Ailiya's Portfolio

1. Through this project, I first created a unique story telling the story of a fashion business and their sales. At the start of the year, the company just launched their new collection which meant their sales did not boost at all. Slowly, through different marketing strategies, their sales started increasing as customers began to notice. Although things went pretty smoothly at first, at some parts of the year V&V also faced challenges like fake social media news that they needed to recover from. My graph clearly shows a realistic year of a fashion business launching a new collection. I also explained what marketing strategies they accomplished on their journey.
2. I’m really proud of my explanation of the story and the slopes. All the things made sense as they fully connected to each other. I also really like the deep analysis of the questions I had proposed. I fully related this units topic with other topics from the past to further show my understanding.
3. The hardest part of the project was to think of meaningful questions that allow for complex thinking. This part was really hard because I had to make sure the questions were not already answered and that I challenge myself to make both the actual question and the answer connected with extended learning.
4. If I could revise the project, I would want to create a more complex graph involving a different kind of graph. This means that I would no longer do a linear piecewise, but an exponential one. This would make it more complex and fun to work with. On the other hand, it would also show my growth and my ability to extend my learning as a student.
5. This project made me understand all the working functions to create a helpful and accurate piecewise function. I now know how each part worked, for example the slope, different intervals, maximum and minimum, and so much more. I also had a better interpretation of the whole unit.

What key message do you want your audience to understand about you as they view your artwork? How did you communicate this message?

I want my audience to understand who I am through crafting, doodling, spraying, and more. Through my artwork, there are lots of icons that build up my identity. For example, the doodling of the stars and triangles show my determination and leadership. This is because stars have 5 different sides, and it shows how I can pierce through challenges that are in my way. I tried to communicate this message by layering through blank space to make it more full and inspiring. The heart spreads a message of my childhood. On it, it is filled with childhood memories like snoopy, my school, and so much more. The two veins represent how all these things tie back together to who I am today as my childhood is a very big part of me. The turtle on the left side represents my connection with my mom and marine biology. We’ve loved experiences to the sea, and made lots of memories there. The turtle is swimming upwards, showing perseverance and positivity. The turtle is made by different scraps showing a unique and various personality. The qipao with the posca markers show my relationship with my grandma. I have designed multiple qipaos for her as part of our journey together. The clock above is a collage of clocks, the number 18, and newspaper scraps. The number 18 is very special to me since it’s my lucky number. The clock represents how I have grown and changed through time. The golf cap is a sprayed paint outline showing memories with my dad. He made me enjoy golf, and we would constantly golf together. The golf course between me is a symbol of how my life is like a golf game. There are rough days and bright days which make up a good game. On the left hand top corner, there are messages and words carved inside that helps me get through challenges. They bring strength and optimism to my life. These are shown my bold words that make a difference.

During the creation of your artwork, how did you take risks and experiment in order to effectively express your intended message?

The first risk I took was spray painting. It was my first time doing it, yet I also wanted words behind it. I needed to be extra careful and handle it with precision. I gave it a try and it turned out pretty nice. This experiment made me more confident with my skills and led me into taking even more risks later. This spray paint background spread my message of leadership. Through out the journey, I also took risks like directly doodling on my canvas. It was a bold move to make, and I got scared at first to it. Eventually, I overcame that fear and made my canvas look full and pop out because I took the risk. I also experimented with collaging. Sometimes the pieces of the collage were not sticking to the right place and there were a lot of different challenges. Later after I finalized the piece, the collages not only looked visually appeasing, but it was a efficient way of communicating my messages. I wrote quotes, words, drawings, numbers, and more on them.

In this unit, we went to the aquatic center to swim. We demonstrated our understanding with fitness, water safety, and water polo. We discovered how to scull on water to float. Although it was hard at first, maintaining my balance while holding the ball, I eventually got the hang of it. We played multiple games and also reflected on our learning. In essence, it was a pretty fun unit because it was really unique and I learned a lot of new skills.

1. Cultural Influence on Aesthetic Choices

After meeting Kool Koor and learning about his artistic journey, how do you think his background in the graffiti culture of the Bronx influenced his aesthetic choices in the techniques and styles he demonstrated? 

