Music Mosaic

The Natural Woman

       For my Music Mosaic, I chose the song, “Ali Farka” performed by Monsieur le Maire de Niafunke. When I listen to this song, I automatically think of our world and how worldly it is. The eccentric melody creates this harmonious feeling of diversity. While I listened to this song over and over again, I looked back on our required reading.  In Anne Dillard’s, “Seeing”, I came to discover a reoccurring theme of nature. She fills her story with all types of wildlife. I loved this idea of nature combined with diversity. For in nature there are so many contrasting forms of life, while in humans, there is also so many contrasting forms of life. I saw that Dillard promotes this worldly feeling, that seems very similar to the feelings that I received from, “Ali Farka”. When I was finished with analyzing both my song and the reading, I chose to express my perception through a handcrafted collage. I wanted to reveal the combination of nature in Dillard’s story and diversity in Monsieur le Maire de Niafunke’s compostion, “Ali Farka”. I decided to create a face that would involve all races and have it be illuminated with all the elements of nature. 

      My first picture, I left my characters face and neck blank, awaiting the colors that would provide it life.  I started by surrounding the background with neutral soft colors that we see everyday in the nature. For these peices, I used sharper lines that were more abstract. I wanted to create a distinction between the lines of my nature and the lines of my face. After I organized my background, I began with the neck of my character. I then went to adding different colored skin tones for my face. The lines that I used for the pieces of paper skin were more curved. I then proceeded with adding eyes, then a nose, lips, ears, and finally hair. I used many different colors in my characters face, because I wanted to get the idea of diversity across. My end product reveals a woman that is filled with many different races that is enclosed with many different elements of nature. I chose a women, because I admire the particular strengths that they conceive. I also wanted the beauty of all the different races of woman to be portrayed. 

In conclusion, I discovered the theme of diversity in my composition of choice and combined it with the theme of nature that I extracted from Dillard’s story. I gave this combination life with a self made collage.I provided my first image with the pictures of nature that I believed to be relevant, and followed it with images to fill my nameless woman’s face. I wanted to display my progress of adding features onto my woman’s face in a way that you can notice the different colors and shapes. My end product was a satisfying representation of what happens when you blend nature and diversity.