ARASHLEY-GRACE RAMOCAN

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WRITING

DESIGN

PERSONAL STATEMENT

PHOTOGRAPHY

MULTIMEDIA

ARASHLEY-GRACE RAMOCAN

PERSONAL

ARASHLEY-GRACE RAMOCAN

“”

Dynamic communicator dedicated to developing and preserving the integrity and mission of the organization and represented destination through both traditional and innovative marketing

mediums. Talented in writing, copyediting, print and digital design, and production management. Having developed enthusiasm for economic and community development, looks to expand on four years of journalism and communication leadership and nearly two years of experience in destination marketing. Maintains enthusiasm for and devotion to developing and sustaining a well-crafted and

designed brand, end-product, and organization’s reputation.

STATEMENT

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WWRITING04

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This opinion piece also appeared in the print and online edition of the Rome News-Tribune on January 24, 2009.

This opinion piece also appeared in the print and online edition of the Rome News-Tribune on October 29, 2009.

Wynn waited in the com-mon room, sitting at a table with her thighs pressed against her chest and a crossword puzzle book resting on top of her knees. She tapped the puzzle page with the dull pencil tip, as she sifted through terms, phrases, images, and sounds that all could be labeled with a six-letter word fit for “Down: 38. S.I. unit alterna-tive.” She smoothed the pencil’s lead against the peppered grain of the newsprint puzzle page while she concentrated on the vertical string of boxes, all empty but the fifth that was filled with the “g” from the m-a-g-n-e-t-i-c crossing it.

“It is now time for group therapy,” a nurse interrupted over the intercom, her voice slightly low in pitch, result-ing from the wearing wires of

the thirty-year-old P.A. system. She repeated several times the announcement throughout the building, a staccato beep lacing between each pause. Wynn rose from her chair and dropped her pencil in the pouch of her college sweatshirt and tore the puzzle page from the book, folding it into fourths and placing it into her back pocket. She made her way to the conference room, walking according to the place-ment of the olive and cardinal red carpet’s pattern of winding vines.

Wynn paused briefly and looked around at the faces of those already seated in the room and searched for a free spot in one of the corners. She walked to her left toward an older gen-tleman around age sixty-five. His yellow skin was sprinkled about

with raised, mauve liver spots and was thin and taut as though there was nothing between it and his bones. His back was arched, leaning forward with clutched hands below his chin. His eyes were squinted, focused on the carpet. Perhaps, Wynn thought, he was tracing the same floral pattern she had just finished, wandering it himself and chasing each bloom. Wynn sat in the seat next to the man, waiting for the rest of the patients to fill in the vacant chairs and silently trailing what she imagined would be the man’s path among the carpet’s flowers.

After the last patient filed in, the room door closed, break-ing the travels of her mind, and Daniel, one of the younger mental health assistants, cleared his throat. He pulled his black-

a taste of amaranthby ashley-grace ramocan

Placed 1st place in the 3rd Bi-annual Southern Women Writers Conference Emerging Writers Contest at Berry College in Mt. Berry, Georgia.

rimmed glasses off his spiked dark brown hair streaked with silver. He called out roll, saying each patient’s first name and last initial and then speeding through the medical preliminary ques-tions.

“William T.?”“Here,” the older man next

to Wynn said flatly without lifting his eyes.

“William, how are you feeling this morning on a scale from one to ten, one being poor and ten being excellent?” Daniel inquired without much interest, keeping his eyes and pen on the clipboard.

“Five,” Willie said, “…indif-ferent,” he added.

“A number will suffice, Wil-liam. No need to explain,” Daniel said, his eyes still focused on the chart. He continued, “How about any pain in your body, Willie? Where? And rank it on the same number scale.”

“I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I have a migraine.”

“A number.”“Seven.”“Alright,” the assistant

moved on to Wynn. “Miss Wynn S., how are you feeling this morning?”

“Six,” Wynn said, “and no pain.”

Daniel continued his rounds, his feet kicked up against the seat of a chair facing him. When he was done, he dropped the clipboard to his right and clapped his hands together, startling some of the patients whose minds had wandered, too, down the carpet’s vine path.

“Well, welcome to group therapy, again. Today, we’re going to do a little collaboration activity and come up with a list of ways to further your recovery process…” Daniel paused and took a deep breath; his mouth parted midway and his lungs followed through, swallowing the uncomfortable silence in the air. “Whether it’s from tragedy, depression, or addiction, you are all on your way to recover-ing…So, I want you guys to tell me some techniques you have learned so far about healing and getting better.”

