Where you are or where you’ve been has a major impact on you. Places shape people into who they are and who they will be. Depending on where this is, it can leave a very positive impact, or even an extremely negative one. For example, a not good person might have the excuse of how they were raised, but can also have a lot to do with where they were raised. If a certain place is very dark, outdated, not cared for, or not safe, it is going to have some sort of effect on someone. Place not only affects people’s identities, but cultures as well. It is a known fact, wherever one travels, and it can be anywhere in the world, the culture there is probably going to be so different from wherever they were coming from. Cultures are formed and adapt based on place and its resources, climate, geography etc… These cultures, based on place, then again have a major impact on the people. Places are extremely important, because they shape people and the surroundings, without us really knowing it.
There are people, who do realize the importance and beauty of place, and so they then choose to express that through their work. Paul Nash is one artist who is well known for his quite abstract landscape paintings. Although his paintings appear abstract and not realistic to what we would exactly see if we looked out the window, they still give a major sense of place. Just looking at a painting you can easily understand what or more so where he is trying to show. His interpretations of place as a whole are very interesting and cool to look at because of the fact it isn’t a traditional looking “place,” but yet you can still easily get the point and physical picture he is portraying. Justin Favela is another artist that has an interesting way of showing place. Justin is a mix-media artist that does mainly large installations and sculptures in a sort of piñata style. Through his work he is able to express not only basic place visuals, but history, society, and his Hispanic culture as well. Being raised in Las Vegas is what a lot of his pieces reference to and try to show, because of the pretty big Latino population there. So, not only is he physically showing place, but his culture as well because of this place. Brent Toderain is a city planner and urbanist, which means he expresses place in a more literal way for his work. He has been in the industry for around thirty years, so he has a clear vision and idea how places should be. Although he likes to focus on public transportation and car culture, he does have influence over zoning and other areas that are super important. Just going through his feed I’ve learned so much about what goes into these things, and how normal people don’t realize it, but a lot of work goes into city planning and designing. The vibe he gives off through the pictures looks amazing and looks like places that I would want to be surrounded by. These three people, although very different in how they express place, all are important and impactful. They each give a new and interesting perspective, which is good because in the end the goal should be to learn about places, to then work on how we can make these places better.
In general the world has taken a major turn to being very techy and extremely industrialized. And honestly it isn’t always amazing. It is cool to see the big cities and what we can do in these cities with all the lights and technology, but it’s also nice to keep things simple. I think peoples experience with place could be cleaner and more enjoyable. I feel like some things have become over complicated, with so much going on that it looks messy. Everyone of course is entitled to their own opinion, and some vibe with a certain style over others, but I feel like there should be a healthier and cleaner change made as a hole. The newer generation is always going to have their technology, that will never go away, but that doesn’t mean it needs to take over every aspect of our lives. I think places need to be more organic, still modern, but just with a more natural, clean, green feel. Personally, seeing color and life outside makes things better, versus giant gray ior brown boxes. And I do believe the baby boomers had a major effect on the newer generations, because while they were pushing for all the new tech stuff and trying to make things bigger and “better,” it can kind of come off as boring and yet overwhelming because they weren’t taking the chance to appreciate and see what they had because they were too busy taking it over. The idea of being stuck in a small box, in a building isn’t all that exciting for everyone. People nowadays want to sort of take a moment to take life in and experience things. Now there are so many ways to do so, one being virtually with technology, but with that we are still able to get so much out of it. Millennials are more open to individuality l, and to each their own sort of way of life; so, there can be someone who wants to dive deep into virtual worlds, while others want to go out and physically see and experience what’s out there.
My vision of place in the future is to hopefully be less overpoweringly industrialized, and more bright and full of life. Of course it can still have that sense of technology and improvement, but somehow incorporate it with life and positive vibes. Things shouldn’t be too overpowering, I would like the future of places to be cleaner and truly healthier for us. The giant buildings are not always a good thing. Put some more trees up, we need it. Also, hopefully places can be more open and expressive. I feel like for a while everyone and everywhere was trying to be the same, and that’s boring. I want to see cultures grow and spread and truly shine for what they are. Traditional culture shouldn’t have to die out or be a thing of the past. If anything, they should be more present in the future. It wouldn’t be that interesting if every place was the same in the future; what would even be the point of that. What makes this world so interesting and amazing is the fact that we have so many different places that then shape and have these different people that we can learn from. In terms of the present future though, and how I expect to navigate place because of the pandemic, I will try to put more effort in learning about place. Because I now know that physically being in new places isn’t going to be a new thing, I should try and learn now through the resources I have about other places. Just like some things can’t be experienced, like meeting new people on campus or bumping into people in a mall, it is up to me to use our technological resources and outlets to do so and try new things and “see” new places in a totally new way. After college though, depending on how much the pandemic decided to take over it, I plan to go out and put in the effort to physically experience places. I’m sure we’ve all put in the time of doing things virtually with being in quarantine, so it only makes sense to want to go out in the world, be outside more, travel, learn, see, and experience all the wonderful places out there.
