Noelle m.

Creativity is multi-faceted – it’s about problem-solving, creating new ideas and exploring the unknown. The downside of this is that innovation can be a bit “mad”.

Duality is at its core, acting as both a catalyst and an inhibitor. Thus, the root cause of confusion in the individual is almost always, ‘am I creating more problems than I can solve?‘

The creative mind resembles madness.

However, madness does not resemble creativity, nor does skill and proficiency in the arts and humanities; to dream is to live.

…

Which dreamed it?

(translation: Noelle’s creative madness).

Preparation

As much as I love food and celebration, the purpose of my party was to unite people and facilitate collaboration; in short, to be each other’s playmates. Simultaneously, I somehow ended up combining three years of obsessions into this one party – everything I admired molded together naturally.

Strawberries, high tea, characters, film and aesthetic must have been subconsciously ingrained into my soul. My sources of inspiration were Alice in Wonderland, Mood Indigo, Amélie, Laurencin Marie, Frida Kahlo, Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, Moonrise Kingdom, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Might I add, most of them are French.

And since my real birthday, 15th of April, is on Good Friday this year, I was also inspired by Easter, which fit in nicely with the Alice in Wonderland theme.

I enjoyed everything about the process of planning the party (side note: I don’t like planning!) From envisioning how to decorate the party space, to discussing ideas for food and drinks to doing these photoshoots and quirky edits, it was a joy to see these ideas come to life.

This joy was so prominent that I could care less if only one person showed up! And it was all the more joyous when people did come along and expressed the same excitement as me!

Without further ado, here is the party!

9th of April

Thanks to everyone who came! Even for those who weren’t able to, I’m still grateful for your love from afar!

Art Challenge

The girls were paired up, preferably with someone they didn’t know, and were asked to do an art challenge. One by one, the pairings picked a piece of paper which were either one of the art mediums: painting, watercolor, oil pastel, photography and sketching (portrait). They were then asked to take inspiration from a wall I decorated with ripped pages from books and small sketches from my art journals. They were allowed only one submission per pairing.

They had one hour to complete the task.

When the hour was over, we congregated to share. Here are the artworks they created.

I thin they did an amazing job and I am excited to share with you my critique! At first, I was hoping they would critique each other, but then, this didn’t work out quite as planned – I had to bear the responsibility to pick the three winners myself. I didn’t have much time to think about it, so I trusted my intuition…

Third place

Portraiture of each other/sketching.

The finishing work was quite surprising! I thought the girls were working separately on two different admissions and I was wrong! Their challenge was to do a portraiture of each other. While one person did the background, the other did the line drawings of their faces. Their process of creating it was intriguing, and I appreciated how they were able to distinguish the two people apart by using different colors to represent them. I think the background’s texture and application of color, which were a mix of harsh strokes and soft ones, created a beautiful contrast with the faces. The non-blended separation between blue and purple and the matching lipsticks further reinforced how the two were indeed two different individuals who came together. Great job, girls!

Second place

Oil pastels.

This artwork is larger than it looks! It’s incredible how hard the two worked to fill in the large empty space I gave them. I purposely chose a large paper so I could test the pairing who chose oil pastels. Much of art is composition, placement of the subject with the background and keeping the space interesting by getting rid of the uninteresting details. They managed to do all of that in this art. The colors were vibrant and worked together harmoniously, which reminded me a lot of the colors used in the art from my journals. I appreciated the direct reference to me in my outfit and bunny ears, and that you could still tell it was Alice and Wonderland because of how well it matched the background. With Alice’s eyes closed, I also interpreted this as the kind of world she feels when she’s dreaming. It brings you in! Love it!

First place

Watercolor.

Oh my gosh! It’s a worm in a mouth. It honestly gave me anxiety and chills when I first saw it. The girls used watercolor, and they used it in such a way to emphasize the natural red pigment of our oral mucosa. They added contrast with black and blue, seamlessly blending it with the yellow-tinted teeth. Of course, skin isn’t blue and black… unless it’s a deceased mouth, so this aspect brought on the ‘horror’ of the artwork. I loved that they used a quirky poem from the wall instead of choosing something that was light and easy. Because it was such an unexpected outcome, I felt it stood out to me a lot. It even triggered a perspective of what it’s like to be a dentist because it’s just highly unusual to be looking into people’s mouths like this. Great job guys!

The entries

Lianna and Emman

Painting.

The two worked on their individual pieces. It was impressive that Lianna painted such a beautiful sunrise with little experience with painting, and that Emman created such a powerful and meaning-driven artwork that can be understood by anyone who sees it. I loved how the two paintings fit together pretty nicely in terms of the color scheme and meaning. The sunrise as resembling a new day and the sunflower as representing the lack of growth when there is no sunlight – opposite inferences, but this is what makes it unique.

Corina and Luigi

Painting.

The two also worked individually. The two share in common being completely different from the starting point. Corina’s painting was initially an abstract shape art and Luigi’s was a portrait, which became a volcano then landscape art. Props to them for being flexible to the changing canvas. It’s inspiring to see how they came to their own art through following their intuition.

Kaitlyn and Jaycee

Photography.

Beautiful pieces of art. When you look closely at the flowers, you can see photoshoots of myself. I loved how difficult it seems to be to put it together – I have always wondered and admired how people created a picture out of a collage, like the one of Jesus made up of many different people’s photos. Definitely out-of-the-box and technically skilled. I appreciated the effort they put into making it and the beauty of the final result.

Diana and Jess

Watercolor.

An artwork that reminds me of my favorite pastel art! The softness of the colors and the blending are so beautiful to the eyes, and I especially love the roses and the blue hair contrast. I think the beauty of it is due to the lack of contrast. It truly represents physical beauty (and how good is that subtle structure to the face?). This art fits the romantic vibe you get from looking at art by Monet and Laurencin Marie, and I am a big fan.

Escape Room!

Clues on ripped pages and in envelopes were distributed everywhere. To be honest, even I couldn’t re-trace my thinking about the clues. They were able to solve the escape room, which was to solve a seven-number sequence.

The sequence was 21112021.

Upside down, this translates to Noelle.

I think I need to work on an escape room with someone instead of doing it on my own – in that way, the logical sequence of puzzles wouldn’t be lost because only I knew!

Overall, I really enjoyed the outcome of the party and feel tremendous love and support from the people who celebrated it with me. It goes without saying, can’t wait for next year’s!