So What
My minuscule piece titled, So What, requires the viewer to engage with it up close, on an intimate level. It is a collection of five pills. One each one I have drawn colorful flowers with sharpie. On the other side of each is a word. In the correct order, when they are turned over, they read “SO WHAT IF THEY KNOW.”
These pills are a kind of confession. I have started taking several different medications recently, in order to manage my depression and anxiety, as well as treat my acne. I have never wanted to be on medication, for I have often thought of medication as an easy way out to something that can be easily managed by a correct lifestyle and mindset. Being on medication was a shameful thing in my mind. However, these natural remedies did not work for me, so I made this change. I have come to see that medication can be a beautiful gift. I chose to draw flowers on the pills to show that for me they are precious things that can help make my days brighter. I did not draw on my prescribed pills, for they truly are precious to me. Instead I used vitamins, supplements, and pain medication as my tiny canvases.
The text is there to express my refusal to hold onto shame. I have often cared too much of what other people think of me. For people to know that I am on medication, especially for such unseemly things like depression, anxiety, and acne, was a scary thought. However, I was reminded that there are a great deal of people that deal with the exact same things I do. In my experience, knowing that I suffer from the same things as someone else, brings me closer to them. There is no reason to hide from those who have the same problems as me. There is also no reason to fear the people who do not. If they judge me for these things that I cannot control, then they are certainly not people of whose opinion I should take to heart.
The interactive aspect of the viewer flipping the pills over lets them interact personally with the piece. It is as if they are coming close as I confess my secret, but my quiet confession is done with joy and confidence.
In Nature’s Time
I did not start this piece with a necessary idea in mind. I knew I wanted to make a collaboration between this very plain IKEA clock and the rugged beauty of nature. Through the process I was inspired to create a piece that speaks to me.
I tore a pinecone apart, which was a process more difficult than it sounds. I collected some lichen as well from the trees around campus. I layered the pine cone pieces along the sides and top of the clock, making several layers, resting upon each other and fitting together like puzzle pieces. The lichen I glued to the front of the clock, surrounding its face.
However, I could not claim that this by itself was a drawing. I put the project aside and worked on other ones. While doodling in classes, I was inspired by the shape of a woman in a fetal position, and set out sketching her until I found the exact position I wanted. I realized that I could transfer this image somehow to the face of my clock, and that together they could speak volumes.
I drew the image onto the clock face with a brown sharpie, but the vivid color seemed off when set against the rugged nature beside it. I took apart a piece of pine cone and separated out the individual fibers. I cut them into very small pieces and then glued them on, over the form I had drawn. The pieces were so small that I had to use the lead of a mechanical pencil to apply the glue and move the pieces around.
I was very pleased with my product. The woman’s figure, formed by small fibers of nature, is tied together to the rest of the piece, creating a drawing that fuses nature with the most practical of man made objects. I had transformed my regular desk clock into a piece of art that reminds me of truth every time I look at it.
In Nature’s Time is meant to express the importance of letting life run its natural course. The woman, in the shape of a seed, has not opened up and grown into what she will someday be. However, there is nothing wrong with that. She is beautiful in the shape that she lay. I wanted to remind others, as well as myself, that we do not need to force ourselves into what is not yet meant to be, but let time progress as it shall, knowing that time is not ours to manipulate, but natures.
Essay
This work was inspired by a frustrating evening of attempting to print a paper due the next day. The printer in my room had run out of ink, but I realized that there was a new cartridge I could put in. After a long while of trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, I noticed that the cartridge wasn’t the exactly right size. I had to run up to the library before I went to bed, which although was not the end of the world, it was a hassle. In the moment I had wished that I could just force the rest of the ink out of the cartridges and onto the paper.
This is essentially what I did. I replicated my essay by violently stamping the dry ink cartridge on printer paper. There are several indentations from my smashing the cartridge. There wasn’t quite enough ink, so I broke a pen as well. There are several smudges as well as my own fingerprints.
I didn’t have a meaning going into the piece, but while I vented some frustration, I translated my action into a fear I have. The thought came to mind, “what if this is how professors view our writing, just ink on a paper?” In much of my writing I put my soul into the words, similar to how I included my fingerprints in this piece. I sincerely hope my words are worth more than ink on paper.
All About that Bass
The inspiration for All About that Bass came to my friend and classmate, Audrey, and I as we brainstormed in my room one evening. We had noticed that the music department had thrown away a bass case, with broken hinges and no working zipper, and it had been sitting by the dumpster for some time. I kept on suggesting to Audrey that she should use it to create one of her drawings. While spitballing some ideas, we searched for some sort of music related pun, and the concept for All About that Bass emerged. The title was inspired by Meghan Trainor’s hit song with the same name, which celebrates body positivity for the full-figured woman. The idea of cutting out the image of a nude woman’s backside on the inside of a bass case, which is in a similar hourglass shape, was hysterical to us.
In probably the most impulsive artistic decision I’ve ever made, Audrey and I ran down to the dumpster, welding exacto-knives and a reference image, a piece I had made for my figure drawing class. We cut shapes out and pulled up the velvet to reveal the styrofoam underneath, the white indicating the light cast on the figure.
One of the biggest joys of this piece was the awkward encounters that surrounded the making and transporting of it. Several people walked by, some confused as they threw away their trash, and some friends of ours who were loving our strange creativity. It was difficult to transport the case, since it was so large and there was no way to keep it even slightly closed. The two sides were holding onto each other by a thin, ripping cloth. Taking up to the third floor of Arminton and back down was an adventure. Carrying it up campus to the art building we were greeting with confused and joyful laughter. It was a surreal, funny experience, which I don’t think I will ever forget. I am happy with the final product, and even happier with the memory of its process.