Some looked around waiting for someone else to speak up, and others stared into the air, busied by their own worries. Wil-lie continued his journey among the carpet’s vines, hopping from flower to flower and imagining the light sting of each stem’s prickle.

Wynn decided to be the first to answer to hurry the group

session to a close.“Forgiveness.”Daniel was startled yet

relieved. “Yeah. That’s good. Very good. Anything else?”

Wynn continued to list a few other answers, knowing they were expected and “right,” yet she felt no connection to the words—to her, forgiveness, acceptance, and trust were not much more than sounds like dis-jointed syllables. The words were no more important, and even less significant, than the letters that filled in the hollow boxes of a crossword puzzle, housing only incomprehensible echoes and no meaning.

She let the other patients take over, as they fed off the mo-mentum she had built. “Forget-ting,” one woman said, her lips quivering from the overpowering anxiety she tried to suppress. Kathleen C. had orange-red hair with a few blond highlights in her side bang. Her eyes were gray and outlined by a map of irritated veins that pulsed behind it. She was bipolar and struggled with chronic anxiety, having trucked over the past ten years through heavy dosages of every anti-depressant and anti-anxiety pill to date. The doctors at the behavioral clinic prescribed

Kathleen a series of electrocon-vulsive therapy sessions for the next twelve weeks to stimulate her nervous system, bringing her peace along with a fairly fried memory.

“Allowing a grieving period,” said an unshaven man, about age 35, whose beard hairs were beginning to spread onto his neck. Garrett P. struggled with insomnia for the past few months when his wife of ten years became heavily addicted to methamphetamine.

After a while, the group began to quiet down, their an-swers dissipating under the thick silence that began to stack itself in the air. But a woman in her early seventies spoke up. She was seated in a wheelchair, her legs covered by a burgundy quilt and her hair wrapped in a violet scarf. Agatha B. resembled Rosa Parks, her face aged by an era of police dogs and picket signs.

“Prayer,” she said as her voice cracked through the si-lence. Agatha clasped her hands together, as though she were praying, raising it to her face and pressing her lips against her fingertips. “Prayer and faith helps

me cope with my son’s death.” Patients began speaking up

again with other ideas spawned by this woman’s thought, but Wynn muted the voices and stared at Agatha’s hands, tracing the outline—its shape like the silhouette of the praying hands engraved in church signs and the spine of Bibles. The bent surren-der of the fingers was familiar to Wynn, and she thought back ten years before to her last church visit.

Although only nine, Wynn was made to sit in grown-up church next to her mother, who came in late and, subsequently, sat in the last, dark cedar pew of the church. She fidgeted in her dress, readjusting so that the poof of white tulle lining would bulge over her thighs like moun-tain ranges or the rolling tides of clouds. Throughout the service, she lifted her legs, back and forth like the steps in a march, to keep the elastic of her stockings from sticking her legs to the sweat of the pew.

It was Communion Sunday, and people lined up outside the church door to exchange sin for

redemption, sealing their place in heaven. Wynn certainly didn’t understand concepts like sin, death, redemption or eter-nity that tied the ends of the reverend’s sermon. Even so, Wynn always lost herself in the pictures on the church’s stained glasses that colored the inside of the dim sanctuary—the images and the colors looked like they had jumped off the pages of her Children’s Illustrated Bible. On certain Sundays depending on the way the sunlight hit the crucifixion window, a rainbow of reds—crimson, scarlet, rose—would shine across the congre-gation’s faces. Wynn studied the crucifixion window every Sunday examining the implied glory of Christ’s death—ques-tioning the magnificence of his stretched body, pierced crown, spilled blood, and hung head. Her mother once explained that Christ’s blood was shed to heal the world.

The reverend began to instruct the congregation in the communion procession. Row after row stood and filed out to meet the priest at the altar for a wafer and wine. Wynn’s mother

joined the pilgrimage, too, taking her daughter by the hand and making her way through the pews to the prayer bench at the altar. She knelt onto the bench’s scarlet cushion. As the reverend moved from person to person, Wynn’s mother lifted her hands, once clasped prayerfully like Agatha’s hands, and unfolded them, waiting to receive the wa-fer. The carmine glow from the crucifixion window covered her mother’s head, highlighting the graven piety that narrowed her face. Wynn watched her mother eat Christ’s body and taste his blood. She exhaled, leaving her worries at the altar in exchange for just a taste.

