Instruction
Illustrate or write about the best gift you’ve ever received. Keep it concise, but convey the proper emotions it makes you feel.
Purpose
Understand what gift-giving elicits in others and how it can be perceived. Practice only allowing the most essential elements of something bleed through in your work, think of materiality, style, color, etc.
My Interpretation
I wanted to not only convey what my gift was in words but also style. The sketchy, black and off-white color scheme highlights the memory I have of my best gift, a gray Cleveland Indian’s “C” baseball hat, which is fuzzy, distant, and very melancholy. It is fragmented and I don’t like thinking of that time very often. I was a very different person, specifically much more rude, aggressive, and standoffish. My then-partner gave this hat to me for my birthday in 2016, when I was 16 in high school (the summer I was to become a junior), they were a year older. I wore this hat all the time, to workout, to lounge, when my hair was too messy to bother with. It became worn rather quickly but I still often use it today, it’s a memory of a person I treated poorly and wish I could apologize to, but not someone I really want to see again. Its a strange bittersweet mix of emotions that remind and humble me everyday. The gift itself isn’t necessarily the best ~thing~ I’ve ever recieved, but it has become the best gift to me as it has kept me more grounded and reflective of the past, almost a warning to not be what I was before and that everyday people change. That developing understanding is the true gift.