Mid-second semester, I became interested in the idea of creating spaces, especially spaces that are completely unusual in their context. Like converting a work studio space into a cave that’s still completely functional as a work studio, so trees and rocks would open to reveal cabinets and drawers, etc. That would be a far more complicated version of what ended up being my final for Visual Language 2. Continue reading
This was my most intensely personal project all year. I began the year following assignment guidelines, making sure to give my best within the rules and try out new things, experiment and be a good, solid art student. In a way I was re-integrating myself into life, and certainly life around other people, and a lot of my time was spent simply getting to know my world and my surroundings, and the people I came into direct contact with.
Christmas break gave me a nice break from that world, and time again to process and have space from things. I spent time doing web work, and cooking. A lot.
Second semester I dove more into projects, thinking hard about the concepts behind them and making every part of my work represent or portray whatever the point of the piece was. This project was my final for Drawing 2, and was my long overdue confrontation of the last few years, what they’ve meant to me, how they have changed and shaped me, and how I’m going to proceed with life despite the hurt and cold they represent in my mind.
I mapped the song On the Brink by Coheed & Cambria. Starting with the waveform of the song, I mirror that with my emotional response to the song, be it the lyrics or the music or both, forming squiggly spikes poking upwards, making a bed for the symbols that form the meat of the piece. The majority of the symbols respond to the lyrics using imagery from the past two years that is significant to me, all in traced silhouette forms, meant as icons of what the lyrics and music are saying, what they’re meaning, and as a reminder to me.
Using the song as an intermediary, I am portraying and interpreting the last few years of my life in a synthesized and archival way, to record and display and finally just put down, so that I can move on with the things I’m coming into now, in this new phase of my life.
Assignment Proposal (PDF), Artist Statement (PDF), Final Piece (JPG).
Coheed & Cambria, Song (Video), Lyrics.
This project was seriously ambitious. Near the end of the year, with a few projects, I developed the habit of coming up with an idea, loving it, and just saying ‘Yea, I’ll do that, that’ll be so awesome!’ I didn’t take into account the work involved before completely deciding, without bargaining room, on what I was going to do. That said, I got everything in on time, and serious compliments from everyone who saw the projects.
This one was about loss; we simply had to map the idea of loss, at whatever scale, in whatever way we wanted. I decided to make the flags from the countries I’ve lived in (other than the U.S.), with my silhouettes cut out of them at the ages and poses fitting the times I lived there, and then use those cutouts to assemble a silhouette of myself now on a plain white flag. I ended up adding the white background fabric just to hold all the pieces together and make hanging them easier, and I don’t have to worry about the wall behind them too if that space is just empty.
It got fantastic response from people, even the janitorial staff had some nice things to say about it, my teacher told me one of them said “It’s good because it’s simple, it’s clear, and it’s good.” Nice to know my stuff is appreciated by non-art-students 
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Given some examples, making an artist book is really not that easy of a thing to tackle, especially when the assignment is this open. But I managed. I wanted my last two projects for this class to have to do with home, be it a place or simply the concept of home. Looking back now, I realize I did a few others leading up to this and at the same time, in other classes, that were about home as well. I guess it was a pretty solid theme in my subconscious at the time.
Anyway, the assignment was very open, and I didn’t quite do as much with it as I wanted to, but with all the other finals going on at the same time, it was a pretty daunting task to focus on this enough as well. And I am happy with the way it came out, and it’s gotten great response.
The book cover is a dark, earthy, grainy walnut, roughly cut, with the words ‘home…’ on the outside and ‘An embrace from a place’ on the inside. When you open the book, there are two hands, and if you pull out the hands, their arms stretch out and unwrap themselves to reveal memories and thoughts of home written all over them. The hands have Velcro in their palms, so that when the memories are all read through, they can clasp behind you, and you are literally embraced by home.
This was a very open assignment, as were most of the later-semester projects in my studio classes, that simply asked us to trace lots of stuff – anything we wanted – and assemble those tracings into a drawing. We did this over spring break, so we had 3 weeks to do it and finish our Mapping Routine project, so naturally mine became much more complicated than that… Continue reading