Her mother’s eyes were closed tightly, focusing on some-thing—on what, Wynn didn’t know. Two tears fell below her mother’s eye and streamed down toward her mouth. She stretched her tongue onto the corner of her upper lip, licking away the first tear. Wynn, intrigued, reached over and wiped away the second tear with her finger, placing it in her mouth and tasting the sweet-ness of the saltine drop.

She would do the same a

few mornings later, waking up to the sight of her mother in the guest bathtub soaking in amaranth-colored water. Her mother’s eyes were closed and sunken into her porcelain skin, shaded red from the reflection of the blood. Wynn knelt over the bath side, wading her hand through the mixture of blood and water and creating waves that traveled the course of her mother’s body.

Wynn lifted her mother’s weightless arms, which lay afloat and turned with her palms fac-ing up. Two deep, vertical cuts dragged down the middle of her arm—one in each, streaming from the bend of her wrist to the bend of her elbow. Blood poured into the water with a slow and persistent pulse, dancing in a swirl upon its collision with the water and then waltzing into the dissipation of the mixture.

Wynn searched her mother’s face for some nuance of pain but only found the warped turn of a smile. It was like some unseen rebirth. Yet, what—the blood or the water—had transformed her mother? And what was resur-rected?

Maybe, Wynn thought, she’s trying to heal herself with her blood the way Christ healed the world.

Wynn lifted her mother’s hand and kissed the wound, letting the blood part her lips and reach her tongue. Like the tear, it tasted sweetly.

“Does anyone else have any other thoughts or ideas on recov-ery and healing,” Daniel asked, announcing that the session was about to end. Wynn was running her fingers over the welted scars on her wrists as she thought about her mother. She looked up at Agatha whose hands were still pressed against her lips and then at Willie who continued to traverse the vines.

“I do, “ Wynn said. Daniel looked up and then

down at his watch, “Go ahead. Finish us out for today.”

Wynn paused and picked a scab from one of the cuts on her arm and let her blood surface in the gash of the wound.

“Bleeding.”

DDESIGN14

Post Secret Feature for COM 3400: Feature Writing; Designed and Written by Ashley-Grace Ramocan

D

Feature on Little Five Points: “Music finds Fiddler a home in Little Five Points”Written and Designed by Ashley-Grace Ramocan

Apollo Magazine,

Group Project for Publication Design.

Contributers: Chris Cannon, Ashley-Grace Ramocan, and Jesse Wood.

The Chimes, the literary magazine of Shorter College. 2008 edition.

Faculty Advisor: John KwistEditor-in-Chief: Krystin Fain

Staff Contributors: Mack Freeman, Heather Gentry, Amy Goggins, and Ashley-Grace Ra-

mocan.

Layout Designer: Ashley-Grace Ramocan

The Chimes, the literary magazine of Shorter College. 2009 edition.

Faculty Advisor: John KwistEditor-in-Chief: Krystin Fain

Staff Contributers: Mack Freeman, Amy Goggins, Regina Hicks, and

Ashley-Grace Ramocan

Layout Designer and Arts Coordinator: Ashley-Grace Ramocan

The Chimes, the literary magazine of Shorter College. Synchrony: Spring 2010 edition. 7 x 7 magazine.

Faculty Advisor: Dr. Angie Crea O’Neal Editor-in-Chief: Ashley-Grace Ramocan

Staff Contributers: Nikki Sanchez, Bonnie Winstead, and Amber Wilson

Cover Design by Ashley-Grace RamocanOverall design and layout by Ashley-Grace Ramocan

www.VisitSandySprings.orgFacilitated redesign for desktop site product

Designed dominant visuals for home page in slideshow banner that serves as advertisement, promotional space.

Whatever shoe fits.

Meet Hike Bike Chill Sleep

Located minutes from Atlanta, Sandy Springs is Sandy Springs is the perfect fit for your meeting and offers

a unique combination of city facilities and natural settings. . With 20 hotels that collectively have more than 2,800 rooms, Sandy Springs offers numerous, inviting hotels from which to choose. The City boasts countless activities for your group, including the Chattahoochee River, museums and exhibits, city and national park areas, golf courses, and more than 200 ‘Fashion Forward’

specialty boutiques and department stores.

