For the subject of both my realistic and abstract caretaker studies, I chose my sister, Mary. As the eldest of three children, she has frequently been given responsibility of my other sister and I. In my upbringing, she has taken the role of the mature big sister. She is the one who offers criticism and counsel at every turn in my life.

For the realistic pose of my sister, I sought to portray the expression she gives me when I do something wrong. When I disappoint her, she will put her hands on her hips, tilt her head, and raise her eyebrow , as if to say, “Really, Alvin?” She gives me this expression almost on a daily basis, so I believe to put it in her realistic pose would embody her perfectly. The class was pretty much spot on in guessing the pose was of a female scolding a child.

The abstract pose was also of my sister, but it represented another side of her. In the pose, I tilted my feet slightly inward, clasped my hands together with a finger over my mouth, and tilted my head downward. This pose was meant to be an abstraction of my sister’s sometimes shy and sheepish nature. Although she is very comfortable around me because we grew up in the same house, she tends to be somewhat timid around others. She will not say whats really on her mind around strangers. Rather, she’ll reserve those emotions for the family and close friends.

For my caretaker study, I decided to emulate my dad both realistically and abstractly. My dad’s a funny person who loves to talk. Whenever he meets someone new, he tends to talk nonstop. He loves being social. All of my friends who have met him think that he’s the funniest/coolest dad out there, but I personally think he’s weird [in a good way]. He can be annoyingly suffocating, strict, and overbearing, but I think that overall, I’m a pretty lucky guy to have him as a dad.

For my realistic pose, I decided to do a pose that he does when he’s just sitting and listening to music or when he’s sitting anywhere and just people watches. When he does this, he just sits and looks ahead with one leg atop the other. He has a slight smile every time I see him do this pose; I don’t know why.

For my abstract pose, I decided to highlight his indecisiveness. To do so, I took off part of my sweatshirt and one of shoes, and I tried to look confused. My dad always needs confirmation on a place to eat or on something to do before actually doing it. For example, if we want to eat out for dinner and he’s in the driver’s seat, he’ll keep asking what we want to eat (and we’ll tell him), but he ends up choosing some other place. He doesn’t know what he wants most of the time. This doesn’t mean he can’t make up a decision, though. He works as a Senior Vice President at Citigroup, so he has to make decisions; but as a regular dad, he’s pretty indecisive.

I chose to use my dad as the subject of my caretaker studies for several reasons. My father has always been a very prominent figure in my life. Although he was very strict when I was younger, a lot of my personality and interests take after his. My dad is sometimes blunt and unreasonable, but he has never ceased to support me in all that I do.

I chose the first pose to be my dad’s realistic pose because it was something he used to do after he broke his collar bone earlier in the year. He would sit on the couch relaxed and watching TV, but his right hand would be massaging his collar bone, and even after it had already healed, he kept touching it out of habit. Although he doesn’t do it as often, there are still times that I find my dad in this same pose, hence I chose it to represent him in this study. I think this pose represents my dad’s calmer, more relaxed side. He is very opinionated and unafraid to speak his mind, but he also knows how to wind down and hold back when he knows it’s not the right time to speak out.

The second, abstract pose represents my dad’s strictness. For a long time, up until about my junior year of high school, my dad kept a very short leash on my social life. And during that time of my life, there were many times I felt very suffocated. I wanted to speak my mind and reason that he was not being fair, but could never find the courage to do so until I reached the third year of high school. This no longer really applies now that I am in college, but the way my father raised me has had a very large, if not the largest impact on who I am today.

