An Autobiographical Map

Statement

      The process in which I executed my final project, "An Autobiographical Map", I have fled from my traditional project planning of my artwork and was pleasantly surprised to find beauty in impulsive and odd ways to produce an image. The most important aspect of creating this piece comes from the shapes that later turn into a landscape of emotion and character. I find pleasure in expressing my experiences through color and creatures that convey a specific response to the piece as a whole.

        The physical experience of creating this piece felt so natural and inviting to finish, I had no trouble dealing with issues and obstacles along the way. I also felt free to use any drawing mediums I could find around the house. I used an assortment of materials, including acrylics, gauche, watercolors, glitter, marker, ink, etc. Starting with a blob of color or random shape, I build off of a detail with more detail until there is no more white space. 

        "An Autobiographical Map" was majorly influenced by a question I am frequently posed: what is art? Art can only be created with intention of some sort. If there is no intention, is it art? I find that my final project plays with the idea of formalities in gallery setting, but I also literally represent this playfulness through vibrant colors and graphic lines. On one hand, I would like my viewer to become lost in the variety of textures and patterns in my piece, but on the other hand, also question the rules or limits of the art market.  

         I have also always been deeply influenced by Frida Kahlo's work and her life story. She went through many painful experiences that prompted her to start painting these beautiful, symbolic self-portraits. She incorporated grotesque and vibrant colors to portray her torment. In my final project, I use cartoon-like characters and playful scenes to convey the current anxiety I feel in my life right now. 

         This piece is also a large-scale continuation of my sketchbook drawings, in the sense that I uphold the freedom to doodle on a canvas and focus on filling the white space. I enjoy creating art this way, especially in times of stress and pain. This semester of school was extremely difficult for me, and a major escape is my sketchbook and journal, which gives me more of an incentive to create a project that makes me excited, rather than stressed. The layers of colors I overlap and the patterns that flow together in "An Autobiographical Map" are imagery I create from impulsive mark-making, which help me lose myself in my work, focusing on the shapes and colors on the paper. 

Bio:

I am originally from San Francisco and moved to Orange, California to attend Chapman University. I am currently going to be a junior, majoring in Studio Art with a focus in painting and drawing. My interests and focuses are primarily creating work that furthers my journey as an artist, but also to express myself in some sort of physical way. My goal, as an artist, is to convey transformative work that conveys my progression/ timeline as an individual in society. I am overjoyed when people recognize my work or feel affected by it somehow. I think it is important to express yourself in a physical way, whether it be drawing or writing, or even just running, to create a tangible experience or object and reflect on it for personal growth. 

    

http://bryanlewissaunders.org/drugs/

https://www.gavinbrown.biz/artists/kerstin_brtsch/works

Final Artist Statement

Trigeminal Transcendence 

Artist Statement:

About 6 months ago I was diagnosed with Trigeminal Neuralgia, which is a chronic pain condition affecting the trigeminal nerve (cranial nerve located on the sides of your face.) On average I get 2-3 episodes of pain a week and on a scale from 1-10 the pain usually spikes to a 12 and sometimes a 14, ranging from an hour to 6 hours. My neurologist prescribed me muscle relaxers on top of one of the strongest painkillers called Zohydro Codone (vicodin). It is illegal to produce in most states (including California) but can still be sold here through a pharmacy. I had to order mine from Mexico and it took the longest week of my life to arrive. Funny fact, my neurologist also told me it’s the closest thing to heroin in a smaller dose. So at least a small perk of this condition is that I get some street creds.

The effects of this painkiller is very gradual, and it slowly numbs your entire body out. It can give you an out of the body experience because you can’t feel the weight of your body and it does not feel like you are inside yourself. Sometimes if the pain gets really bad and I have to take two, but that is the limit. Adding another pill can sometimes make me very dizzy and cause nausea. As bad as that sounds, the side effects beat having to go through the pain. The pain feels like a thousand needles stabbing me all over my face. It also causes my muscles to cramp up from being so tense. Do you remember when you were a kid and your tooth would fall out and your gums would be so sensitive? Well picture someone stabbing that with needles. That's a glimpse of what the pain can feel like, it's hard to express it in words.

For this project I wanted to do a series of 6 automatic drawings that are 4 1/2 feet long on white paper. I wanted to experience what kind of art I could express while I was coming down from my pain. So for every episode I experienced over the course of a week and a half I would do two drawings. One drawing during the pain and one after the pain killer started to work. This way you can see how much the drugs affect my body. It was very difficult to draw while in pain, not only was it a mental battle to keep going but half the time my eyes were shut. It helped me deal with the pain with my eyes were closed. So when I felt done I would open my eyes to reveal gestures that I would have never thought to make. And once I was done I would take the painkiller and wait till it kicked in. It was a surreal experience to be able to draw while my entire body was numb. My mind was completely clear and I knew exactly where I wanted my hand to go but my body was slow and not a precise as I wanted. It was a mental struggle and I had a hard time accepting the art that I created. I am the type of artist who needs to be in control so this was a very different approach for me. The reason why I wanted to use such a wide sheet of paper was so that I could use my entire arm spade and move freely across my drawing. This part of the project was liberating and I loved being able to swing my arms around.

