ABSGELLER

Class taken at UNC of Greensboro with Professor Maria Lim in the Spring of 2019. Shoe Project I selected my “hero” to be my significant other, Nick, with whom I have lived for the past almost two and a half years. I selected Nick because of his tremendous influence in my artwork, my perspective of my work, and my person in general since I have known him. I used to do create work for the sake of others -- always. It was either for class, for my mom, for commission, for other people… etc. His unconditional support of my work, and genuine interest, was a turning point for realizing the types of works I truly wanted to create. Initiating with his actual shoe, I knew immediately I wanted there to be fire and water. That was the first painting I ever made him, it was only 4x6 watercolor and pencil, with a bit of colored pencil. All it was to me were doodles, like swirls, but he was completely obsessed with it! He put it up next to his bed. I know he still has it some...

Class taken at UNC of Greensboro with Professor Maria Lim in the Spring of 2019. Woodsie Woodsie - Andrea Santolim Geller Woodsie’s a hell-of-a-person, teacher, and friend to me. We really did get to know each other my first year at Weaver in a muddle of hate. I judged her for her scrambled-ness and she, my arrogant curiosity. The more she assumed me to be a brat (probably entirely justified), the more I assumed her to be a boring, crazy art teacher. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Of our entire Visual Arts class of 2016, I’m probably the alumni who sees her the most regularly nowadays. She did indeed become a paralegal, very recently after my mother became a paralegal herself! Knowing that even the teacher I felt inspired by could let go of visual arts entirely in her day-to-day life and pursue an entirely new career, I found comfort, and decided to do something along the same. Obviously, I am much younger and have spent but a decade honing my craft, w...

Class taken at UNC of Greensboro with Professor Maria Lim in the Spring of 2019. Identity Story Quilt Reflection - Quilt Project - Andrea             The main idea of my work was obviously, my story, written for the “prompt” that we had in class that utilized adjectives which describe ourselves. My story was about a boy (supposed to be me, I was very boy-ish when I was young) who thought his grandparents’ keys were magical, and could be used to create a portal that could take him anywhere. He took the keys to the park, and while waiting for the magic, fell asleep. His dream took him to a witch, to whom he requested that he be taken to the United States, to get “opportunities” so as to bring them back to his grandparents and family. The witch could not help him. When the boy woke up, he was in bed. I went back and forth as to who should be standing over him -- his mom or his grandparents. After all, it is dif...

Class taken at UNC of Greensboro with Professor Maria Lim in the Spring of 2019. Collage Project Stereotyping and Prejudice Project - Andrea Geller On the topic of stereotyping and prejudice, I selected Judaism and Jewish people. My father is Jewish, and I grew up around a number of Jewish holidays and families, of whom are dear to my heart still. Focusing on a particular point in Jewish history, I decided to do further research on a topic I had previously fixated upon during a Religion and Politics class: the German-Jewish Enlightenment.  The Enlightenment as a whole obviously lasted from the late 1600s all the way until the early 1800s. In my previous class, we were assigned an excerpt from Batnitzky, a Princeton professor who studies religion and particularly Judaism. The work I read of hers discussed a number of debaters from the German Enlightenment period in the late 1700s.  To summarize, Judaism had never really been labeled or defined as a relig...

Class taken at UNC of Greensboro with Professor Maria Lim in the Spring of 2019. Paper Sculpture Project Paper Sculpture Reflection - Andrea Geller  The theme of my paper sculpture project is overpopulation. I selected this topic because it is often considered the root cause of many other global issues, both in anthropological and political contexts. Problems in the world that are affected by overpopulation include but are not limited to the exploitation of limited resources, environmental destruction, increased warfare, hunger and starvation, and lack of clean water. Overpopulation has been a crucial factor in systemic oppression in that the world powers popularize masses through targeted media in order to exploit them for labor, in turn establishing a cyclical structure that is extremely difficult to break free from. Although this is largely due to capitalism also, overpopulation is an element which capitalism utilizes in order to create and establish mobility f...

Written for my Political Science class on International Relations, taught by (an awesome professor) Dr. Michael Broache in the Fall of 2018 at UNC Greensboro. I believe the grade I got on this was a 93, points taken off mainly because he did not fully comprehend what was my definition of 'hegemony.' So I wrote a second paper, attempting to define it. See: Hegemony 2 Andrea B. Santolim Geller The Accuracy and Necessity of Hegemony PSC 240-01 Dr. Michael Broache Paper Word Count: 1,222 When discussing idyllic circumstances for promoting and practicing cooperative methods between international entities, within and without formal institutions, we inevitably face the ultimate repeating obstacle: anarchy. As is commonly understood in modern-day discussion of political theory, anarchy is less so defined by inherent chaos or otherwise constant opposition between parties of influence and is more so defined by a lack of a central unifying sovereignty. The chaos...

Written for my Political Science class on International Relations, taught by (an awesome professor) Dr. Michael Broache in the Fall of 2018 at UNC Greensboro. I think the grade I got on this was an 89. Written in response to feedback to my first paper, Hegemony 1 .  He had told me he did not understand my definition of hegemony, and so I attempted to define it. Andrea B. Santolim Geller Defining Hegemony PSC 240-01 Dr. Michael Broache Word Count: 1,122 In International Relations, sovereign entities establish avenues of influence often with a realist theory of self-advancement. This is engineered through hard and soft power, the former of which is more typically exercised by dominant regimes. Hard power is coercive and utilizes either the threat or employment of force, and debatably specific instances of sudden cessation of resources. Wielded in a variety of ways, soft power is most productively exercised by economic means. Examples categorized by globalizati...