in the end I chose to do it on my favorite show. The drawing that I did for this project was fun, but you can only see my growth through the artist statement that I wrote for unit three. I wrote about my process for this unit and I feel like any reader can see my side of the story whether they agree or not. It was a fun project to draw a Bobs Burgers scene and remake it into what I thought it should’ve been instead. Now, looking back at both of those projects while they are completely different because one is a drawing and the other is a Instagram page, they have one thing in common which is that they were both made to fight for a cause. A REAL cause that has absolutely nothing to do with me, but for the people around me. This is why these projects are my top two, because I didn’t do it on me or my story, they were made based on other people’s stories. The fight for equality for transgender people is still a real one, and the fight to end homelessness is a real one too. Never in my entire high school and college years had I done a project made for such important causes as these were and that’s where you can see my growth in Doctor Halls class, my page on homeless will stay active.