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.