thank you x a million!

This is long overdue, but THANK YOU to everyone who helped me with my show, offered to help me with my show, gave any input on my work at any point, walked past the gallery and glanced over for 0.2 seconds, read one of my postcards, or did anything else that could remotely be connected to the production of my senior thesis.

I deinstalled last Friday and just finished reading through the sign-in book and let me tell you – it was like reading a high school yearbook filled with notes and hearts and friends and people I don’t quite remember, only 9834285 times better. So many overly-nice things and words of encouragement that made my debacles with drawing and painting the walls and ESPECIALLY framing totally worth it.

My photos of the show are atrocious, but hopefully a combination of Photoshop and finding pictures taken by the gallery staff can amend that.

Thank you again to everyone!

Med school’s sure going to have a hard time trying to top this.

 

a semi-new beginning.

I’m in a huge dilemma right now concerning my plans for the fall (I know I’m going to med school, I just don’t know where – waitlists are the worst thing ever invented) so I guess it was inevitable that this personal crisis would start seeping into my art. Not exactly a bad thing, just something I hadn’t planned on happening as I try to keep my science and art equal, but separate. (Please ignore any unintentional historical references this makes.)

It started a few weeks ago when I was, admittedly, freaking out about medical school. I was (and still am) very excited and very ready, but also nervous and disappointed and financially insecure. I was overthinking just about everything (no surprise there) and somehow Netter popped into my mind as I was contemplating anatomy class in the fall, hence my previous blog post. Using his illustrations as inspiration, I had planned to create meticulously labeled posters with a similar anatomical feel for my new work this semester, except featuring fruits and vegetables instead of human organs. I had planned to spotlight a graphite drawing of a particular food in the middle of a large sheet of paper, and then visually “dissect” it into its parts and associations: what each veins are named (xylem vs. phloem), where it’s are grown, how much it costs, what bacteria it harbors, and other random facts.

I embarked on my first piece, choosing a romaine lettuce leaf as my subject, only to find that it took me nearly 12 hours to complete just the drawing part because I became so obsessed with capturing the details of every shaded segment and the precise pattern of the network of veins. The leaf was initially intended to be a simple illustration with the labeling aspect taking the bulk of my time, but my perfectionist tendencies won and the drawing became my sole focus. Once I finished the leaf, I stepped back and decided to ditch (or at least hold off on) the labeling and any other accessory I had originally mapped out, leaving only a stark high-contrast graphite rendering in the middle of the cream-colored sheet. It’s hard for me to not overwork these drawings and I’ve tried to picture them with various added components, but in the end, I think they look better like this – left clean and simple without distractions.

Romaine lettuce, graphite (Bic 0.7mm mechanical pencil) on paper, 18″x24″

Artichoke, graphite (Bic 0.7mm mechanical pencil) on paper, 18″x24″

I’m continuing in this direction with five drawings completed so far and planning on featuring ten or so in my show (opening April 11th, 2012!). Although this means scrapping basically everything I did last semester and pretty much starting over during the very last semester of my college career, my artistic process remains consistent in its attention to and preoccupation with detail. My media and the final overall look of my work have changed radically, but my innate obsessiveness drives everything I do and hopefully that will show through in the end. Plus, it’s definitely a great feeling returning to drawing after a nearly 4-year hiatus. More to come.

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P.S. Any ideas for other fruits or vegetables with detailed features that I should draw? In addition to the romaine and artichoke, I’ve done red onion, red cabbage, and grapefuit. Planning on trying out pomegranate, collard greens, and portabello mushroom next…

P.P.S. Any tips for photographing work are welcome. I am terrible at both shooting and Photoshop, and I think the drawings look 90349285 times better in person than they do in these photos. This needs to be reduced to, at most, only 10 times better.

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artist statement posted!

A very rough first draft of my artist statement has [finally] been posted!

{Click “artist statement” page on right sidebar to view.}