My name is Alicia Abramson, my passion is nature/underwater photography, my major is in photography! I use my artwork to have a voice and show my sides on important topics, mainly environmental ones. My approach is to have a message that comes through easily so whether or not my viewers care, they at least know the purpose of the pieces I create. Most of my classes were challenging me mentally, I was given loose prompts, super stricts prompts and had to work with foreign materials and somehow make it enjoyable by putting my own artistic voice in there. My first semester was more about self evaluation and adjustments, not until my second semester did I really focus on my voice and beliefs, I had been trying to find my voice throughout the year but it would get drowned out by just getting the project done instead.
Throughout this year I become clearly more knowledgeable in photoshop and learned much about premiere, lightroom, illustrator and indesign, which are amazing skills! Having those skills were extremely helpful in my other courses. I worked a lot with premiere which would need photoshopped images as well. I learned how impactful the senses are and how to appeal to more than just sight, I did more sound pieces, which I happen to enjoy quite a bit. Most of my work though is very personal, I find those to come out the best and get my full attention as I am eager to work on them as well as present them. I tried to incorporate my photography whenever I could but in some works, it simply was not applicable therefore I had to find other ways to make it a personal piece of art. My thought processes in seminar were thought out and analyzed, which then helped me develop a clear project for my studio class. Doing research on what I was making only helped me understand it more and get the best result I could get. I could have always done better on some projects with more time but I believe that time limits are a good thing to help tell you when you’re done instead of continuously making small changes and never finishing.
My first highlight is from semester one studio, it is called Sound experience on my LP. I was assigned a partner and we had to create a sound experience. We did something together that was personal, it was about relationships, specifically a break up, we incorporated our own thoughts and words, even our own handwriting and had a friend recite it while we individually addressed an envelope to each student in class for them to read while listening. After it was done they had the choice of interpretation and of throwing the letter out, or saving it in a drawer, it was an interactive and personal experience that I was very proud of, it was my first project with sound. When planning this we already had a rough idea of a letter and a break up, relationship theme. After writing our ideas down and putting them together we gathered background noises to make it seem realistic and then got a voiceover and printed out the copies, we really wanted our classmates to connect with the piece and that was our idea on how to do so. I learned more about my comfort in expressing myself and being comfortable in a new medium, like sound.
My second highlight is another sound based medium, but it is from my second semester and is definitely proof of growth. For my Time class, I did a project on an embodied experience. I chose to focus on the captivity industry and made a premiere video that also worked with sound. I had clips from tv shows and movies, with my voice and another narrator speaking over the footage. There were parts with silence and parts with music, it came together beautifully and when I presented my classmates got chills, They all understood my message very clearly, and I was so thrilled. The piece on my LP is called “seq recut.” The process was longer because I wanted it to be powerful, I had countless clips and had to cut and paste and trim just until they were perfect, I changed big parts last minute to match with the visuals which were just as important, finding that harmony between sound and sight was the biggest achievement from that project, because that is how people will be affected. I learned a lot in my first semester alone, from my first semester to now, I feel like I have so much more freedom as an artist.
I hope to in the future get better with premiere and photoshop and even learn how to use bridge or other adobe apps. I wonder if I will be able to make a piece that addresses all the senses, that would be spectacular. If I keep working on each sense and gradually putting them together I believe I can get to all the senses in one piece, somehow. I want to work more with animals in my work, as I feel those are my strongest pieces. This year alone has already taught me so much and helped immerse me more into new mediums, bringing out work I never thought I could do.
My studio class reading their letters, with the trash can and drawer on display for after they finish.