Artist Statement and Poster
Artist Statement
For my senior project, I explored the connection between memory and music, and the psychology behind the theory of flow. By taking the image of people who have impacted my life and creating it out of song lyrics that I have shared memories attached to I bring forth the question of how we remember people; is it by their appearance, the things they say, or some other factor? Through my research, I have found that there is a connection between memory and music. A person is more likely to have vivid memory when music is present due to the emotions that will surface caused by the song. This idea plays into my senior project because part of the reason I chose these songs was due to the happy memories that I have attached them to. In psychology, Flow is considered to be a state of mind a person can reach when they are deeply present in the work that they are doing; when in this state, nothing else matters and it is common to lose track of time. The theory of flow is shown in the work itself, as I reach the state of flow through the repetition of the words while creating my art.
Repetition has always been prevalent in my work as an artist. I find order in the chaos and peace in the process when making art that has a repetitiveness to it. When it came to choosing the subjects of my pieces, I chose friends and family that have played major roles in key moments of my life. My younger sister, best friends, former roommate, and sister-in-law are the people that are being represented. In terms of the songs, they were chosen based on strong memories that I share with these people. For example, Hey Everybody by 5 Seconds of Summer makes up a majority of the face of my sister because it was the opening song of the first concert the two of us went to together. Each part of the song that I chose was for a reason, as they are the parts of the song that are pushed forward the most in these memories.
To create the images, I used my QKK Mini Projector to project the images onto Stonehenge paper, then outlined the portrait in pencil, as well as outlined the main shadows and highlights. From here I used Sakura brand Pigma Microns with a .45mm tip to write in the text that makes up the portrait. I started with the highlights, then went to the mid-tones, then shadows to finish the face. Afterwards I would work on the hair and shirt simultaneously, before going in and doing any minor corrections. The location of the songs was chosen deliberately. The song I have the most vivid memory of makes up the mid-tones as there is the most of those, the song in the highlights is the one that I have the happiest memory associated to that person, the shadows are the memory that repeat the most, the hair is the longest memory I share with the person, and the shirt is the oldest memory I have with the person. The words were done obsessively to create the overall effect and texture.