Artist Statement

Artist Statement:

I was never much of a doodler, but when I did it was always flowers. It wasn’t until this year that people starting pointing out my affinity for flowers. They had always been stuck in my art subconsciously. Flowers come natural to me, they are embedded in everything I do, but never the focal point. Flowers are safe, calming, nostalgic. My discovery of my affinity for florals lead to an exploration of my past, my mother, and a departure from the comfort of simple flowers. This project affirmed much of my childhood feelings, but also encouraged me to grow and confront the reality of a flower; a flower is a beautiful living organism that will eventually fade.

Artist Bio:

Tristan Fields was born in Denver, Colorado in 1996. He is pursuing his BFA in Studio art, and a BS in Business Administration at Chapman University in California. Tristan uses art as therapy, relaxation, and expression. He finds inspiration from human connection, family, and his early life. He is a multimedia artist who uses drawing, sculpture, collage and installation to convey his concepts.

forget me not!

Izzie Panasci - Final Project: Forget-Me-Not!

Artist Statement:

The human memory is limited in more ways than most people think! As a species we cannot clearly recall on any given memory. Instead, we end up using small neurological connections that to help us reference specific moments and events in our lives. This explains why people feel that they remember events that actually never took place, or that "something is on the tip of their tongue" but end up struggling to remember anything about it. This is even more prevalent in regards to remembering people's faces. Most of the time it is extremely difficult to recall the exact shapes and features on the faces of people dearest to us. I started exploring this idea in some collage projects earlier this year in which I drew the same face from memory several times. Each of these freshly drawn characters had a feature or aspect about them that looked a lot like the person I was thinking of. Combined, they truly did represent the person I intended to draw. My ability to capture personality in my portraitures of others was helpful because it united the characters I had drawn into a cohesive group. 

I have expanded on this idea in my final project "Forget-Me-Not!" 
By carefully selecting friends and family with distinct features and appearances, I built a small army of characters that represented my memories of the people themselves. After looking quickly at a photograph, drawing images from pure memory allowed me to show the many expressions each of the people make. While each cup is designed to emulate the persona of the individual drawn, I intentionally did not draw them in a hyper-realistic way. I let the cartoonish aspects of their features overtake the cup, and did not to let potential facial inaccuracies interfere with my drawing style. 

Creating these people on cups instead of on paper allows for one to see how the same character could be in conversation with itself and viewers all at once. Some characters on the cups gaze across at each other, while others stare right at the viewer who is standing before them. Since each cup is suspended from the ceiling, the viewer is able to walk around each cup, checking out each of the person's expressions. Having these characters drawn onto a dimensional surface allows the objects to have more presence in the space they are presented in, as a real human would! The viewer can treat the cups more like they would the individuals, walking up to them and studying their expressions as objects in space rather than as figures drawn on paper. 


Artist Bio:

Izzie Panasci was born in San Francisco, California in 1997. She is currently an undergrad at Chapman University where she is majoring in animation and minoring in art and anthropology. The majority of her work reflects her interest in the micro expressions of those around her, and is accomplished through a manic-like attention to detail. She tends to focus on capturing the personality of her subjects, and has developed a very individual style through the use of precise line work. After graduating she hopes to create animation films that tell ethnographic tales about different communities and groups of people. 

How the following artists and pieces inspired me: 


robert crumb
Robert's work is inspiring because it is as manic and detailed as I strive to be in my work. I appreciate the small scale in which he chooses to illustrate because it makes it possible to actually accomplish the envisioned details. Whether he is stippling or just drawing perfectly straight lines, his comical portrayal of people communicates a lot about personality, humor, and identity.

aline crumb 

Aline, Crumb's wife, loosens up her grip on the pen which I can also appreciate. Creating more fictitious representations of people and their mentalities, she has created a style that focuses on line work and facial expressions. I like how simple she can keep each character yet maintain a stylistic attention to detail in the overall image. 

ray pettibon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Vk19BE2_p0

Ray's work embodies the beauty of light-handed line work. I am inspired by his "knowing when to stop" a common issue for me in my work. His simple messages and drawings make his underlying messages like "fuck housework" more dominant in the message of his pieces. 

Julie Doucet

Julie Doucet has a style that I would like to feed off more- it has a refined sense of looking both comical and realistic all at once. Her detailed scenes and portraitures show me new ways of using line work to create depth and capture light. I think a lot of my cups have drawn inspiration from her (and my own) oversized eyeballs look. 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-vs5hZu744

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.