Art Statement (real one)
My work for studio class explored many different areas like book, sculpture, photograph and digital work. I would like to try making experimental artworks through studio classes. For me, the first semester of art school is to help us to learn about broad areas of art, which is a good beginning for the future inspiration because we will not be narrow in our own major. I, personally, am a person who is brave to try new things of making art, even though sometimes the results turned out to be bad. Trying to make experimental things is a way to push me learn new skills and make me to be strong to face the failure.
In all my work done in the studio class, the book of Chinese culture is one of my favorite and proud works. The type of this book is a zine, which looks quite different from traditional books. The reason of choosing zine as a format to create the project is because zine can be more artistical compared to the normal books. The cover page is a red lotus with 3D touchable title: Chinese culture. Inside the book, they are all the pictures that me and my Group mate Selina took, which includes Chinese food, constructions, decorations, etc. Me and Selina designed each layout for each picture and wrote a simple explanation behind the pictures. The sequence of pictures is also in connections, including same elements about color, structures and symbols. What we want to express is that Chinese culture is various with long history. It is different from the typical impression of Chinatown. It is true that Chinatown is a way to show the Chinese culture to the world, but the real China is not just Chinatown. We tried to express the real China to Western people who only know China from Chinatown and who believe China is still far behind the world with poor living conditions.
The inspiration of making this book is because the first impression of Chinatown for me is a bit weird. As a Chinese, I went to visit Chinatown when I first came to New York city. The view I saw is surprising. Even though I feel in the environment with all of similar people around, I just felt I was not in the right place to feel China. This impression of Chinatown was a bit messy and quite noisy, which I did not really like. I start to think about the reason that when there are some scenes of China in movies, there are always about crowded markets or narrow streets with buildings around with bad living conditions. Therefore, Selina and I deicided to change this impression of “fake” Chinatown. We took some pictures in New York City and found some pictures back in our hometowns to start to prepare for making this book.
Talking back to myself, my name is Xinyi Zhao. Vella is my English name. I am now studying at Parsons school of Design, in communication major. My past 18 years was spent in my hometown Shaoxing, which is a small city in China. Drawing has been my favorite thing to do since I was a little kid, and when I went to high school, I start to formally regard art as my future. I started to be determined about considering making arts as a future major and job. I like more digital artworks than the traditional paintings. Also, my taste of art is both minimalism and hyperrealism.
Art Statement (fake one)
The work of Karen Smith includes both abstract and realistic sides. Her early works were more related to minimalism and hand-drawing. She spent her last fifteen years exploring the colors with geometric shapes. And for the next five years until now, she has started to work as a digital artist for drawing posters and designing characters for game companies. It seems to be a big transformation in her life, but she believes that people should not be stuck in one area. The journey of life is too long to waste on one area. She loves to explore new areas and she admits that her direction of art probably will change in the future as well.
A current artwork of Karen is named Infinite, which is a sci-fi style poster with a character she created for a game company. The environment of her work is designed in a snowstorm. In the middle of the poster, there is a female soldier wearing a mechanical uniform. Her face looks pretty calm or in another word, she is trying to be calm. The hand gesture reflects that she is commanding something to the backup teammates. The background of the artwork looks like the world has been destroyed. Because it is a digital drawing, it can be put into various sizes.
The inspiration of creating this artwork is because artificial intelligence is the future trend. Nowadays, people pay much attention to the development of virtual reality and it has already started to influence the normal people’s life. Karen believes that AI will bring benefits and convenience in the future. There will be more high-tech inventions appeared and that brings the idea of a female wearing mechanical uniform to her. Also, the environment might get worse in the several hundreds of years, people need to wear glasses to distinguish the objects in the front. The suits the future people wear will change the temperature through the outside weather. Thus, the figure and the background became clearer idea in her mind and she created this drawing.
Karen believes that making art should be really enjoyable. An artist should be into his/her work when they are creating it. Even though it is true that artist need to sell artwork to making their living, but Karen does not really care about the final results. She always thinks the process of drawing is the most wonderful things in her life. One of the most exhausted but also amazing point of her works is that she really focuses on the details. No matter it is a simple circle or a complicate portrait to draw, she would like to draw each line accurately. She considers those clear and neat drawings can bring visual enjoyment for herself and people. And she is going to depend on it as her motto for the future artworks.
(“Li, Rui.” Art station. Accessed December 12, 2018. https://melodyoflost.artstation.com)
