In Alejandro Gets to Gardening, budding gardener Alejandro runs into a worm while seeding lettuce. A compromise eventually turns into a dance party, and friendship blossoms.
The puppets are both made and shot by me! Creative Commons assets included are in the title and credit screens and Alejandro’s Gardening book, Gardening for Stupid Idiots. My friends recorded the narration for me, and the music a creative commons asset.
Fair Use Disclaimer: “Alejandro Gets to Gardening” claims fair use of Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” according to Category 6: Quoting in order to recombine elements to make a new work that depends for its meaning on (often unlikely) relationships between the elements
I normalized and spliced together the narration using GarageBand and edited my video using Canva.
“my year as a yogi” by Olivia Sampogna is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0“my year as a yogi audio” by Olivia Sampogna is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
I’ve been practicing the physical aspect of yoga for about three years, though as I’ve started to consider teacher training, I’ve slowly begun to familiarize myself with yoga as a lifestyle, its history, and its original meaning. I thought it would be fun to start off the podcast with my singing bowl, an instrument often used to start or end a class or to meditate due to its vibrational properties (attributed to the Westernization of yoga). To an audience who has taken a yoga class or guided meditation, this sound effect would hopefully evoke images associated with yoga. The peaceful effect does not last for long, though, as in this episode we are taking an unflinching look at the transformation of yoga into an institution that perpetually creates and empowers abusers. As I delve into my three anecdotes, my voiceover is accompanied by intense chanting music that heightens and fades with the emotion of the words. The practice of chanting is rooted in The Vedas, and so it is commonly practiced as a part of contemporary yoga as well as in teacher training programs. The voice over and mixing proved to be the most difficult for me as I’m unfamiliar with these aspects of digital content. My friend who records music suggested that since I don’t have a walk-in closet, to record the voiceover under my comforter, which I worked to muffle background noise.
“Neighborhood Laundry” by Olivia Sampogna is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0. Derivative of “A Monday Washing, New York City, published 1900” published by Detroit Photographic Company retrieved from National Gallery of Art, dedicated to the public domain under CC0.
Hello! I used the image editor Canva Pro to create this derivative.
“Grandest Woman in the Canyon” by Olivia Sampogna. The image is dedicated to the public domain under CC0.
For this blog post, I mainly went through photo albums of trips I’ve taken with my mom. We’ve taken each other to so many scenic places where in each I take an obscene amount of bad photos. I have always liked the original (bottom) photo, my mom’s stance is very triumphant, and her overlaying the trunk of the tree strangely evokes her strength and grit. As you can imagine, beyond the edges of this photo are the spectacular views off the rim of the canyon. This is the view she is taking in, though I felt like because she is centered in my photo of her, it seems that she is looking at me (the camera person). Based on the rule of thirds, I cropped her onto the intersection of the right-hand third of the photo, to make it appear more like she is looking into the negative space, toward the canyon. I also got rid of the foreground of the photo to try and create some forced perspective, as if the camera is looking up at her from a much steeper angle, as if she has just climbed a mountain.
“Julie in the Grand Canyon” by Olivia Sampogna. The image is dedicated to the public domain under CC0.
The reasons behind my choices for this painting and the pairing of music are very unclear to me even though I was incredibly picky throughout the process. When it comes to visual inspiration, I almost always turn to Pinterest. I use it so often that my algorithm is perfected to my exact taste. I have even had friends ask me to use my Pinterest for their search query. It is my fourth most used app behind the New York Times’ Games. Anyway, Pinterest is where I started. I originally sought out (and found!) a watercolor painting of birds, and through much querying found artist Alice Ravenel Huger Smith.
This particular painting pleases me for several reasons. Firstly, the colors and motifs are a complete evocation of my nursery, of which I keep photos around to look at when I am feeling nostalgic. My mom chose a “fairy” theme, painting the walls purple with clouds going up onto the ceiling, and fairy lights wrapped in organza are strung into the center of the room. Secondly, the location of the image, a bayou in Charleston where Huger Smith based most of her work, reminds me of The Princess and the Frog, which is clearly the best Disney Princess movie. No, South Carolina and Louisiana aren’t that close, but they both have bayous, ok?
The first direction I thought I may go in as far as audio was a jazz/blues song from the Charleston Renaissance, which took place around the time the painting was created. The problem here was that the jazz of the time seemed too energetic for the painting, which is melancholic and seems to depict a place where time stands still. Blues on the other hand, would pay no heed to the idyllic colors and impressionism (sorry, Bessie Smith). If I had my choice, I probably would have chosen a Mazzy Star song. Mazzy Star is not in the Creative Commons.
I found the chosen song on FreeMusicArchive.org by searching “ambient jazz”, clicking through many different songs until I found the right one, then finding it again after making an account and getting redirected. I wish the song page listed the instruments used, because it is hard for me to tell if the wind instrument is a saxophone or not. The song does sound more modern than 1920’s jazz, which, to me, is perfectly fitting for a painter whose work fits so well into my very contemporary tastes.
Hello everyone! My name is Liv (she/her) Sampogna, I come to you today from my very sleepy writer’s desk in Roanoke, Virginia. I settled here after attending Roanoke College, from which I graduated with a BS in environmental studies and creative writing in 2021.
I love visiting libraries when I travel! I also need a new film camera.
If my life were a Muppet movie, I would be played by a lost and troubled Gonzo who, having no idea what planet she belongs on after college, moves in with her stranger of a roommate, Fozzy Bear (my dear friend Audrey). Luckily for Gonzo, Fozzy Bear has already found her life path as a Librarian, and enlightens Gonzo about all that it means to be a Librarian, Gonzo quickly realizes this is where she belongs and expresses this epiphany in song. Gonzo would first be accepted by a library down in Fraggle Rock where, though she has a great deal of fun and finds her footing, doesn’t find herself able to relate well enough to the cave-dwellings Fraggles. After earning enough experience, Gonzo begins working for the library on whatever planet he’s from, where he meets the rest of the Muppet’s cast, all of whom play a part in Gonzo’s library journey!
I am realizing now I don’t want to make the whole post in that format because it’s very discombobulating. I’ve been working as a Youth Librarian for Roanoke Public Libraries since 2022 and though I had never realized I was a kids-and-teens-person, I’ve definitely found my calling! I do a couple of Storytimes every week with wildly played-out themes, I have a group of artistic teens who started off as a “Zine Club” and now is just generally an art club, and I do many other miscellaneous things! This is my fourth semester at FSU, I’m very grateful that my system allows me to work as a capital “L” Librarian in the mean time.
A puppet stage I made for a pizza party-themed storytime!
Outside of librarianship, I also work at a historic theatre in my neighborhood as a bartender which is, unsurprisingly, a very fun gig. I love to read, watch YouTube videos about books, and spend hours on my book logging app, please feel free to add me on StoryGraph! I love collaging, painting, sewing, writing and unabashedly love (slow) fashion. As to why I’m excited about this class, I feel like digital media allows everyone to be an artist, as well as for the collaging of different mediums (visual, audio) which brings ease to expressing bigger ideas. Also, because digital media is so widely shareable, nurturing digital art/artists makes the internet a more inspiring and creative space. Speaking of, has anyone ever used Are.na? It’s sort of like Pinterest but for research: you can connect links, journals, videos, quotes and pictures to different topics (“channels”).
