Sweet Nothings
by Samanthah Santana, Junior Ramirez, Grace Levy
Our main goal with this piece was to showcase the beauty of unconventional love. We showed a literal interpretation of classic cliches by framing them in an eccentric frame that leaves a Valentine's meets Halloween crossover. Love is a concept we are so confused and baffled by so we contain it with these "sweet nothings" that don't truly grasp what love is and can be.
Self Love Club
by Matti Merdler
Love is found in many forms, but self love is something that's so important and often forgotten. Having 'self love' isn't simply taking a bath, lighting candles and putting on a face mask on–it's a complicated idea that can be really difficult to achieve. It's something that comes when you respect yourself, know your worth and trust your own instincts. The graphics I designed are made to fit the screen of your phone as a wallpaper, hopefully serving as a daily reminder to stay on the path to loving yourself.
La Vie En Rose
by Kenna Bandford, Mariel Cathcart,
Sophie Murray
Setting out to uncover perceptions of love, we posted a poll to Instagram containing the following questions. What is love? What can you equate love to, if anything? What is the difference between self-love and that of others? These responses were read to provide the baseline for our project. Through the process of bringing these responses to life, we were able to explore our own perceptions of love and add them as a lens to the video.
A or B
by Julian Croman
I have two routines
to waking up
Alone
and
With you.
I wake up and roll out of bed.
Brush my hair and teeth and skin
And walk out the door.
With you.
Your morning breath fills the room
I breathe your soul
And exhale mine
We stay tangled
Until I decide
to put the coffee on.
DAISY
by Corenna Council and Mia Giacobazzi
I've never experienced love for other humans outside of my family and friends, but I do fall in love every time I meet/see a dog on the street.
Love&Smile
by Sebastian Healy
The feeling of love can be a very nuanced thing to try to descriptive or capture in anything. In person it can be even harder to show besides through general affection. For me, nothing can show love visually quite like a genuine smile. A smile can radiate warmth and love and all the abstract things that can't really be described. I wanted to capture that feeling of warmth in video form using snippets from little moments in time of my friends and family having fun. Trying to emulate that feeling in the viewer, and even hopefully get the viewer smiling themselves.
WHAT IS LOVE?
By Callum Champ
For me love is important, but I didn't really know how to put it into words. So I decided that asking some of the people I love would be a good way to find out.
Cheesily Yours
by Hayden Ogden
I used to be able to eat all the cheese, milk and yogurt my heart desired. But things change as we get older, I like many others have a lactose sensitivity. Which means eating Mac n Cheese is an entire ordeal I feel the need to put myself through. Which when you think about it love is the same way.
Like Mac n cheese you make my stomach tighten, squirm and occasionally churn.
Like Mac and cheese my mother will always warn me about the heart ache you could bring me.
But unlike Mac n cheese you make butterflies appear in my stomach every single time you smile at me.
Like mac n cheese I am willing to pop my anti-lactose medication and give up all other dairy products for you.
Baby you make all the milk, yogurt and cheese in the world seem flavorless and unsatisfying.
No almond milk or vegan cheese could ever replace the way you bring me comfort after a hard day.
Like Mac n cheese I never seem to get enough of you and you always keep me guessing, some days you have breadcrumbs but someday you are just Kraft. But that's okay because I love you when you are a 5 cheese, bread crumbs brie infused dish and when you are the last box of kraft mac n cheese that we forgot was in the back of the pantry.
Unlike Mac n cheese I'm not counting carbs and calories but counting how many time I can make you laugh. How many laugh lines you have when you smile and deciding which ones I take credit for. How often you try to love almond milk for me..
There will be days that we run out of butter, or the stomach aches won't feel worth it anymore. Days where we wonder why we put our stomach through this when others foods exist. But steak, pie and soup well they are nice but they simply can't compete with you.
cheesily yours,
HO
The Oedipus Complex
by Melissa Perrett
'The Oedipus Complex' is inspired by the psychological term coined by Freud that explains the competition men tend to feel with their fathers. Love is not one dimensional. Parental relationships, even strained ones, are one of the fiercest forms of love.
What Makes You
Feel Loved?
by LaDara Brydson, Nicole Dell'Angelica, Mason Hughes
This is the digital representation of a potential interactive installation piece designed to emphasize the love we give and receive from those around us, and the importance in taking a second to consider it. We chose to do this for the 'Love Story' brief because our connections to one another is arguably the best love story of all.
Love is
(Looking in a Mirror)
by Mason Hughes
This piece is kind of a personal description of what love has been and will be in my life. So many different things but all with the same connection. Love for myself, love that I am looking for, love that I have. As for a connection to the brief, it is a love story. For myself, for my life, for my future.
With Love From
Mom & Dad
by Madison Whitcher
After reading the brief, I asked both of my parents to write a love letter, to anyone, about anything, and hoped their responses would lead to further inspiration. Coincidentally, or maybe not, both of my parents wrote back a love letter to me. I pulled excerpts from each of their letters to use as phrases throughout the collage. Other images used in the collage I was inspired to find and add because of other sections in their letters.
CD's Last Longer
than Lovers
by Jill Sullivan
I used to steal Fleetwood Mac CDs from my dad when I was a little girl. It sparked one of my earliest and most enduring loves of all—music. It's been about 15 years since that first CD and as you can see, my love has grown a bit. Each CD here is a part of my heart. They've stuck around when other love's left.
