So I just wanted to take a minute to fawn over the pretty little posting template I got. All credit goes to Goss for the outer design, I merely stole it and changed the color so it was that nice turquoise you see now. Turquoise is like, the greatest blending of green and blue evaaaaaaar. And look, my sig and ava match the turquoise theme! SO GREAT.
Alright, I'm done now.
So I am in the final semester of a my final year as an art major with a concentration in new media at my college. Freaking out a bit at the prospect of my Senior Show in just a few weeks, and realized that most of the art that you guys see hear has very little to do with the art I make for my major.
It was a long and arduous process to reach the place I am today, and you don't need the whole back story (it's rather drawl really), but in summation, I always struggled as an artist as to where I fit into the world. I love writing, love animals, and love drawing and creating pictures. Yet I didn't want to become a veterinarian or devote myself to a biological degree, and always told myself it wasn't out of laziness or that science got too close to math (wherein my mind shuts down and I cannot process anything above simple mathematical equations.)
All I wanted to do was write and illustrate stories, and so that's what I did. But I was never successful with them. I never gave my viewer anything new to view, a story that they hadn't seen before, or even the vaguest impression of something new.
You learn quite rapidly as an art major (at least in our program) that you will never in your life create something wholly original. Everything that is ever going to be made from here on out has been done before, and all you're doing is reflecting upon the past. Yet that doesn't mean you can't tell the story a new way, bring new light to an old conversation and use your own inherent creativity to make something refreshing and engaging.
And I simply couldn't find my niche. Try as I might I just made what was made before. I don't have jaw dropping technical skill, or some sordid back story that inspires the sort of emotional wreck of an artist that sometimes fall under assumption of outsiders.
So I struggled, and my teachers saw me struggling, and did what they could, and it wasn't until I took a required supplementary art credit in sculpture, a medium I certainly had no intention of ever truly pursuing that I found it, my niche, the place that inspires me and renewed this wonderful sense of artistic wonder, and (most important part for me really) let me tell my stories.
The images below are of the project that put all my interests together. Making, storytelling, writing, and a strange fascination with collecting interesting objects. I created a multi-media installation space about a rather cooky professor who had discovered breeds of draconian creatures and was trying to publish research on them. The writing included research, angry letters from his co-workers, and a journal that illustrates his slow descent into madness. In jars are insects labelled and classified that I stole from my father, the biologist.
Unfortunately these images and explanations are a poor representation of actually sitting in the space and looking through Mr. Brighton's documents, but alas, you all live much to far away for me to invite you to my Senior Show and take a look for yourself.
Now my stories have drifted from dragons (My advisor forbid me from involving dragons in any of my future work from there on) to rodents, and now my installations involve water color images, formatted professional letters, made up research papers, and bones from specimens that I extract from owl pellets as I collect objects to put into my spaces.
If you stayed with me through that, thanks. I just felt like sharing my artistic influences with the amazingly talented artists that grace Mizahar both visually and rhetorically. This post also acts as a strangely biographical explanation of why my activity will be significantly decreased in the coming weeks, as I prepare for my Senior Show
I thank you all for understanding! |
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