As an artist, it is very difficult not to be influenced by the everyday objects and creations that encompass me. Whether created out of need, function, or pure artistic exploration, everything that has been altered by man has been designed and is thus art. Upon realization of this notion, I philosophized upon what would make our thought patterns change things in the ways that we do. For some artists, the way they think seems to coincide within the realms of classical art, while for others their minds relate more intimately with modern or postmodernism. In my own way, the thoughts of Abstract Expressionist artists seem to have the most resemblance to my own.
Through the years in high school I have gone through six art courses with my work originally being mundane and of average quality. I was not in art because I was necessarily any better than the next kid; I was simply bound by a love for the crafts. It was not until I hit my junior year and entered the AP portfolio that I was taught much of anything about art history. Through rigorous critiques that often left me put down about my work and my abilities as an artist, I began to see a stark contrast between the students who knew exactly what they were doing and could engage in an active and demeaning discussion about their concepts, and the people like me who thought that good art was photo-realism. I began to study different art movements, and began to break down the barriers that I had set up for myself. I used to think that art was meant to capture an image and a mood, and that modernism was just a slap in the face for the art community. After studying the thesis and artists statements about their work and the methods taken to conceive it, I was finally learning what art meant. It was only then that I began to change the way I thought about the world around me. I began thinking about what marks meant and what it took to make a mark. I sought a way of making a piece that contained only marks made by a media that did not resemble charcoal or graphite in its application, and I decided upon fibers. I used contrasting and analogous color schemes and sporadic movement to promote balance among the tumultuous colors. I referenced the work of Pollock, Newman, Franz Kline, and Philip Guston and the way they used canvas sizes that would totally engulf the viewer, while still maintaining a composition that works when their work is shrunk down to a thumbnail.
I have a fascination with the oceans of color that ab-ex works come with. I love that when I enter the room, everything is the color of the canvas. The white walls turn to red, and the green shirt you were wearing is canceled out and turned to brown. It's the fact that the mere existence of such a work can affect you. Not the ideas behind it necessarily, but rather by the mere fact that it has physical implications upon wherever it is placed. No matter how large a photo of Steve Steigman's is, it is still a photo. What fascinates me is that the 40 foot by 60 foot paintings of Newman's seem to gain emotional significance as they grow in size. It was with this same thought that I was simultaneously becoming interested in Communist ideals, and having toyed with the thought of a working communist society, I set out to show the interrelation of notable Communist leaders and idealists such as Karl Marx, Trotsky, Stalin, Castro, and John Lennon. I assembled their portraits onto a sheet measuring 5 feet by 6 feet and centered them around the silhouette of the sickle and hammer. It was upon completion and subsequent exhibition at school that I was approached multiple times by people to ask me about my painting. Up until now, I had never made work that inspired people to think. I had only tried to create photo-realistic works and pretty paintings. Once I got a taste of what it meant to make art, I was hooked. I started looking into assemblage and using everyday objects with sculpture until I stumbled upon the technology of cold-cathode lighting (essentially a cheap neon light). Utilizing the materials in the form that they were received unto me, I framed them onto a base, seated them firmly into an esthetically pleasing arrangement, and taught my viewership about light's behaviors. Mixing two red, two blue, and two green lights, I was able to create a soft white light that filled the room with a very calming mood and sound. In the sense of a good installation, I made sure to find ways to keep my sculpture lit for long periods and was able to gather remarks upon my work. People gathered into the light to eat lunch and catch a short nap, or to read and catch up with friends. I even heard my school's Principal comment on how soothing the room had become.
It is the love of creating, the joy derived from design, and the ego boost to have people want to pick my brain that keeps me involved with the field and keeps me so interested in industrial design. I can produce a well designed product and make it into art, which almost completely encompasses my love for art, science, and engineering. Abstract Expressionism is something from which I can always learn something new from, and each time I scan through a new book and revisit old artworks, I see something new or can appreciate something that I could not before.
