Caitlin Phelan

 For this walk, I knew immediately the person I wanted to ask. I chose my mom because of her brain and her beliefs, she's someone who believes whole heartedly, and is the fairest person I know. I showed her the assignment and it took her awhile to give me an answer on what she would want to walk for. My mom is a strong woman of God, and cares about the safety of other, and how their lives are affected. She decided that her "walk" would happen in the middle of downtown Gilbert on a Saturday afternoon because it is the busiest time of day. This walk would be a walk defending the faith of others. She believes whether you believe in something or not, you should be able to practice it freely and without judgement. Of course she will always try to spread the gospel, but she knows that there is a way we can all coexist. When she had given me her answer, I was not shocked one bit, this seemed exactly like what she would want to walk for. She also mentioned it would be the most pe...

Alcohol kills is a project that I have always felt like I needed to do but never knew how to execute. People think going out and partying/ getting drunk and blacking out is cute. When in reality, blacking out is not a normal thing, it's a response your body has because it rejects alcohol. Alcohol goes against our every move in life and in our nature as humans. I chose to use a beer bottle from the house I'm currently dog sitting at, my family is avidly against alcohol because of how many addicts in our family exist. I chose to use this bottle as a sign, and document places that are dying or show no signs of life. This project is meant for people to see how alcohol may feel good in the moment, but the dying nature in these pictures is exactly what's going on in your body.

Maps were a way for people to take control of the geography around them, some may see them as a weakness, but others depend on them to take them to every destination. I believe that their creation was important and very vital to how we live in this world. I love D’ignazio’s writing, because he recalls maps as being used in a powerful sense. These traditional types of maps and location documentation serve governments, corporations, and everyday civilians. I think that we as artists tend to put our own personal twist and humor into something as simple as directions. We see maps as instructions, and most artists don’t enjoy being told exactly what to do step by step, so we break those barriers and show our art within the space of them. I think taking back the power of these types of items is such an interesting way to use what is called cartography as a form of creativity. His writing used mapping as a way of activism and art. My favorite reference of the series is No Dead air by Michael ...

 My friend Sofia has become a body builder, and it's always been something I found super intriguing but I never had gone close to it. She invited me to a competition and I knew I wanted to think about this topic while I was there, we had to wait a couple hour for her to come on so I decided to walk around and listen to music around the conference center. n the beginning I was cocooned by my music and was listening to 4 different songs on repeat. "Constant" by Maverick city,"Every time you cry" by The Outfield, "Take it on the run" by REO speed wagon, and "Fade into you" by Mazzy star. These songs invoked so much emotion in me for some reason. All I could think about was these people and how the think about their bodies on a daily basis, and they used to be just kids who didn't even know about body image. It made me sad that, they will do anything to their body, just for a medal. Once I took off my headphones, I got so overwhelmed by the s...

 This past week I spent 5 days in a large, evangelistic conference that was hosted by my church. This was a social territory that I was used to, but not one I tend to enjoy because of the large amounts of people. I'm extremely comfortable in my faith and my church, but there was over 2,000 people there, and I barely knew half of them. This really made it so I had to go outside of my bubble and meet others who believe the same things I do. I decided to show how I viewed it through my camera lens. I mapped where the photos were on the map of the church.

 Walk 2: Desire Lines The average weather in Phoenix is 110 per day. However there are still some insane people that like to get their exercise in the middle of the day, such as my father. I asked him to take me on his route and do shortcuts of what he does to help him stay out of the heat as much as he can. I discovered there is a lot of shade, and shortcuts to make it not as unbearable, but it was actually horrible. I also included of desired lines I noticed on our walk.

 Writing 1: Ephemeral/Site In the reading Wanderlust, it states the facts and history that goes with walking. We see walking as a normal everyday thing that is just a part of our lives. This reading divulges into the “history” of walking, which is stated to be an amateur history. It seems like history doesn’t have much to say, but as we all know, walking is much more than it seems. It is a privilege to most and impossible for others. I think what the reading means is that it’s just something thin, and nothing crazy or rich to expand about. From the readings and what I’ve gathered from living everyday life, is that it's such a privilege to be able to walk. We are able to get up and just move from place to place, we have an everyday path to the bathroom, to go to our cars, to go to work. We just take advantage of it everyday. In the reference of Walking the Line, it talked about walking as a creative exercise, which isn’t something I think of. To me walking is either a normal everyda...

 For my walk, I decided to do sense of smell and all of the different smells I encountered within my walk. Instead of doing 2; 20 minute walks, I decided to do 1; 40 minute walk. My sense of smell is definitely my strongest, and is a blessing and a curse. Some days it's nice to smell a salty air scented candle, or fresh baked cookies from the oven, but when I sit next to someone and they have on the most horrendous body spray, or the smell of food after it's been in my fridge and molded. I deeply inhaled and tried to smell every last molecule throughout my walk. Wet mud  Hot asphalt dead grass horse crap bird crap pinecone-waiting for fall sewer hot metal trash