For a class project, we were asked to take a word, poem, song lyric, or something written that means something to us and make it into a word art picture. After some careful consideration, I chose the poem by author Amanda Lovelace, whose books "The Princess Saves Herself In This One" and "The Witch Doesn't Burn In This One" inspire me still to this day.

Word Art ProjectAnna Friguglietti

As someone who has grown up in an extremely conservative environment, becoming empowered as a woman has proven to be an extremely trying, but ultimately rewarding, adventure. It can't be explained how much it meant to discover that women are not a subservient being, made by a capital "G" god to simply be there for the all-powerful man. Even while I was in that period of time, I had wondered what else was there for women besides teaching, music, and homemaking. It seemed so limited that it honestly crushed my spirit in my high school years as I looked on towards college. I want my work to project how happy and strong I felt when I discovered feminism.

I chose the colors that I did to emulate just that. Blue to represent peace, which is something that I feel now knowing that I have the freedom of my own choice. Red to represent passion, which obviously linked to how determined I am to have equality in my life. Brown is to call attention to how much I prioritize this when making decisions and how I deal with my siblings. And last but not least, black, for the realization that it is scary and hard to push against the patriarchal society that we have as the norm today.

I also decided on the design that I did to show how unequal and confusing the concept of feminism has gotten. Author Kristie Fleckenstein notes that "gender-coded qualities are made, not born" and I do think that it is a very major point in the confusion. Feminism, by actual definition, is the equality of all people, hence the large word in the center. The way all the other words seem to branch off is to bring out all of the communities that are supposed to be held up by this support and equality. Sadly, the words are out of order because feminism has been so miscommunicated and jumbled.

As for the font, I wanted to make it "pretty", which is what we think of when we think of princesses or the classical fairytale "damsel in distress". Of course, this is another societal standard because the whole point of the poem is the act of woman metaphorically taking up the sword and slaying their dragons, as stated: "once upon a time, the princess rose from the ashes her dragon lovers made of her & crowned herself the mother-fucking queen of herself. - how's that for a happily ever after?"

Overall, we have a patriarchal culture, and it's one that is proving to rapidly become outdated. If we want to be able to move forward, we need to include everyone in the future, and that's what I hope that can be conveyed in this project.