ARTIST STATEMENT
I’ve been thinking a lot about what constitutes someone as an artist. How can you earn that title? Is it even something that you earn? As a student mainly of an art history background, an artist to me has had some sort of unspoken, elevated, and elitist connotation. I guess since I’ve spent the last six years studying what a “true” artist is through things like Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, I have had trouble separating them (Great Artists/ Old Masters) from myself. What I have come to realize however, is that these arbitrary set of standards made by a group of men in 16th century Europe for who and what an artist should be is not relevant to how I should look at myself as an artist, or how I should look at anybody else as an artist.
I believe we all can be artists, that is one of the best things about art. I have always thought of myself as someone who creates things, whether I or anybody else considers it art, I feel it is important nonetheless. The things I make convey how I explore various mediums and attempt different creative endeavors. Making things because of the process, not the outcome, is something very important to me. Louise Bourgeois has said “The finished work is often a stranger to, and sometimes very much at odds with what the artist felt, or wished to express when he began.” I believe it is especially important with all the technology we have today to be able to slow down and really think about the process of how we as humans create things. Our whole experience of the world is not just mental or verbal, things move at the pace of the body. This reflects the art that I make. Because of the fact that us as humans move through time at what seems all too often to be so fast, I think there is value in making things by hand at the pace our own bodies are capable of.
I want to work with students to show them that you don’t have to be this “born blessed with a Michelangelo kind of talent” to be considered an artist or a maker. All you need to do is be willing to be vulnerable and take chances when it comes to expressing yourself creatively. I do consider myself an artist because of the fact that art is so crucial to my life. Rather than looking at art as being something only achievable for some, I see it as achievable for every single one of us. Art has helped me understand the notion of “us vs them,” how can we share this collective experience (life) with our neighbor? Creating art, no matter what it may be helps me look at the world with more empathy and allows me to feel more connected to those around me.
I believe we all can be artists, that is one of the best things about art. I have always thought of myself as someone who creates things, whether I or anybody else considers it art, I feel it is important nonetheless. The things I make convey how I explore various mediums and attempt different creative endeavors. Making things because of the process, not the outcome, is something very important to me. Louise Bourgeois has said “The finished work is often a stranger to, and sometimes very much at odds with what the artist felt, or wished to express when he began.” I believe it is especially important with all the technology we have today to be able to slow down and really think about the process of how we as humans create things. Our whole experience of the world is not just mental or verbal, things move at the pace of the body. This reflects the art that I make. Because of the fact that us as humans move through time at what seems all too often to be so fast, I think there is value in making things by hand at the pace our own bodies are capable of.
I want to work with students to show them that you don’t have to be this “born blessed with a Michelangelo kind of talent” to be considered an artist or a maker. All you need to do is be willing to be vulnerable and take chances when it comes to expressing yourself creatively. I do consider myself an artist because of the fact that art is so crucial to my life. Rather than looking at art as being something only achievable for some, I see it as achievable for every single one of us. Art has helped me understand the notion of “us vs them,” how can we share this collective experience (life) with our neighbor? Creating art, no matter what it may be helps me look at the world with more empathy and allows me to feel more connected to those around me.