He was introduced to European Spray pain on graffiti arts in New York. His overall work is colorful and bold, representing new ideas. In his time in NY, there were lots of every day routines that were lots of everyday routine like the barber shop that had inspired him into his signature style. His restrictions made his artwork unique in a way of pattern and color, as he also mentioned that this habit later stayed with him. With just scarce materials, he developed something that is bold and bright. These made his pieces pop out and have contrast in walls in public places and right now on canvas too. It taught him to express speed through line work, making powerful messages through works. These later also stuck with him once he moved to studio works. Graffiti made him realize that bold colors can really contrast whole using signature shapes. This made his artwork more easy to identify with, along with adding special unique detailed touches that also made his work more self related. Graffiti made his work more powerful and self expressed, communicating his emotions through his own unique style.

2. Environmental Impact on Art Creation

Considering Kool Koor’s shift from street art to studio work, how do you think different environments (like the streets versus a classroom) impact an artist’s creative process and choices? In what ways did you feel these environmental influences while trying out his painting style?

Different environments will influence him because with different places to work at, he gets different memories and experiences. This could either come from his surroundings, or from the people he worked with. His artwork often blends with his chaotic and energetic vibe from the street, making his pieces wild and bold. It also differs a little bit with his style now in a studio, but sometimes he mixes both, transferring to modern artworks. The blend lets him express his roots and really devote passion into his artwork. This contrast also helps him unlock more styles, allowing his artwork to represent identity and messages in unique differ various ways. We can see from his work in Milan in 1985, the bright lining and colors stayed with him all the way through 2015 and 2025. His style now like the Meisha features bold shapes along with layered colors, truly reflecting back to his past paintings.

3. Personal Reflection on Aesthetic Development

3. Personal Reflection on Aesthetic Development. What aspects of your culture or environment do you think will influence your future artistic choices for your self-portrait mixed media artwork? How can you incorporate elements from your own background into your artwork to express your unique identity?

I would incorporate the more modern things like hobbies and interests. For example, I am into golf, and golf really truly represents my family bonding time so I would add that. I would also add figure skating because it shows my past and childhood. My environment will influence my overall mood and style of my artwork as my artworks often show identity, and my artwork will represent me. I can incorporate things like backgrounds, stories, and memories that truly represent me so then the painting will have a close connection to myself. I want to include my hometown Shanghai and also include Australia because thats where I am from. I would also include my characteristics through symbols and pictures to really show and demonstrate myself. Like KoolKoor, I want to represent messages through bold contrasting complimentary colors to really make my identity stand out. I think color will really help me present ideas and connect with different things.

I am proud of my first unit and part of my second unit. I am always persistence and improving. I show deep understanding and constantly push myself to my fullest when I am doing work. I do every L4, even when it is optional, and I spend a good amount of time working on it so I can perfect it. On the first summative for unit 1, I exceeded the requirements and pushed myself to do the L4 Presentation. I prepared a lot for the presentation and made sure that I payed careful attention to how I present. At first, I wasn’t really in the time zone, it was too long. Time by time, I started shortening it and it eventually began to get more perfect.

My biggest challenge in the first unit is contributing group talk and I should make sure that I spend more time sharing my ideas. I sometimes volunteer to speak, but I want to improve, and make it always. I sometimes tend to hesitate in reaching my hand out to share my ideas. Also, I want to try and make my speech in a slower pace, my pace right now is a little bit too fast.

I have strongly demonstrated collaborating well and staying positive. I am always able to collaborate with others and stay optimistic whenever something happens. Next time I want to get better at improving as a reflective thinker, this way I can be able to fully identify my strength and weakness to help me better improve.

My current goal:
I plan on improving my critical thinking skills. Some of the times, I have trouble thinking outside the box. I want to challenge myself to be more curious into exploring units while discovering new ideas and perspectives that I can bring to the table. This can lead to several disadvantages, when I am able to think more critically, I can unlock more ideas and share them to my peers and teachers. In the upcoming year, I plan on constantly gently forcing myself to generate more perspectives and always ask questions when I am stuck. This way, I would be sure that I consume everything taught while having the abillity to expand my learning. I am confident that if I keep aiming for my goal, I will succeed as a critical thinker.

