First French Art Project!

My favourite class at school is by far Art class.  It's the only class I take that doesn't involve listening to a teacher or taking notes for an hour in a language I'm still working on understanding.  Not to mention that everyone else who takes Art is super chill and nice, the teacher is very very cool and laid-back, and it's just a big happy gathering of creative minded people. Awesome.  Also... we can eat during class: BONUS! It's an option so I'm with a bunch of kids outside my class.  If I didn't do Art, my Wednesdays and Fridays would finish a lot earlier, but I'm happy to spend that extra hour or two at school for art.  Back in Canada, I spent like 50% of my time in my New Media classroom working on photo or video projects, and it's awesome that I have something similar to that here.  The teacher is cool with me doing all my projects on the computer with photo editing and that kind of thing, so I'm so pumped for the stuff I'll get to do this year!!

And on that note, here's my first project of the year!

Make sure you click on it to blow it up full size and get the full idea. (I didn't take any of the photos that make up the inside of the eye, EXCEPT for the one directly to the right of the deer who's on the inside corner of my eye.  For anyone who's interested, it's a photo I took from the top of Polar Peak mountain in Fernie BC a couple years ago after hiking to the top.)

The theme of the project was a "Cabinet of Curiosities."  The teacher started by telling us about way back in like the 19th century when people lived in their huge ancient houses and lived their curious lives and often had some kind of wardrobe or cupboard in their house full of random, unknown things.  People would bring back quirky or interesting souvenirs from their travels, and often in each household there was one place where they stored it all.  Thus, a cabinet full of curiosities.  Our assignment was to take that idea and apply it to something we could do for a project.  We had to reflect on what we could call a "cabinet" and what we could call a "curiosity."  Almost from the beginning I really wanted to use an eye as my cabinet, because I feel like (watch out I'm about to get deep) the saying about eyes being a window to the soul is true, and also because every single person processes differently the things they see throughout their life, and no two people will be the same.  Therefore those things you have seen, and have become a part of you, are "curious" to everyone around you.  Once I half-sorta-tried-to-with-the-help-of-Sixtine explained this in my broken French to the teacher, she suggested putting things in my eye (not literally...DUH) that I knew from Canada, but that might be unknown to most of the French people I go to school with.  And so, after using her suggestion and doing some more reflecting on my original idea, I came up with what you see here! When I look at all the things inside the eye, I think of home, so I called this project "Home" (wow like I am so original.)  I even managed to present it like the rest of the students have to: speaking in French and explaining what you did, why, and your inspiration for the project to the teacher.  It was really cool and I am quite looking forward to the next assignment!