Orange Coast Tarmac, 2019.
Mixed Media. 13 in. x 20 in.
Cardboard, Nylon Thread, Newspaper Collage, Sandpaper, Acrylic Paint, Magazine Collage
This piece was a part of my 2019 AP Portfolio, my concentration was an exploration of Futility. I was inspired by Mark Bradford’s art to employ an additive-subtractive method of construction and to explore maps as subject matter. While making this piece I had a particular time of my life in mind. When my family was struggling more than ever to make ends meet, my parents decided to try vending at a local swapmeet. We’d go to the venue on Friday mornings at 6 am to buy tickets to a raffle to see if we’d get a spot to vend at for the weekend, when we were lucky, we’d get there at 7 to set up and leave at 2 each Saturday and Sunday. The Nylon thread grid underneath is actually an aerial view of the parking lot where the swapmeet was hosted. The colored squares represent the unpredictable nature of the raffle and how we never really stayed in the same place twice. The images collaged over the very top were from a national geographic article about poverty in the middle east, the images very much so remind me of what the swapmeet looked like and I thought that my experience was mirrored in that way. Through this piece, I want to unite the worldwide struggle with poverty with my own experience.
Return to Sender, 2020. Mixed Media. 12 in. x 18 in.
Cardboard, Handmade Paper, Novel Collage, Newspaper Collage, Magazine Collage, Date Stamp, Acrylic Paint, Pen Ink
This piece was a part of my 2020 AP Portfolio, my sustained investigation was an exploration of the concept of home and what it means to ‘be home’. I was inspired by an assignment to create a self portrait from collaged newspaper but I wanted it to have a more ‘colored pulpy feel’ so I made my own paper for the background and used the fading pages of novels and weathered newspapers for the rest of the collage. While making this piece, I had transit, lost letters, and liminality in mind, particularly what it feels like to be to be at a train station or airport. The stamped dates represent passing time spent waiting, I chose not to define the backdrop beyond that because I felt it would detract from the openness and suggestibility of it being any kind of transit stop, I only wanted the general feeling of it. I also thought that the stamps here were reminiscent of international postage stamps. As for my portrait, I wanted to keep a sombre mood and to also explore the ways that people interact with their surroundings even without noticing it, the strips get progressively further apart as you look down and I intended it to be interpreted as how people leave parts of themselves in the places they inhabit even if only for a short amount of time especially in places of mass transit. I want the viewer to think about how their presence moving throughout the world unconsciously and unintentionally affects the lives of others and to question if they’re waiting for something that will never come.
Homing Mechanism, 2020. Mixed Media. 23 in. x 14 in.
Cardboard, Nylon Thread, Newspaper Collage, Sandpaper, Acrylic Paint, Oil Pastel, Alcohol Marker, Pen Ink, Spray Adhesive, Sewing Thread
This piece is also a part of the same sustained investigation. I was inspired by Mark Bradford, white paintings, and neurology to start working on this piece. I wanted to explore home as the neural connections we have to a physical place. The Nylon threads here represent a bird’s eye view of plowed fields, train tracks, and neurons. I used multiple layers of thinned white paint over brightly colored sections and neurographic designs to create a veil-like effect like sinew over muscle to further develop the neurology motif. While making this piece, I researched the history of railroads in the United States and the navigational methods of migratory birds and homing pigeons to incorporate them into the piece. The way that signals traveling through axon from the nucleus to the synaptic terminals made me think of railroads hauling information in our minds, the yellow shapes here are pieces of myelin sheath which facilitate the travel of this information but they also reminded me of train cars. These grids here represent the cities that popped up around train stops which eventually became suburbs. I want the viewer to think of and question their accumulated knowledge of where their ‘physical home’ is, why they are instinctively drawn towards it and how that instinct has affected their relationship with their concept of home.
Dreamscape with Summer Tanager, 2020. Mixed Media. 24 in. x 18 in.
Yard sign, Spray Paint, Pen Ink, Acrylic Paint, Adhesive Vinyl, Chalk
This piece is part of the same sustained investigation of ‘home’. I was inspired by Julie Mehretu’s works and animal and dream symbolism. I wanted to explore ‘home’ as a journey or constant pilgrimage marked by transience. My own anxiety towards moving on to different things in the future also contributed to me wanting to touch on this subject. I started the process of building my composition by researching animal and dream symbolism to find a subject for the piece, I found that in dreams, the Red Summer Tanager is meant to be seen as a premonition of upcoming changes in life. I then began building up layers, first starting with spray paint to prime the sign and then to start the body of the bird, afterwards I drafted the floor plan of the model of the apartment I live in and maps of Orange County and LA, then grouped marks similar to how I carve linocuts to add detail, texture, and depth to the piece, I accomplished this with fine point pen, marker, and watered down acrylic paint. I then cut pieces of colored adhesive vinyl to add movement and contrast to the piece. Finally I decided to add pastel colored shapes to the white space of the piece because I adored Mehretu’s use of pastels in some of her earlier works, but unfortunately the gloss spraypaint wouldn’t absorb it very well so I revised the areas I wanted to use chalk over with matte spraypaint and I finally got the subtle effect. I want the viewer to think of signs in their own life that signal oncoming changes and to reconsider thinking of home as a stationary place that you get to once but as an ongoing and constantly developing state of mind instead.
Cyclical,Temporal, 2020. Mixed Media, Encaustic. 18 in. x 24 in.
White board, Nylon Thread, Newspaper Collage, Sandpaper, Acrylic Paint, Pen Ink, Paraffin Wax, Plastic Mesh
This piece was started after quarantine. It is my first endeavour towards encaustic painting and so was highly experimental but I really love the results. I wanted to explore the cyclical and transient nature of relationships. I wanted to deviate from the usual straight lines of Nylon thread I picked up from Bradford and instead made them into interlocking circles of different sizes and then used different shades of blue in the different fragments to add contrast. I’ve been focusing on introspective analysis lately and through it I’ve realized that I wanted to map out the ways that many people enter, inhabit, and then exit our lives constantly and the fact that it's sometimes inevitable to progress past the point of no return with a person and the bittersweetness of it all. I added a self portrait as the piece revolves around my own thoughts on the matter first, mixing acrylic and encaustic was very messy and complicated but I love the ‘suspended in ice or fog’ look that the layers of wax give the acrylic. I want the viewer to think of their own close relationships and how time has affected them but also of how they’re bound to meet new people in due time.