My name is Madyn Garretson and I’m a queer Mexican-American artist. I am a student at Parsons School of Design in New York City, but I’m originally from the Bay Area in California. My major is Illustration and my minor is Video Arts, but I make art of all mediums. Major themes and influences in my work are my struggles with mental illness, womanhood, nostalgia, rebellion, and more.

The similarities in my work this semester were my use of color and themes. A lot of my work had colorful, nostalgic colors and were about my childhood. The differences were the materials I used, I learned how to use wood and how to sew.  Learning how to make 3-dimensional work in Space/Materiality allowed me to bring my illustrations to life in my projects in Time. In Time I also began to explore film more seriously and made shorts that focused on angles, emotion, and sound. Objects as History made me consider the use of figures in Greek, Asian, and African art and experiment with that a little bit on my own. Studio and Seminar got me to explore artists I didn’t know much about before and I was really inspired by their success stories and art processes.

First Highlight:

Many processes went into this. I cast my hands from plaster, altered the cast by adding my lips to the palm and embedding candles where the fingers once were. For the structure, I had to measure out everything and then cut the wood and hand chisel a place for each bubble wands. I build the structure with nails and added a mobile to experiment with balance. The end result is a crib containing two hands, one blowing out the candle that the other hand is holding. I used found objects such as push pins, candles, and bubble wands for their mixed connotations. The sculpture as a whole is representative of my relationship with my childhood and birthday. Figuring out how to build this sculpture was a lot of trial and error but I am now more comfortable working with wood and plaster.

Second Highlight:

I chose a time and location for this video, but the rest of it had to happen in the moment. The fall scenery and color of her attire creates an aesthetic that matches the background song, and using a subject other than myself allowed me to experiment with angles. The story was roughly outlined prior to filming but I had to make a lot of decisions in the moment. Next time I would like to storyboard out the idea so I could be more prepared, but there was something fun about the spur of the moment filmmaking. The end result is a roughly 2-minute video of a girl finding notes with addresses on them, leading her on a wild goose chase, and ends with the viewer finding out she’s writing the notes to herself. This video represents isolation and boredom and the ways we respond to them.

Conclusion: I decided this semester that I want to minor in Video Arts so I’m excited to continue to learn to use video as a medium. I also want to continue to use sculpture in my personal practice or use my building skills to create installations. I want to continue to practice sewing, making a garment was a fun and challenging experience for me so I want to see what else I can do with that. Prior to this semester I only did drawings and paintings, so I have grown immensly as an artist and I’m excited to continue.