Collective Perception Refelction- Lauren Jakiel

Overall I think the project turned out wonderful.  It was such an amazing experience to work with everyone in the class and collaborate with Simon.  Coming into this class I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but after jumping right into creating a work I look forward to what I will learn from our upcoming projects.

             It was a nice change to work as part of a group and get everyone’s different ideas and perspectives bouncing around to create one unified work, Collective Perception, which represented all of us as artists.  I’m very used to working on independent projects and I was  pleased to see how well we came together as one group and got everything done in such a short amount of time.  I really enjoyed hearing what everyone we interviewed had to say and was amazed at how many people were excited and willing to be a part of the project.  I definitely thought one of the most difficult things we would have to overcome would be finding enough people in the amount of time we had to participate.  Although I think that if we could have gotten more people from other places in Cortland that would have really helped to diversify and expand the project more.  Also I think it would have been nice to have larger pictures to make them stand out more against the wall and make them easier to see without having to be right up close to them.  I think the concept of our idea was great and with a longer amount of time and larger budget the possibilities of how we could have expanded the project are endless, but with the resources we had  Collective Perception came together beautifully and I think expresses what we were trying to say.

This project has really helped me to grow and open my mind to working in ways that are not necessarily comfortable for me at first.  I’d like to thank Martine and the whole class for working hard to make this project happen in the amount of time we had, Erika and Jaroslava for allowing us to use the Beard Gallery to display our work, and Simon for helping to inspire our concept and for talking with us about both our work and his.  This was such a fun experience and I look forward to working with the class again and starting new projects.