Elena Hoffman's Digital Portfolio
Palabras del Corazon (Words of the Heart)
10th Grade Humanities/Spanish
(The picture on the left is of the mosaic I created for the project. The girl in the middle is supposed to be me. The cloudy, dark side of the mosaic symbolizes society's cruel ways, and the impacts it leaves on its victims. The sunny, lighter side of the mosaic symbolizes hope and the possibility for a change. The artist I researched in the beginning of the semester was Frida Kahlo, and her main artistic style was self portraits with a gloomy vibe. That's why I included myself in the art piece, how I came up with a sad side and a happy side. My face is supposed to be neutral; torn in two from these two different situations.)
The Palabras del Corazon project, translated into "Words from the heart", was a Spoken Word project in which we were supposed to write a three minute poem with the thesis "What do I Stand for?" and then present it at our Exhibition. Spoken Word is one of many types of poetry, and what makes it distinct is that it is written to be spoken, not read. For that reason, we had to plan out our presentation very carefully, like figure out at what point we were going to speed up, and where to slow down, and what lines should be emphasized and said louder and which lines should be said so quietly they were almost a whisper. We were also encouraged to include hand gestures in as many places as possible, to help bring our poem to life. Before getting to mess with all these presentation skills however, we had to spend a reasonable amount of time writing, and drafting. We did a lot of poetry analysis, in which our whole class would watch a poem and we would write down notes based on lines that struck us, questions we had, and what we thought the poem was about. Towards the end of the project, Kay, our Humanities teacher also had us be out on the watch for other topics. We also studied a lot of different literary devices that could help add imagery to our poem. The Spanish component was that all non advanced speakers had to either have a Spanish introduction to their poem, or add 5 Spanish phrases or 10 Spanish words into their poem. The advanced speakers had to translate their whole poem into Spanish, and perform both the English and Spanish versions of their poem at Exhibition. Our class also studied Latin artists in the beginning of the semester, and we had to create a mosaic based on a theme from our poem. It was also encouraged that we make our artwork in the style of the Latin artist we personally studied at the beginning of the semester. Different themes that came up in a lot of different poems were family, an opposition towards society, and the struggle to be accepted and to achieve perfection. Overall, it was a very emotional, yet bonding night (Exhibition), and it was a great way to start of sophomore year.
Spoken Word Project
I unfortunately had to cut my poem in half to make time to read my Spanish poem as well, because we had restrictions on how much stage time we got. On the right, I've attached a video of me performing the longer, original (English) version of my poem.
If the video does not load, you can click this link here: Video link.
Below is the English version of my poem.
(If you cannot view the document, the link to view is):
On the right is a picture of me putting velcro on different art pieces so that they could be hung up for Exhibition. I first cut the velcro into smaller pieces, and then I pasted them onto all the mosaics. I also helped out at Exhibition by managing all the food that was to be served to the guests at intermission.
Below is the Spanish version of my poem.
(If you cannot view the document, the link to view is):