My progress:

I have been trying to think of multiple solutions instead of one. This means that I will look at more perspectives and opinions before choosing my final decision. Through the process, I constantly made sure that I tried multiple scenarios before choosing the right one. Additionally, I constantly try and push myself to do my very best and even sometimes exceeds beyond the level of requirement. I like to try new things and push myself to the very limit, sometimes researching videos that are advanced. By doing all this, I can build a stronger connection with my learning while enhancing my critical thinking and persistence skills.

I am very proud of my deep understanding in science class. I always prepare to my fullest and stays on task no matter what. Also, I have nailed every one of my three for three, not messing up any of these. This fully shows that I am concentrated in class and shows deep understanding. I will constantly push myself to do my best, and also push myself into doing extensions like research which are very advanced and somewhat hard.

My biggest challenge in science class is that I want to contribute more in big discussions and always share my ideas. I want to make this mostly into always, always sharing and proposing some ideas. I am able to always do that in smaller discussions, but not all of the times do I share out in full class ones. I can improve by sharing more and being more confident, which means understanding that I can make a mistake, and its okay.

According to my active learner chart, I always stay on task, and even have one exceeding for staying positive. I contribute my ideas, works with partners, and stays positive. I fully demonstrate collaborating with others and participating fully because in class I am always ready and I always contribute my ideas during group discussions. I want to improve by reflecting as a learner, so I can have a better view of my performance.

During the sticker project, we worked on creating actual sticker blueprints with mathematical concepts like rotation, dilation, reflection, and more. With the help of these transformations, I created a vivid scene of the Shanghai bund. I really enjoyed how we could challenge ourselves to make the sticker more complex by using in-depth inferences and applications that go beyond what was taught. I also really enjoyed how we got to think outside the box and really make this project unique and one of a kind. Everyone’s sticker was different, with various kinds of stories behind it. If there was something that could be different, I think I would suggest that we could combine stickers. This means that each person can contribute one part of a big class sticker, this way it would be more meaningful and also represent your true identity. This will also add teamwork and collaboration skills into the whole process.

I chose question 8 as evidence of my best thinking because that was one question I got partial, which is also the critical thinking question. Although in CFUs and classwork I was able to identify multiple imposters and fully demonstrated my learning, I think on the actual COL I should pay even more careful attention.

I chose question 1 in the Level 4 section as evidence of my best thinking because I got the question fully correct while showing my work. This demonstrates my ability to exceed as a learner while providing evidence.

Throughout this unit, I improved the most at proving congruency of angles because before I always messed up the formulas, but then as the unit rolled by, I got more familiar and started understanding it.

I feel that I still need to work on my critical thinking and re-reading questions if I wasn’t sure during the actual test as that will strengthen my learning, making things more clear for me.

Three of my strengths so far this year include: Explaining in detail, Understanding formulas, and Solving unknown equations with given evidence.

Three things I want to improve on in the next unit include: Re-reading questions, double checking my work, and strengthening my critical thinking skills.

In the next unit, I want to focus on improving my critical thinking by thinking outside the box for new and more ways to solve questions. There might be challenges such as some ways might be more complex, but through lots of detailed work, I think I can be able to solve them while gaining new insights.

Throughout this unit, I have grasped the concept of multiple things. For example, I have learned how to successfully analyze connotation and denotation, knowing which words fit better for that exact situation. I now have the ability to identify all parts of speech, sentence structures, and choose the best word choice. With this skill, I will have a better time writing in the future since this is the foundation to a good piece of writing. During this unit, we discovered and learned about grammar through a interesting way. Everyone had to teach their “Alien” how to communicate in English while asking them why they are here. Everyone’s alien had a different background story, and it was truly memorable sharing their Alien’s story with the class. It was a interesting project since we also got to learn on the way. In the end, my alien produced a dazzling piece of writing about its origin, and I was really proud that my job as a teacher did not fail. I really enjoyed this unit because not only was it engaging, but along the way I got to learn so many new things as well. It was not a boring standard test, but it was creative and attractive. In essence, I had a lot of fun learning about grammar, I grasped so many new things, and most of all I successfully finished my report which showed my understanding of the whole unit.