B L I N K

By Kyle Laffey

Connection

intertwine

Conjunction

network

relationship

Bond

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

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

Because they’re a sign from aliens.

Why don’t you like eggs?

What?

Freewill

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

Cha

nge

self

Cha

nge

wor

ld

Attraction in space without time

An eternal, abstract concept

Thought

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 placeA zone of complete comfort

when it is breachedWhen 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 spontane-ity 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 draw-ing 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 be-cause although it was fun and lighthearted, it obviously

had a lot of thought put into it and was a wonderful meta-phor 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 dia-

logue 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 strug-gle 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 work-

Everything is connected in some way.Relationship of animals and humans

Humans’ comfort zoneHome

Being an outcastChoice vs. Opportunity

ExplorationInfestation

The mind of a child vs. mind of an adultThe perception of time

By Kyle Laffey