Through the years I have done much experimentation in my art with many media such as paint, oil pastels, charcoal, markers, cut paper,and pencils. In all my experimentation I have found that the closer I am to the paper the more deeply I fall into to my work. looking at my collection I have found that my favorite medium is charcoal both color and black. This year especially I have played with the technique of layering lines in my drawings. I like to start loose and go in and refine in different rounds as I keep revisiting the drawing, portraying my models and myself in ways that the drawing questions the viewer through facial expressions.
This has been my my most committed year as an artist, spending weeks and months on my art until I reach a feeling of satisfaction. While it is often said that an artist is never done but merely runs out of time, I am proud to say that my best pieces have been completed to my liking. I hope to reach a place in my portraiture where the portrayal does not end at a physical level, if my work could plunge deeper with a stronger connection to my subjects as people or symbols my art would reach a new level that I would be more than happy to reach for.
In the 99 percent JR shares thoughts about the hardest parts of bringing his project to other countries, and that the hardest part is not being there, but deciding to go. “But sometimes there’s no sign, and you need to push yourself and go into those places.” He explains how when you don’t have a plan, its so easy to wait for a sign to tell you what to do, but when the plan is to respond you just have to go for it. When I think about his main question “can art change the world?” I think he answered it himself, that anything possible if the world is your canvas.
From what I’ve seen in the TED talks segment featuring JR, and Ariston Anderson’s “JR on Art, Experimentation, and Keeping Your Freedom” on the 99 percent; I am very careful to recognize that photos are JR’s medium. I am careful to say that they are his medium rather than calling him a photographer because even though he does take photographs, I found that who takes the photos is not most important, but that they are taken. The art lies in the process of getting the images up, of smoothing them up against the wall, composing them, and then leaving soon after. In the same way that Jackson Polluck’s paintings are all about the process and life of the paint, JR and his friends create art that is all about the process of posting the images and the daily lives of people.
JR’s attitude is the most selfless I have ever seen in an artist. His lifestyle and image make it so clear that the work is its not about him, not once did he take all of the credit for his group’s work. The life of his work relies heavily on the people surrounding it. People from Palestine, Nigeria, Brazil, and India, just to name a few. The images that JR posts are all images of faces in any combination on a very large scale, they tell the rest of the world that the people exist. In Nigeria JR and his friends made a point of printing their posters on vinyl. This way they were able to fix leaky rooftops for families who needed them. While in Nigeria in addition being practical they were playful in their art making. They made a full arrangement of faces so that when the train passed behind a set of houses there were fully composed faces. The train held the eyes and the roof held the smile so the expression changed as the train moved. JR is what I consider to be the ultimate public artist. Even when he began the sidewalk gallery when he was younger, framing graffiti in the streets of Paris, bringing a considerably bourgeois aspect of western culture to the streets for all to access.
I had the same art teacher from kindergarten through eigth grade, and between the two of us we know a little something about growth. She was the one who encouraged me to go to the Boston Arts Academy and the one to help me with my portfolio. As a little girl in kindergarten or the fisrt grade I would enter the art room at the Misson Hill School and my eye would always be drawn to this painting that there was of a cherry blossom tree. For some reason it stuck with me for this assignment. I associate that beautiful blossoming tree with a metaphor for our relationship. It has been around a long time and it only seems to get more beautiful.
