Perspective can be defined in two ways:
1. The representation of a 3D object using 2D lines, in a way where the object still feels real…
I originally made this piece for an assignment in my ART109 class at the University of Miami. We were supposed to use the pencil tool in Adobe Illustrator to trace a picture that we had taken. The final product had to be black and white and either cropped or edited to be perfectly square. I knew that I couldn’t crop the top without losing the mountain peak, and I couldn’t crop the bottom without losing part of the llama’s legs. With the help of my teacher, we Photoshopped the original image into a square, and then I got to work tracing everything in extreme detail.
Before
After
Final
My grade was dependent on this project, and I probably spent 10-12 hours in the end. I tried to use varying thicknesses and lines to try to show the shadows made by the sun and the nuances of the mountain. My goal was perspective, both because that would get me a stronger final grade as well as because it represented what this trip meant to me.
2. A particular point of view in regards to a situation…
Last summer, I had the opportunity to accompany my mother on a medical mission trip to Piura, Peru. We flew into Cuzco and spent the first few days exploring Machu Picchu before continuing on to our final destination. The view was incredible, I was obsessed with the llamas and stray dogs around the area, and we stayed in a beautiful hotel eating delicious food. It was perfectly touristy and I even got a little sunburnt.
Quite the opposite was the case in Piura. My family and I stayed in the basement of a church for seven days, waking up at dawn to volunteer and returning late in the evening for church (in Spanish) and dinner. We slept in bunk beds with mosquito nets, but at least we had private showers. That was probably because my mom was VIP, but I definitely appreciated not being forced to use the community showers. Most of the meals were variations on chicken and rice, very different from multiple courses with wine at our other hotels. Nonetheless, we were on a religious medical mission, so we were going to eat what we were given, and the cooks were very creative and tried their hardest to make every meal decent.
My mother was invited as part of a surgical team that would be using the church facilities as a makeshift OR to remove hernias (mostly umbilical) from locals who had no other opportunity for treatment. With only two surgeons on the trip, my mom and the other doctor were cranking out 7-8 operations a day. It was absolutely incredible to see the team of doctors and nurses working together to get so much done, and due to a lack of experienced medical personnel I was asked several times to help out with pre- and post-op care. I even got the opportunity to assist my mother in surgery, which I will likely never be able to do again. That’s me on the left holding things and my mama being a lady boss on the right.
Once I made it known that I was from Miami and had studied Spanish for years – long enough to get by conversationally – I was made a medical interpreter. I can’t even describe how nerve-racking it was to have to come up with words like “burn” or “ice” on the fly, or having to give medication instructions like “toma dos pastillas cada dia” and hoping they understood through their anesthesia, pain, and my terrible accent. I was taken on house visits; where I witnessed dirt floors, holes in the roof, and dangerous electrical connections. And yet everyone was happy. I witnessed 60+ year old men and women who had had SURGERY just days prior, up and walking around and helping make dinner.
Watching my mother save lives and seeing how happy the people we helped were with what little they had… It taught me perspective. To appreciate my laptop and phone and house with floors and all of those material things I take for granted most of the time. I think everyone should volunteer abroad at least once. To see how the majority of the world lives and understand that you can definitely survive with less. To realize that your petty first-world-problems really aren’t worth worrying about. It’s hard to write this post without sounding presumptuous about the blessings that I know I have, but I hope I was able to get my point across anyway.