Two Dimensional Emphasis
I have learned in life that you don’t have a right to the cards you think
you should have been dealt, but you have an obligation to play the ones you
were. I hadn’t imagined that I would go to art school, or watch my younger
sister battle a drug addiction, or take four years off from my education, or
leave home and move to Utah. Life is made up of experiences. There are all
these things around us that we must choose to embrace or ignore.
Over the last few years I have drawn inspiration from all of the
experiences happening to me and around me. I feel very strongly about the idea
of ephemerality and how the things around us are not permanent. We should take
part in all that is happening because one day those things won’t be there to
experience. Image 6 is about the idea that there is this whole world out
there to see. There is this geometric shape that you need to get through in
order to get out. Image 2 comes from a series I did where I photographed people
who were out doing things, but weren’t actually involved in what was happening
because they were engrossed in their cell phones or other technology. Image 4 is a continuation from image 3, which came out of the abstraction work I did
on my Painting I Final (image 6). I tried to focus on being present in the experience of just
making the work and the feeling of freedom that can come from creating art, and
trying to realize that you aren’t always in control.
For a long time I was afraid to try new things. Afraid of things that I
never pictured myself doing or things I assumed I could not do. I have learned
that there is a power in fear. That power can change you if you let it. Since
coming to Weber State I have been given the opportunity to try art mediums and
processes that I do not think I otherwise would have. Because of this I realize
that I am capable of so much more then I thought possible. Learning new things
has become something I love, that only grows with each class I take.
There are individual aspects of both photography and 2D that are so
attractive to me, that it has made it a hard choice to pick only one. The
merging of the two areas as one has allowed me to better convey my feelings and
experiences within my own practice. I draw inspiration in my 2D work from my
photos and vice versa. In the BFA program I would want to continue using both
photography and 2D in my own practice to keep stretching myself beyond what I
think I can do. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “A mind that is stretched by new experiences can never go
back to its old dimensions.”
