BFA SHOW: Under Pressure
Student-Athlete or Athlete-Student? Exploring the use of different programs and mediums, I wanted to bring light to the sacrifices and struggles collegiate athletes experience while devoting their time "equally" to athletics and school.
Drowning Because of School or Swimming?
There is a give and a take to being a college athlete that results in a never ending battle on what you want your priorities to be. Staying up late to do school work resulted in less sleep and recovery for practice. Going out of state for long meets meant that class will be missed and school work would pile up. Focusing on the balance of swimming and school resulted in the lack of social life and friendships. This video represents the constant trade off student athletes endure while trying to succeed at what they do. Notice, I never successfully break the surface.
“Within a year of creating and editing this video, it was viewed over 1,200,000 times.”
Awards First
When people look at a student athlete, the first thing they see are the awards and success they achieved. What they don’t see is the effort put into earning them.
This installment piece challenges the audience to look beyond the medals. At a glance, the audience member is faced with these successes of first place medals. Behind the blue and gold, is a series of posters highlighting the sacrifices and struggles that go into earning those awards. These silver posters are written on with red ink because they come second to the audience members point of view.
Piñata Performance Art
To optimize the performance of student-athletes, coaches take the time and responsibility to make itineraries for the team to follow. This allows the athletes to specifically focus on competing rather than what they should be eating before and after the race. (I am extremely thankful for that). The down fall I have experienced from living off of itineraries, is that I had a hard time adjusting to my own routine. Once I was done with my swim career, no one was there to tell me what to do next. It was a crutch that I relied too heavily on and found to hurt me in the long run. I needed to break free from the order and discipline that was my life for the past 4 years.
To achieve this sense of freedom, I created a piñata out the swim itineraries that I have collected over the past four years. These itineraries included what time to wake up/go to bed, what to wear for that day, what to eat, and so much more. I filled the piñata with all my first place medals that would disperse all over the ground when busted. My life has been planned out step by step for the past four years, and now I was finally going to break free of it.
Going the Distance
Interpreting swim yardage to distances the audience members would understand.
There are two forms of visual representation to help the audience understand how much yardage I have swam in my lifetime (roughly). After calculating the amount of yardage for a specific time period, I was able to color coat the measurements and portray them using a mural made of tape. 1 inch of tape for every 6,000 yards. The shape of the mural resembles the thick black lines on the bottom of a pool, most likely what I was looking at during the completion of this yardage. Another visual I used was a map of the United States. I converted the yardages to miles and found destinations (on a map) that are equivalent to how far I swam for that specific time period.
