What I think
“Creativity takes courage.” — Henri Matisse
If everyone’s life can be seen as an open canvas, then artists’ lives should be the ones that carry the most wild, vivid and original colors. As an artist, I don’t like to put myself into boundaries. Rather than being too concentrated to one aspect of design, I want to be brave to explore and not afraid of getting out of my comfort zone. Art should be without boundaries is the boundary I set for my art. In my opinion, being able to connect and express through different medias is the most valuable aspect of creating art.
More about me
Medias: Charcoals, Watercolor, Pastel, Oil, Digital(Photoshop, Premiere, Illustrator)
Major in Parsons: Undeclared
Previous Work link: https://portfolio.newschool.edu/amberzhang/2017/10/29/2016-2017-portfolio/
How I started?
Early inspiration from film
-a lead to discover my personal style in fashion making
Values projected into Fashion: finding myself in my art
In the three years in LA, I was strongly influenced by the local culture.
There, I discovered the voice of a deep inner self of me, a soul cries out for freedom and dare to express herself. I also experienced a major shift in the taste of arts and fashion styles. I started to get really amazed by street arts and street fashion styles. For me, at that time, everything comes from the street feels more connected and more complete. They carry with strong voices coming out of the society, deep background roots from different riots and is often-time an extreme emphasis of personal colors. Street style clothing and arts become my constant inspiration and gave big influence to my later work, especially when this semester I first moved into fashion design…
Bridge 2: Partner’s fear
“It’s not funny”-A jacket that deals with Coulrophobia
Design details and thinking patterns
When I was interviewing Ata, I found out the reason he felt great fear with clown was because his previous impressions of clowns from the movies. In all the clown movies he had watched, all the clowns turnt out to be serial killers and psychopaths. Ata agreed on that his fear of the clown might actually be the fear of dark and evil forces in our society. However, Ata was not afraid of a lot of cartoon characters of clowns. He specified the two clowns he liked. They were Lego clown and the Krusty from the Simpsons. I majorly incorporated these two characters into the design of this jacket. I expected when Ata wear the jacket he will be free from thinking the scary clowns, but instead, the cute ones. I displayed this ideas of two different types of clown in the drawing that’s on the hoodie also, with one side colorful cute clown face and one side darker coloring paints and a skull. As I got deeper and deeper understanding of Ata’s fear, I felt like the disgusted feeling he got from clown was actually his hatred to cruel acts happening around our society. It could be further linked his desire to make peace and justice out of the world. So, thinking of that, I added “Peace” and “正義”, which means justice in traditional Chinese, on the front of the shirt to incorporate with the drawings. I also put a saying from George Carlin stating “may the force of evil become confused on the way to your house” to give my best wish for Ata. The hoodie could be all zipped up. This is, in case, when Ata meets a clown and he becomes really scared of it, he can simply zip up the hoodie. As he said, he won’t be afraid of clown if he actually became one of them or he could not even see their ugly faces. The back of the jacket, I put a drawing of a boy with sharp eyes and serious face stating “it’s not funny”. This quote actually came from Ata. I put the line on the back meaning to scare the clowns away and show Ata’s attitude towards the clowns. There is also a painted line “sober” appeared on the back of the shirt to indicate that clown’s bad spirit cannot get into and mess with Ata’s minds.
More about this garment: https://portfolio.newschool.edu/amberzhang/2017/09/29/its-not-funny/
Bridge 4: Further Research into The Enigma of a Day
A concept develop between peace and war
Main strength of my work
“I also deeply value the power of ideas. A garment without a message behind is meaningless. An artwork without a subjective voice is boring. I have always tried to make my work strongly relate to my society and my background. To be not afraid to take a stand in my work becomes my career goal and working standard.”
—Amber Zhang
While my garments appear to be cool street wear, I want it to mean something in the real word and try to deliver a message to my audience. As people say, “beautiful face without an interesting soul will be bored also.”
Other works of mine emphasizing the power of idea
The voice coming from my background and my race
Talk about the future
- Practice my sewing skill
- develop my own style of creating and making(always get out of my comfort zone to explore)
- make more works matter to the society and speak for my race
- explore even more with new medias, e.g. 3D printing