Artist Bio:

Kristi Fujii was born in Fremont, California in 1994. She is receiving her BFA from Chapman University this year. Kristi has exhibited her works in numerous shows on campus as well as off campus at “A la minute”. She used to be a graphic design major but recently in the past year has found her calling in painting and drawing. Most of her work deals with how the body interacts with the mind through physical and psychological conditions. She is now located in Orange, California but will be moving to San Jose to continue her work as a graduated artist.

Mail Art

When I was young my family spent a lot of time camping, biking, fishing, etc. Our family was big on mountain vacations and enjoyed many cliche activities in Colorado. My parents are both originally from Wyoming, a low density populated state with a lot of wilderness. My grandparents still live in the small town of Riverton, and my grandmother lived in Lander until she was about 80 years old. I have fond memories of these towns, and the adventures that came with our vacations. My mother and I still visit whenever we can, although the trips have become less and less frequent. However, when I visit in the summer I am flooded with nostalgia. Memories of blooming summer flowers in my mother and grandmothers garden. My grandparents have over 25 acres of land so they also have vast amounts of wildflowers. This feeling of happiness and connection inspired me to share my love of flowers. However, I didn't just want to draw flowers, I was more interested in conveying the actual sensation I feel towards flowers. As I wondered how to do this a pressed flower fell from a book my mother had sent me a couple weeks prior. Pressing flowers is a hobby my mother picked up in her late teenage years, in order to collect and preserve beauty and memories. I wanted to not only carry on this tradition, but understand more about my mother and her pre-child years. This lead me to the second part of my project, understanding how we are all pieces of other people, how we construct ourselves from parts of other people. The poem I wrote for this project has a lot to do with thic concept, and all the mail art together add up to make a whole poem and a larger piece of art.


https://stuartmatthewsphotography.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/mail-art/
http://nashvillearts.com/2015/06/letter-to-me-mail-art/

I Copy

Mail Art

For this project we went back a few years to a time when phones were not smart, when mail was slow but reliable, and when social media was nonexistent. This time we made artwork that could fit within the bounds of an envelope and handed into the possession of strangers in the hope that they would be sent to their respective destinations. It was a new and fun way for me to look at art, to look at it with a sense of purpose, with each one being made for a specific person; it had an audience.

One artist that I looked at was Ray Johnson who was known as a correspondence artist. He is among the founders of a mail art network. I watched the video, ‘How to Draw a Bunny’ which chronicles his life and the people with whom he worked. It includes interviews with various artists of his time. From what I gathered, he was a fascinating man, I dare say an enigma, because his way of working was both humorous and puzzling to those that received them. His work was mostly collage, with some drawings. Here is an example of his work. I would write an entire post about him, but for now I will focus on how he affected how I approached my work. I decided to mix the idea o collage with drawing, but adding my own twist. Instead of cutting and pasting papers on top of each other, I decided to weave together different types of paper with different textures and opacity. On top of the collage, I wanted to incorporate my drawings, in my usual linear and loose style.

I wanted to cut the papers into long strips of uniform width and length in order to create individual squares all of which make up a larger image. To the right is an example of weaving different papers and textures that i looked at. This was in part inspired by the work of Chuck close, a painter who makes portraits in a very unique way that I have tried to recreate many times. This time, however, I tried it with paper instead of paint, which I think has been the most successful one. He works by making his surface into a grid and painting each square individually. Up close, there is a world of its own, with seemingly random colors in each square, but when looked at from a far, you can see the image they make.

 

When thinking of the subject of my work, I came up with the idea of sending something beautiful, something that when I look at, I am overcome with happiness. I decided to send everyone a picture of my dog. Each image was specially chosen for each individual to add a little personalization to the work. I used reflective, iridescent paper that varied in transparency and hue, which gave my collage a playful almost random look to it.

Overall, this project made me think of the process of making art in a different way. To think about it as being made for a specific audience, personalizing it based on the person who would receive it while still maintain my style. It was a lot of fun, although I felt anxious leaving it at the mail, fearing that it would get lost or delayed. That, however, made it even more fun, and as discussed in class, it gave me a lesson on deadlines: work fast effectively, and especially take into account the lack of control in delivery.  

