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Kashia Moua
March 10, 2016
Art 135
Amber Ward
Written Reflection: The Souvenir
The Souvenir is a studio project that is intended to inspire the artist to reflect on the
places they have lived or are currently living in and think about some meaningful characteristics
that identify those locations. The key concepts of this project are inspired actual souvenirs and
the idea of having memorable item from the places you has visited. Some attributes that can be
assigned to the concept of souvenir are honoring a location of significance, reflecting local
landmarks, buildings, and other unique features of the location, and empathizing feelings
towards and opinions about the experience the location gave you.
For our Art 135 class, the subject of our Souvenir project was the Sacramento area or a
place we have lived for a significant time if we have not lived in Sacramento for long. We
brainstormed for the project by making a list of cities and towns in the Sacramento area, local
tourist spots and recognizable landmarks unique to the area, and what materials and resources are
unique and common to this area and what are not. We also read from Michael Birds (2012) 100
Ideas that Changed Art and John Parks (2015) Universal principles of art: 100 key concepts for
understanding, analyzing, and practicing art to learn some concepts and principles that could be
applied to the project. From Bird, we learned about sculpture, miniature, and less is more. From
Parks we learned about mass, mix media and multimedia, scale, and space and volume. These

concepts and principles all have the common theme of creating small scale, three dimensional
forms that are symbolic, meaningful, and memorable.
We started the project by brainstorming some cities, towns, and tourist spots in the
Sacramento area and what materials and resources are and are not unique to the area. This
brainstorming was significant to the process because it helped us think about and reflect upon the
places we have been to, what stood out about those places, and what significant memories we
brought with us after visiting those places. Through our brainstorming, our class even came up
with some more abstract and somewhat satirical concepts when we listed materials and resources
unique and not unique to the area. Some of us came up with lobbyist as a resource we are
abundant in and budget for the arts as a resource we lack.
Once we finished our brainstorming, we were given a handout to organize our thoughts.
We answered questions about which place we wanted to make a souvenir for, what iconic
landmark or event we wanted to represent, what significant emotion or idea we wanted to
convey, and what materials we wanted to use in order to plan for the sculptures. Afterwards, we
sketched our idea for the sculptures and proposed them to the professor who gave us advice on
how to improve them or how to put them together and then set us on our way. We were given a
variety of materials for building three dimensional sculptures such as cloud clay, wires,
cardboard, and casting tape. For my souvenir, I wanted to make a figurine of the SacAnime
Conventions mascot to show my appreciation and fondness of the locally grown anime
convention that I have been attending for almost 10 years. To make my figurine, I used
cardboard to make the base and wires to construct the skeleton of the figurine which I plan to
build with clay or papier-mch.

As a potential art project for high school students, I believe it will be a good project to do
as an introduction to the sculpting unit. The Souvenir project has students working on a small,
intimate scale which may help beginning students get into sculpting without the intimidation of
struggling to build structure of large scale sculptures. The project also lets the students think
creatively about what they want to make since souvenirs can be just about anything. Masks,
clothing, accessories, figurines, dioramas, snow globs, and even packaged food can be souvenirs.
Students can start to work wherever they feel comfortable and will still be able to meet the
project objectives. I would keep the readings that we were recommended to read for this project
but I would add photos of actual souvenirs from famous locations to the presentation of the
project so that the students can use them as reference. I have to consider that some students may
not travel often or have not been exposed to the tourist and souvenir industry just like I was when
I was starting high school since my family was not very wealthy and we did not travel much. The
success of this project may help students reflect on the places they have been and the places they
come from which can helps them build their identity and pride.

Bird, M. (2012). 100 Ideas that changed art. London, England: Laurence King.
Parks, J.A. (2015). Universal principles of art: 100 key concepts for understanding, analyzing,
and practicing art. Beverly, MA: Rockport.