Objective: Basing self portraits on the work of various historic and contemporary artists using photographic portraiture as source material in unorthodox ways.
- The project requires the usage of material culture that relate to memories or experiences that shifted your view towards the world.
- It is photography based but any material or media may be used – 2D or 3D.
Photograph of me basing the piece:
The sketches for my project:
These sketches for my self-portrait tribute project are all slightly different, but all have to do with the theme of my memory poem:
I Remember Poem:
Final Project:
Graphic Novel Pages:
Artist Statement:
I consider myself to be a multi-media artist, with my concentration being on showcasing my lived experience in whatever medium shows it best. In the past, I’ve done this by making huge collage pieces, film photography, graphic designs, ceramic work, and illustrations. Here, I continued this theme of portraying my life experience through different mediums, using illustration this time in the form of a graphic novel depicting my lived experience.
The graphic novel began with a process of writing a poem based off of the concept of Joe Brainard’s I Remember: a book-lengthed poem about his memories and how they shaped him into who he is today. My poem turned out to be mostly about how I’ve grown into myself and accepted that I will always feel/be different due to my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and lesbianism. When reflecting on how to portray this through a piece of artwork, I was drawn to the idea of expressing my growth through a beautiful image/painting, but the sketches I made for that idea deeply inspired me to instead create a graphic novel depicting myself through a doodley character: living my life and growing through my experiences.
I was challenged throughout this process by what I should include and leave out. I had to make decisions between memories based on if they would make sense in my story and fit the innocent, younger feel that my drawings give off. I had to stick to a single art style throughout the novel, which was also difficult for me because I’d never drawn a group of cohesive characters for a project before. Despite these challenges, I’m very proud of how it turned out and I believe that it would inspire young girls who may be living similar experiences to what I did, and feeling different and left out because of it.