The first pose, contrary to what most people thought, was of my mother. She would always wake me up early in the morning, screaming into a phone with anger and annoyance. To be honest, the only reason why I’m able to wake up in the mornings on the weekends is because of my mother screaming into the phone. She’s a very busy person – sometimes I hardly see her in the mornings, afternoons, and nights. She runs errands for my father, and then she has to take care of problems of numerous condos and apartments. In short, my mother is a landlady. My father on the other hand, is an architect. So while my father creates these buildings, my mother rents them out. Since my father is overseas most of the time, my mother has to deal with the tenants. She has to deal with them almost everyday, and most of the time it is through the phone. My raised hand signals her angry hand gestures, as if saying “what is the problem?” or “what do you mean?” or “I have done everything you asked for already, why are you still unsatisfied?”. My opened mouth signifies the way my mother screams into the phone occasionally, and the way my leg is propped up shows her old habits of propping up her leg. Her phone rings at least five times a day – even when she was on vacation, leaving her cell phone with my sister, it rang nonstop. My sister had to be a substitute for my mother, and I could almost see my mother in my sister as she also talks into the phone and makes the odd hand gestures.

My second pose though, is of my sister. The comments people had were correct – my raised hand and tilted head signifies asking for help. However, the pose meant more of giving help than receiving. Curled fingers are more natural than a flat hand, so giving help was more natural to my sister than receiving. My stretched hand represented how she would always be there to help me, or anyone even, whenever they needed help. She grew up with having to take care of two younger sisters, and knew of her responsibilities as the oldest child. She always tried to do the right thing and was very proper, which is the reason why I stood up straight with my feet planted firmly on the ground, side by side. Even though she knew she had a lot of responsibilities she asked for help whenever she needed it. She didn’t try to take on the world without wanting anyone else to help her, and she knew her limits. Although we don’t see each other as much as we did when I was younger, I know that she’ll always be there to help me, and that I’ll always be there to help her now.

Both my realistic and abstract poses represented the same person in my life. My dad. He’s actually my step-father, but he’s the only father I’ve known since I was three years old, so I don’t think of him any differently than anyone else thinks of their dad. Sometimes I think I’m more like him than I am my mom.

The first pose with the hand in pocket and the other behind the head is one I see almost every day that I encounter when my dad becomes lost in his thoughts. He is a very reserved, thoughtful person and speaks slowly and in few words when he does choose to speak, giving each word he says more weight. My dad is a mathematician so his mind is constantly finding new problems to dissect, though rarely does he seem to consider minute “everyday problems.” He spends hours alone reading about semantics, computer language, and new ideas in quantum physics… things that only his mind can filter through like a machine, but with human thoughts. When he stands like this, to me he has a very wise and weathered look. His body is loose, his stance relaxed, but his hand scratching his head reminds us that there is a lot going on behind his non-revealing neutral gaze. When he is stressed, he contains a lot of his thoughts within his head. So it’s never quite clear if he is just contemplating life, puzzled by some new mathematical problem, or actually feeling tense or worried. When he scrunches up his face in a squint, you know that he is deep in thought, and most likely, he won’t tell you about it. To others, my dad may seem mysterious and distant, but when I encounter him poised like this, I might ask him what he’s thinking or bothering him, or maybe just leave him be.

The second pose with the slight squat and rounded arms is also meant to represent my dad. I was actually inspired by tai chi, because my dad has been practicing the martial art as a form of exercise and meditation for over 10 years. Tai chi emphasizes the flow of energy, or “chi”, throughout the body. The knees are always slightly bent and the arms convey a combination of fluid and sharp movements. The pose I performed was meant to show stability, calm, and self-contained energy. My feet were solidly planted with the weight equally dispersed from toe to toe, my knees bent, my core straight and strong with my weight centered. I tried to reach a state of perfect balance, for my dad’s presence feels this way–calm, certain, and secure. The reason I rounded my arms was not an embrace, as the class thought, but a shape meant to show fullness and continuity, and well as self-reliance. The arms center his being and show that his thoughts (as I said before) are kept in his own space. And though he is a solitary, self-reliant person, I wanted to create a rounded shape to represent this, to evoke the energy of tai chi, rather than an arms-crossed, closed-off stance. I think there is a large difference between solitary and being closed, and in this case my dad is the former. His company and his words bring me a sense of balance and composure — that is what I wanted to recreate.