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BLUE SPRING
Living in a digitized society, everything is communicated through our devices. Especially when teenagers meet like the four boys portrayed in my artwork, it’s as if they aren’t together physically. As represented with the individual circles, each teenager is in their own world. Each circle is created to completely contrast with each other, utilizing different materials and textures including denim fabric, yarn, and watercolor. It clearly portrays the separation even while they are physically all sitting next to each other. I wanted to create a piece as if it was like looking at the X-rays of the teenage world. When people observe teenagers in today’s society even at a glimpse, this is what they see. My piece can alert the people about their addictions to technology and devices that cause lack of social interactions.
DEAR WILDFIRE, YOU SHOULDN'T BE HERE
Recently, a couple months ago, Orange County was affected by the Silverado Fire that came as a shock to many people, including the people in my city, Irvine. We have never experienced such an event, as we continuously lived safely in our homes. However, when the entire neighborhood woke up with a mandatory evacuation announcement early one morning, the neighborhood became chaotic. The earth toned houses in the neighborhood turned bright red, and brought fear to the people. Seeing the red smoke fill the sky felt so wrong. I portrayed the scene of fear and anxiety that the fire brought to the people in Irvine. To create an uneasy feeling, I displayed the smoke dripping down, and filling the neighborhood. I wanted to create this piece not to remind people of the fear they felt, but to portray the exact feelings myself and other people felt during this time, and to notify the audience of what it is like to be in such a situation, who have never been in it before.
FLARING FEAR
While many of my other works fill up the whole canvas with details and complex designs, I created this piece with a little more simplicity. I wanted to portray a work that would clearly represent the emotions I wanted the audience to see and feel from my piece. This piece depicts the fear in an individual’s eye witnessing a wildfire. As the environment (represented by the burning paper) slowly burns down, the fear becomes more apparent and increases, as the eye becomes more visible. Portraying a specific moment or emotion during that time frame is a key aspect of many of my artworks, and I wanted to represent that through this piece, also focusing on the main theme of fire like many of my other pieces. The shapes of the flames intertwine with the abstract pattern of the eye’s iris to give the illusion of the pain and fear becoming one in the drawing.
HOME ALONE
Social distancing and staying home is the best way to stay away from the coronavirus or infecting others. Each cardboard cutout piece represents an individual. As each individual stays within their own box, there are no gaps for the virus to escape or to contact other individuals, therefore preventing a pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic being one of the biggest global issues for almost a year, I wanted to utilize my purpose as an artist to take my position from the right and safe perspective as this issue has separated many individuals through different world views. As the virus isn’t visible to the human eyes, it became a subject of whether to believe its existence or not, and such perspectives came down to a matter of whether to wear masks and social distance, or to disregard the entire pandemic. This piece was created to display the importance and effect of social distancing by visualizing the action.
MELTING, DEFORMING, PERMANENT
This piece is created with two small pieces combined, and it is another portion of my fire series. Similar to the works “Dear Wildfire, you shouldn’t be here” and “Flaring Fire,” this piece also portrays the pain and fear caused by fire. However, unlike these other two pieces portraying emotions or mental fear, this piece rather portrays a physical form of pain. Burn marks are a part of victims that can follow them forever, and a visible, tangible form of fear. I utilized the flexibility of the yarn to create a dripping shape to portray an exaggeration of the deformation of the human skin, and took advantage of the fluidity of liquid glue to include details that reflect off of the idea of candle wax melting. I also used odd color combinations of the yarn to portray a discomfort feeling that can display to the audience the pain behind the odd beauty of the face and hand.
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