GMUBuzz: Mason Things That Catch My Eye

By Buzz McClain

Tianna Wynn says she’s not sure how the idea came up. “I honestly don’t know,” she says. “I think I was looking at photographs of famous peopleand then it just came to me. It seemed like a good idea.”

 Wynn and classmate Sha’Air Hawkins were looking for a creative way to commemorate Black History Month. The idea that Wynn proposed was to recreate iconic photos of celebrated African American heroes from the past. “And once we got started it just manifested into this whole project,” Wynn says.

The George Mason University seniors scoured Google for images of “those who don’t that much credit during Black History Month but you know they did a lot of great things,” Hawkins says. They came up with actress Dorothy Dandridge, singer Marvin Gaye, writers Langston Hughes and Alice Walker, acting couple Ozzie Davis and Ruby Dee ,sit-in heroes the Greensboro Four, and others and secured the use of a small photography studio in the Student Media department of the Hub (SUB II).

The project was not related to a class, there was no credit involved, and they made the images at their own expense. “It was just me and Tianna just doing what we like to do,” Hawkins says.The pair set out to cast the photos with students, design makeup, find costumes, dress the sets, perfect the lighting, and snap images that paid homage to their subjects. The results are elegant, sophisticated, and remarkably effective recreations.

Wynn, who doesn’t own a camera, directed the photo sessions. “I’m the one studying the [original] photograph,” she says. “But

first I have to mimic the pose myself and then try to move the person into it. It’s a lot harder than it would seem.”

And now what? “We’re extending the project to Women in History Month” into March, Wynn says. “We really love doing this project so we’re going to extended it, but we want it to have a global [approach]. We want to recognize what women in other countries have done.”

Hawkins says there is hope of a gallery show, somewhere at sometime, but “other than that they’re just going go on my website and sit on our hard drives.”

Seizing Opportunities

The photo project is just the latest experience Hawkins and Wynn have created for themselves during their college careers. For her part, Hawkins simply hates to be idle, and George Mason, she says, affords ample opportunities to stay busy.

“I’m going to take full advantage of everything I can,” she says during lunch at the Rathskeller. “I’m someone who hates being bored, I hate to just sit in my room. I can sit in my room when I’m a senior citizen. I’m going to go out and do as much as I can.”

For example?

“I’m in the Pep Band,” she says brightly, pointing out she’s usually in the front row of singers at men’s basketball games. The singing is an extension of her interest in music, and she plays piano, acoustic guitar, and electric guitar (she just acquired a pink one with a flame paint job). She was also host of a radio show at WGMU for two years, introducing listeners to everything from jazz to electronica.

Jazz, in fact, is her favorite form of music, so much so that her Instagram handle is @Birth0fTheCool, taken from the title of a 1957 Miles Davis collection.

She also works part time in Student Media, helping out as a communications project coordinator. “It’s a cool title for working at the front desk,” she says with a laugh. “But we do help out with events and promotions.”

Meanwhile she’s also interning with two organizations: music marketers ‘stache media as a lifestyle media representative, and as a columnist for CollegeFashionista.com, wherein she focuses on what men are wearing on campus. “It definitely makes me see guys in a different light,” she says.

All that plus 15 credit hours in this, her last semester as a communication major with a concentration in media, production, and criticism, with a minor in music and technology.

But it didn’t start that way. Hawkins applied to Mason from Belgium, where she was living with her military family and arrived in Fairfax eager to engage in…sports.

“When I first got to school I was on the track team and that took up a lot of my time,” she says matter-of-factly. Track? “Oh yeah, I’m into sports too,” she laughs, knowing her list of accomplishments is getting absurd to the newcomer. “I was a walk-on thrower—hammer, javelin, and weight throw. I was a buff girl.”

Track, she says, “was my main focus at the time. I wanted to keep doing music at the same time because I did musical theater in high school.” But something had to give, even for someone as organized as Hawkins, and she left the track squad her sophomore year. “That’s when I started the radio show and started making videos. I went into my major.”

Wynn is similarly engaged by Mason’s opportunities. She has the same major as Hawkins, with a minor in English, and has interned at an events management company, a local probation and parole board, and with an organization that assists women with unexpected pregnancies. She’s also had paying jobs in retail and in youth sports education.

Both Hawkins and Wynn, who is from Virginia Beach, say they want to stay in entertainment media production and both realize they’ll most likely have to relocate.

“I’d like to do music videos, with a content-driven storyline,” says Wynn, who speculates Atlanta is her ultimate destination.

“What am I going to do?” Hawkins says. “That’s the biggest, scariest question ever. That’s why I’m always out and about, meeting people, and showing them my pictures. I really want to go to New York because that’s where the entertainment industry is, and that’s all I do. That’s where I need to be.”

To read more stories about Mason, check out the university’s News site.