VisitS

andySprings.org

1-866-511-7742Scan to view our video, ‘Whatever Shoe Fits...’

Visit www.visitsandysprings.org or call toll free 866-511-7742 for a full listing of events. Sandy Springs has gone mobile! Check us out on your mobile device

at www.visitsandysprings.mobi

“Whatever shoe fits.”FY 2012 meetings and convention branding

campaign for Sandy Springs Hospitality & Tourism

VisitSandySprings.org

1-866-511-7742

Summer Fun IN & AROUND

JULY 2012 EVENTS

Sandy Springs

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

2012 HOSPITALITY HIGHWAY

CENTURY RIDE

Join us for this exciting ride through some of the most beautiful areas in Georgia along a stretch of GA 400 known

as the Hospitality Highway. The race includes a 9, 23, 60 and 100-mile option. The annual ride starts at exit 7 of GA 400 and winds through Sandy Springs, Milton, Roswell, Johns Creek, Alpharetta, and other scenic areas of North Fulton.

Registration - 5:15 a.m. Race - 6:15 a.m. GA400Century.com

SATURDAY, JULY 28, 2012 | 9 AM TO 4 PM

5TH ANNUAL CHATTAHOOCHEE RIVER

SUMMER SPLASH

For more event, lodging, dining, and attraction information:

Make a big splash at the coolest event this summer in Sandy Springs, located just 10 minutes north of Atlanta. Float from Morgan Falls Dam to Powers Island in a kayak, canoe, or raft. Beat the heat on your six-mile journey of discovery down the Chattahoochee River. Bring your own non-motorized boat or rent from one of the national park’s authorized outfitters. Call the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area at 678-538-1200 for registration

and outfitter contact information.

Because it’s time to be one of the kids again.

Sandy SpringsGEORGIA

ike your family vacations from yesteryear...Sandy Springs brings out the kid in you. Begin the perfect

day with a beautiful kayak ride down the Chattahoochee River or drop a line as you settle in on the banks for some quality time with your rod, your reel, and your boys. Whether you are here for business or pleasure, catch a few bargains at the world-class shopping options with the family. Before your restful night’s sleep at one of our 20 comfortable hotels, take in the Anne Frank in the World Exhibit. The perfect day starts and ends in Sandy Springs.

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Scan for a chance to WIN!

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“Summer Fun in Sandy Springs” event advertising - featured in Newcomer Magazine,

Where Atlanta, Guide to Georgia, and more local publications

“Be a Kid in Sandy Springs” national advertising - featured in Spring 2012 USA

TODAY Outdoors Guide

“Weddings are more Charming in Sandy Springs” - bridal advertising - featured in

Summer 2012 Perfect Wedding Guide.

PPHOTOGRAPHY26

P“Family.” St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. Rome, Georgia. July 2008 - Digital photo.

Folk in Hand.” Armuchee Bluegrass Festival. Armuchee, Ga. July 2008 - Digital photo.

“Fiddler.” Atlanta, Georgia. April 2009 - Digital photo.

“Life in C # minor.” Atlanta, Georgia. April 2009 - Digital photo.

“Graffiti.” Atlanta, Georgia. April 2009 - Digital photo.

“At Home.” Atlanta, Georgia. April 2009 - Digital photo.

“Untitled.” Quito, Ecuador. June 2009 - Digital photo.

“Brethren.” Iglesia y Monasterio de San Francisco. Quito, Ecuador. June 2009 - Digital photo.

“Solitude” Cuenca, Ecuador. June 2009 - Digital photo.

“Stolen Soul.” Riobamba, Ecuador. June 2009 - Digital photo.

“Unfamiliar Surrender.” St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. Rome, Georgia. July 2008 - Digital photo.

MMULTIMEDIA38

MDuring the two years I worked with the Rome News-Tribune, I have produced more than 200 video and multimedia pack-ages. Please view accompanying DVD to view five samples of the video footage, or visit ashleygraceramocan.blogspot.

com for online videos.

During 2009 and 2010, I shot and produced Freedom Retold, a documentary for the Rome Remembers his-torical series. The documentary covered the local Civil

Rights movement in Rome, Georgia.

Rome, Georgia saw its 175th birthday in 2009, and, to cel-ebrate, RN-T.com, the online product for the Rome News-Tribune, launched a Flash project capturing the essence of Rome’s vast history.

I researched history, wrote content, and designed the graphics as well as the Flash component for this project.