Our Eden
The beautiful natural world in and around Westmont has been a sort of Eden for me, providing a sense of peace and a chance to escape. However, recent disasters have ravaged the landscape. The fires and floods have decimated much of the nature in the area, not to mention the homes and lives. On a personal level I have, to some extent, lost the Eden that I took energy from. Cold Springs trail, which I often hiked with my friends or in blissful solitude, is still blocked off, nobody allowed to even go on the street that leads to it. In my piece I wanted to personify our natural landscape, our Eden, and depict the grief that she is experiencing from the recent disasters.
My model and roommate, Eve, is depicted as nature, whose name I took some inspiration from.
The charcoal that I used for this drawing was wood that was burnt by the fire. I collected this charcoal on the trail around campus, where the fire damaged several trees. The charcoal was hard, scratchy, brittle, and got everywhere. The reference images were taken by me while walking on that trail, looking at the trees, some of which survived, and others that were now lifeless and charred. The drawing is about two by three feet, so I had to work on it in the lounge of my dorm, making my process into more of a communal experience, welcoming friends and strangers in on my thoughts. Drawing Our Eden was somewhat of a cathartic process, allowing frustration to channel out of my as I struck the paper, creating leaf-like patterns with the natural shape of the charcoal chunks.
I am pleased with how it turned out and glad that I could make something, however small, out of something that is devastating for all of us. Also, I incorrectly gauged how much charcoal I needed to collect, so I have enough to last me for a long time, which is nice.
Some Artists I Admire
Paola Andrea Ochoa:
Artist Statement
“My lines and mark-making serve as a way for me to meditate on who I want to become and what I believe in. Drawing is a way for me to sharpen my endurance and to test my commitment to my own thoughts. I was not raised to be who I hope to become, and it is through drawing that I overcome the negative forces that draw me.
When I start a drawing, I channel the second-nature out of myself in a cathartic beginning where I apply ink or graphite onto mylar, making a mess— without fear. I then use intuitive marks to trap the mess and rearrange it, until the act of drawing culminates with a resolved image/record of my internal shuffle.
In the beginning my marks and spills are murky, but over time they become sharp and focused— mirroring the self-control I must remember to live by in order to free myself from the anchor of unchecked habit.
My drawings are my barometer, they keep me in check.”
“My lines and mark-making serve as a way for me to meditate on who I want to become and what I believe in. Drawing is a way for me to sharpen my endurance and to test my commitment to my own thoughts. I was not raised to be who I hope to become, and it is through drawing that I overcome the negative forces that draw me.
When I start a drawing, I channel the second-nature out of myself in a cathartic beginning where I apply ink or graphite onto mylar, making a mess— without fear. I then use intuitive marks to trap the mess and rearrange it, until the act of drawing culminates with a resolved image/record of my internal shuffle.
In the beginning my marks and spills are murky, but over time they become sharp and focused— mirroring the self-control I must remember to live by in order to free myself from the anchor of unchecked habit.
My drawings are my barometer, they keep me in check.”
I love Ochoa’s use of design and color. She brilliantly constructs fascinating pieces that seem to reference fantastical nature, rearranged and bursting with pattern. The viewer is seemingly transported into another dimension. Her psychological process is fascinating and one can see in her work physical manifestation of that surprising pairing of freedom and structure.
Ilinca Balaban:
Artist Statement
“Although art continuously progresses through cross-disciplinary migrations, drawing remains the most primal, immediate and expressive mechanism of image making. It is an intuitive extension into a palpable visual form of our mind’s capacity to see, question and to think. Informed by memory, knowledge, metaphor and emotional impulses, drawing is thought’s visual counterpart, equally as limitless, fearless and impermanent in nature. It is impulsive and charged with immediacy unparalleled by any other medium.
I engage in a drawing process that is anchored in realistic figuration and is inextricably rooted in storytelling and narrative. Each drawing seeks to describe and illustrate ideas that are deeply submerged in an ongoing investigation into the paradoxical nature of existence, forces of irrationalities, and the psychological frameworks imposed on us by these forces. It is left up to the viewer to fill in the dramatic vacuum created by the work’s inconclusiveness with his / her own thoughts and assumptions.
The drawings are painstakingly constructed from an ongoing collection of imagery that is rearranged in unexpected relational juxtapositions that often unfold into the realm of the absurd. Closely ordered rendering techniques and a controlled system of mark making are deliberately employed to reinforce each image’s credibility. Precise details demand a certain intimacy from the viewer, bringing them closer into the work. Text fragments are integrated into the imagery itself, or into the work’s title, serving as anchors for the visual metaphors.”
I engage in a drawing process that is anchored in realistic figuration and is inextricably rooted in storytelling and narrative. Each drawing seeks to describe and illustrate ideas that are deeply submerged in an ongoing investigation into the paradoxical nature of existence, forces of irrationalities, and the psychological frameworks imposed on us by these forces. It is left up to the viewer to fill in the dramatic vacuum created by the work’s inconclusiveness with his / her own thoughts and assumptions.
The drawings are painstakingly constructed from an ongoing collection of imagery that is rearranged in unexpected relational juxtapositions that often unfold into the realm of the absurd. Closely ordered rendering techniques and a controlled system of mark making are deliberately employed to reinforce each image’s credibility. Precise details demand a certain intimacy from the viewer, bringing them closer into the work. Text fragments are integrated into the imagery itself, or into the work’s title, serving as anchors for the visual metaphors.”
Balaban’s work is intriguing and inspiring. Through drawing she is able to create strange scenes that dig deep into the psyche. The amount of detail is astounding and the realistic representation is admirable. I am refreshed by Balaban’s commitment to storytelling and the skill with which she tells them demands the viewers attention and curiosity.
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