ConceptI am Filipino, Chinese, Spanish, & Japanese, but I identify myself as a Filipino American. Both of my parents were born and grew up in the Philippines and moved to Hawai’i to give my sisters and I a good life. My parents both came from poor families, but they were able to overcome their obstacles and achieve their goal, to live happily. With the admiration of my parents, I grew up appreciating the Filipino culture.
My design, “Roots,” is influenced by my Filipino heritage to thank my parents for giving me the life I have now. The stars represents the Philippines; its three major cities. Since my parents are from different regions I have family all over the Philippines. The sun represents the opportunities, the happiness, the gratitude; the life we live now. My parents raised me to never take things for granted. The bamboo represents the struggles my parents faced. For my ancestors bamboo was a tool of oppression.
Reflection
Creating this textile pattern was very time consuming and intricate, but I enjoyed it very much and learned how to use utilize differemt tools in Photoshop through the process of creating the piece. When started to create the pattern, I first though about how I can use the background to create a harmonious textile pattern. I did not want the pattern to flow into the next tiled pattern by just repeating an image. Instead I created a grid so that all sides of the pattern all match differently, but with a grid viewers can easily define the single orginal pattern; I did not want viewers to notice the square swatch within the textile pattern. I played with the positions of the bamboo boxes in the background so it looks like boxes are overlapping onto the next tiled pattern. The left and right sides of the pattern turned out very good, but the bottom and top sides were not as successful. The bamboo boxes were too large and it created long continous grid lines that broke up the pattern into horizontal patterns.
I spent a lot of time creating the background that I did not put in as much time and effort into the other elements of the design. I tend to get so caught up with different aspects of my designs that I, in a sense, neglect it as an overall piece. Despite the time crunch in the end with the last pieces of my pattern, the end product was successful.
