Midterm Artist Statement

To begin with, my big idea is Uncertainty.  From the start, my concern was that this big idea would be too broad, since it can be interpreted in various ways. However, in the end, I feel like that actually was a huge help throughout the entire creating process. While brainstorming I was focusing on the vast amount of themes that tie in with uncertainty.  I gathered pictures representing religion, relationships, identity, life choices, and so on. My modulating meaning project presented the challenge of finding connections between my images and arranging them in a creative and equally thought provoking manner. The end result turned out to be a bit overwhelming with information, and in some ways, I even felt it was too obvious. I looked back to one of the very first artists I researched towards the start of the quarter, Vija Celmins, and her philosophy of making people find the significance in something simple in her artwork. I decided to implement this idea in my final midterm project. I looked more closely at the themes I was building off of in Blog #2, confusion, being lost, perplexed, and questioning. Of all of these, I truly identified with the theme of being lost. I was able to find incredible inspiration in the images off flickr.com relating to this subject, as well. Reflecting on how uncertainty and being lost go together then led me to the theme of fear. So these themes, being lost and fearful, are the two I specifically address in the final diptych project. After those two themes are grasped, I feel that the rest of the ideas associated with uncertainty, such as identity and confusion become easier to discover within the work.

      Finding other artists who focus on uncertainty as a big idea proved to be challenging, however, I did discover Martin Creed, a man of many talents, who uses uncertainty as a theme in the majority of his pieces. There was a certain quality of Creed’s work that I was drawn to; a sort of minimalism and bold style that I thought was useful in getting his ideas across. So again, I used that as inspiration in my own work. My project is meant to be seen as a diptych, but also works simply as a series. I was very liberal with my use of the brightness/contrast tool in Photoshop, giving both sides of my diptych a bright, washed out look. This was to give the piece an eerie vibe, lending itself to the theme of fear. Both parts of the work also have a blurred quality, to in general make the viewer feel unsettled and a bit uncomfortable. At first glance, there is not a lot of visual information going on in the diptych, as I was relying on the simplicity to help make a bold statement in the piece.  One half of my midterm was the combined faces of a grown woman, and a very young boy. I was hoping that the merging of these two images would be haunting. The facial expression is also very apprehensive and discontent. In both eyes, which are wide and unsettled, there are images of dark figures in long endless passages. This is to emphasize the idea of being lost and uncertain about what is ahead. The other half of the diptych uses an escalator and train tracks as a metaphor for paths in life. I purposefully made the image of the escalator blurred and hard to focus on, suggesting that it is hard to concentrate on one path in life and it is easy to lose your direction. This is why there is also an image of train tracks going straight into the escalator. There are two hikers placed right at a crossroads, deciding whether to continue on the train tracks or going up the escalator. So, they are also uncertain and being faced with pressing decisions. At the top of the escalator there is a dark image, but I made it very blurred and difficult to focus on. Ultimately, it is just a shadow that hardly resembles a physical being at all, and is simply ominous. This could be symbolic in various different ways. The image could represent that there is always something, or someone, waiting at the end of a difficult path, whether that be spiritual or human. It could be even be interpreted as an unsafe or foreboding image and push the idea of fear further. In general, the brightness and sterile quality of both sides of the diptych come across as bold and simple, but when you really look at them you can see the different themes and complexities at play.

     The reason I picked the big idea of uncertainty is because of how much I can identify with it in my life right now. In many ways I feel that uncertainty, and all the underlying themes that come along with it, are what drive my life currently. I feel torn between the person I am and the person I was to be. I am not saying I am deciding between being a grown woman or a little boy, but I suppose that is an artistic way to get that point across. I am fearful of the future and, since I am a control freak, I hate not knowing what it holds. But, I have found that it is impossible to get a good grasp or focus on, and no matter what, things are changing. When it comes to being lost, I am a professional. I literally do not know what direction to go with my life, between deciding a major and career that follows and all the other responsibilities that come along with my impending doom called adulthood. Studying and developing an artistic project based on uncertainty was significant to me because I was hoping to find some answers. I may not have exactly reached that goal, but this was a fantastic way to release some frustration about my life right now.