Let’s Go To the Movies: The Inevitable Crucifixion of Potential First Date Chemistry AKA A Drunken Review of the Film Beautiful Boy
by Fabrizio Villalpando
“Please silence all of your devices and enjoy the show.” Light dramatically escapes the theater.
Black.
My date silences her cell phone. I look at her. She looks at me. Our flirty expressions connect and cut through the darkness like sun rays slicing the early morning horizon. We share a genuine moment. Just two people collaborating in the human condition, creating memories and enjoying each other’s company. A pair of strangers, using stories, smiles and laughter to chisel away at unfamiliarity and cure loneliness.
The projector screen expands. The film’s title-card appears.
“BEAUTIFUL BOY.”
My date initiates conversation. She must be thinking out loud. This has to be a mistake. This is not supposed to happen. This is highly inappropriate. I’m left speechless. I hope she joins me. Silencing ourselves is implied when silencing our cell phones. The film continues. Plot is thickening. Characters are developing. My date is unaware. She continues to speak. Although her voice is sweeter than honey, my date’s words travel like an angry swarm of bees amongst the reasonably irritated crowd. She utters shamelessly. She has become a linguistic AR-15 carelessly pumping .45 caliber rounds of sweet nothings—intended for my ears only—into the audience. Her speech is pleasant to the ear like a warm pit of crackling embers. The crowd only sees a chemical fire. We are a flaming buoy in a sea of etiquette abiding citizens, determined to extinguish her immediately and effectively.
Timothée Chalamet shoots up heroin.
Letter from the Editor
by Vinh Bui
The next two letters from the editor will be a little different than our first one. Because Maggie and I are the two Roamanians who are graduating this year, we’ll take turns writing these next couple of editors’ notes. So here goes my solo. *Cue domes to zero, spotlight center stage*
My love story is like anyone else’s. A happenstance meet-cute followed by a deepening of affection: will they? Separation. Won’t they? Reunion. Finally, a ride into the sunset. Of course, I’m talking about the love of my life, pizza.
Before we go on any further, let’s define our terms, namely, what the fuck does love mean? In the words of the great Haruki Murakami,“Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves.” That’s pretty good, albeit a bit of a bummer. I think my dad would agree with James Baldwin that “love is a battle, love is a war.” Not because he isn’t an affectionate guy, but because as a Vietnamese refugee he understands the cost and burden of love.
Personally, I understand love as a state of prolonged reciprocity. You give and you take as much as the object of your love gives and takes.
Which brings me back to pizza. I love pizza because it has given me homes to live in, clothes to wear, and most importantly, a BS in Advertising from the University of Oregon. Not one but two of my college jobs including my current position of Asset Transportation Specialist (i.e. Delivery Boy) at the iconic Track Town Pizza have come from “flingin’ pies”. And because of my definition of love, I must give back an equal share of what ‘za has given me - this letter is my recompense.
When I was 16, I worked under the table at one of those self-service car washes. I cleaned out the big vacuums with a shovel and picked up hypodermic needles around the garbage bins. After that, I found a job moving folding tables and chairs for events like the Wine and Cheese Festival. My coworkers were all twice my age and could carry three times the load that I could. After my first day on the job, I cried big tears of inadequacy.
So my first day working at a pizza place was like a dream. People were friendly, it was indoors, the restaurant always smelled like basil and fennel. Pizza seemed to descend from the heavens into my open arms.
I’ve been asked many times throughout my college career why I have a restaurant job. Why not get a job at the Allen Hall tech desk or at one of the libraries? Why not do something that will look good on a resume? In a moment of perceived sympathy, a fellow student told me that he wished that he had a job. When asked why he wouldn’t go get one, he told me that he was too busy with school and that he, “worked out, like, a lot.”
I think that this is a major problem in the UO Ad program and it doesn’t bode well for the industry either. Some students can’t be picky with the jobs that sustain them. Some can’t afford to buy a camera, an iPad, or even the monthly cost of Adobe Creative Suite.
I swear, I’m not looking for pity or for those with privilege to feel bad about themselves. This is an ode to pizza and all of my beautiful pizza people who work past midnight and then wake up for their 8 A.M. lecture the next day. All I want is for them to get the recognition and opportunities afforded to my friend who is too busy getting swole to find a job because his dad owns a car dealership (I’m just guessing here).
My basic point is this: agencies want to see clean, professional portfolios and robust resumes, but in order to do that, students must have the economic freedom to invest in those things. The jobs that look good on your one-pager usually don’t pay well and classwork alone usually won’t be enough to wow employers. You might be thinking, “well tough tamales, pull yourself up by your Nikes and knock your schoolwork out of the park.” And to that I’d say that students who put themselves through a university get far fewer swings at the ball.
It’s not all bad because there is a very simple solution to this problem. Agencies should ask about what isn’t on a resume. Try to find out what the person had to do to get where they are and value those skills and experiences. That will make students who are also working 25+ hours per week feel like their tremendous efforts aren’t for naught. Interesting people make interesting ads and my band of baristas, bartenders, and delivery boys have some stories to tell.
Even though my love story may be unconventional, my affection for pizza remains unwavering. I’ve paid my rent with ricotta and lived my life with linguica. For that I owe everything to my darling pizza.
I hope you take some time to appreciate whatever you love while flipping through the following Roam submissions. I suggest doing so over a slice.
Love,
Vinh