Alternative Methods

This piece had me genuinely surprised at my abilities to not only use unconventional materials to create art, but I also discovered my ability to add emotional weight to a piece. My journey in this artistic endeavour began on a day when I experienced an incredibly overwhelming shift in perspective. I basically went through a day of wandering around town alone to unfamiliar locations, seeking clarity and peace, and new scenery to connect these foreign sensations to. But to contrast, I spent a lot of time unexpectedly running into many of my close friends. Over the course of that day, I gathered a collection of materials that were either symbolic of a moment or feeling, or were artifacts found at each location. When I had overcome my intense experience, I decided to channel it into my artwork, and utilized all of the pieces i had subconsciously been gathering all day. My creative process began with carefully laying out all of the items in an observable display, and beginning with one piece at a time, consciously and thoughtfully placing it within the piece. I made sure to spend just enough time meditating on the incorporation of each element, but also relied on an unfamiliar decisiveness that i had gained from my experience. I taught myself to go with my natural instinct and not spend all my time dwelling upon every possible option, but just enough to be confident in my decision. This was a technique that i have always struggled with in art, I spend too much time thinking and not enough time executing, and I have a hard time trusting my own judgment with fear of ruining something. This was a huge personal hurdle that i find is reflected in this piece, perhaps not to the viewer, but to myself. The concept of this piece essentially was to capture the self defining experience I had, through material significance and collage, to give myself an illustrative account of that day. It was also a way for me to immortalize the things that held a deep weight, things that I wouldn’t want to keep in their individual states, but was willing to discard into a trash art piece.

The materials of this piece include; an old record case and its own record (post-mortem), cigarette butts, two dead hibiscus flowers, also dead sour grass stems, a purple gel, bandages in an ‘x’, a cut of pink cloth, an excerpt from a journal (of that day), a leftover note, and an addition of paint. All of the materials were compiled throughout the day, and each one holds symbolic meaning, but that which can’t be interpreted upon initial perception.

I find my pieces to have the most resemblance to the collages of Ray Johnson, because of the composition, the content, and the construction. He used commonplace materials, but ones with an unknown yet evident symbolic intention, something the viewer may never understand, but Ray will always hold the answers to. And that is something understood within the relationship of the viewer and the artist, that the viewer is left in mystery and curiosity. I also found parallels in the composition of the work, a time intensive layering of the materials, each one meticulously and carefully placed in chaotic harmony.

http://www.rayjohnsonestate.com/art/collages/

Self Generated

This was a completely unique approach to a drawing project for me, and i ended up finding a great satisfaction in it. I began with making the first object that I felt I could create when I picked up the clay, so I made bread. But after the bread left me just hungry and uninspired, I decided to try the alternative approach and start with a drawing, create it in clay, and draw it again. This way I could redefine a piece of art that I felt deserved more attention, and a new interpretation. I took one of my beloved doodle figures that I made a while back and created him out of clay. I chose him, “Jazz Man”, because he is my most iconic doodle and I have envisioned him in larger, more indepth form. First I made him into a two dimensional clay sculpture, and painted on his colored features as in the drawing, but he begged for some more life and dimension. I expanded the paper-restricted form of his being and created a fully dimensional little abstract statue. I left him in his tan state and used colored lights to define his figure and add tinted shadows. I left him tan because I noticed his figure resembled something of a religious prayer statue, in my opinion, he would be the god of dance. I also thought it reflected his rudimentary components, because he is composed of basic shapes and a simple line form.

I drew him in charcoal, which I felt was the medium that reflected his physical form best. I found it successful when blending his tan but tonal base. And when adding layers of colored tints for highlights and shadows. I kept the background simple but responsive to the pale colors of the figure. I framed him with slightly less headroom than footroom, and had his form take up the full center of the page. I set him at a slightly low angle so it feels as if you’re looking a bit up at him, to further the feeling of his divinity. The background is a simple pale blue and dark purple halo around him, with a sunset colored cloud abstraction. My process with actually drawing him began with choosing the mid tone colored pastel of his base and executing it as a figure drawing, scribbling the form and movement of his shapes. From there I did layers and layers of colors, for shading and definition, until the pastel wouldn’t stick to the paper anymore, and then he was complete. As for the background I began with the lavender aura because I felt he needed to be radiating a purple energy, expressive of mystery and wisdom. Over that I layered paler tones to create clouds and add a natural element.

I was inspired by the work of Allison Schulnik, because she created her own abstract and whimsical figures from her own creative realm, and brought them to life with dynamic qualities. She created figures that could only be spawned from her own imagination, which is why I’m so attached and proud of Jazz Man, because he is my own original creation. https://vimeo.com/31110838

http://www.allisonschulnik.com