It is now the last week of my first semester back in school since taking a five year break from school to pursue my career as a musician. In the music world, there is a great sense of COMMUNITY. Looking back on this semester, I can see how the IARC program embodies the sense of community that I am gradually becoming part of as well. It is obvious to me now how all of the students and professors alike are very comfortable with asking each other for help or advice in an ever present dialogue. This is something I truly appreciate and I feel very happy and fortunate to have found a program that promotes such a comfortable relationship between the students and faculty. The feeling of community is essential for a healthy and happy life both outside and inside school.
As designers, we take on both the role and the responsibility of someone who is responsible or manages things. This may be what a room looks like or how a floor plan is laid out. Either way, designers in many ways must exemplify good STEWARDSHIP, considering that the decisions a designer makes will always have an impact on people’s lives and have a potentially long lasting effect either for the better or for the worse. “A perfect garden – no matter what size – should enclose nothing less than the entire universe.” – Barragan. I think this is a beautiful statement about the way all designers should in a not too serious way, understand how powerful of an impact they can make on other people’s lives. I am proud to call myself a designer, (or at least a designer in training…) and look forward to creating things and places that make other people’s lives better.
A great friend of mine and I used to always talk about how much we were going to do in life. How there is no way we weren’t going to get very far in life, and be ahead of the pack, all the while living life by our own rules. He had a phrase that he came up with that he would constantly say out loud to remind us all just what it was that we needed to do in order to put ourselves on top. The phrase was, “RELENTLESS INNOVATION.” His name is Jon Paul Pardy, and though I haven’t talked to him in a while, he is still a great friend and I have always looked up to him. These words mean a lot to me and some of my friends because constant changing and forward (and backward) thinking are essential to surviving in a world that grows only more competitive and complex each day. I hope and believe that through my time here in IARC, I will grow to be ever more innovative as long as I remain relentless in my pursuit of greatness.
The last word of the last week of the OPUS project: AUTHENTICITY. To be original, to be bold, to be yourself and nothing but. To be authentic is both a privilege and a gift. There is a large portion of society who has no idea what it means to be authentic and probably never thinks twice about it. I feel blessed to have both a comprehension and a desire to truly embody what this means. One of my all-time greatest heroes is a musician named Flea, from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I would watch his bass instructional video every single day after school while I worked on being the world’s best bass player. While his video helped a lot with bass playing, in many ways he taught mostly philosophy on being an artist in the video. I definitely attribute a lot of the foundation of who I am and how I think as an artist in music and design to the ideologies set out in this video. Flea’s underlying message runs through my head on a regular basis, “No matter what you do, always stay true to yourself.” – Flea. It is my everlasting goal to live and die by these words.
