Artist Statement and Bio

Bio: 

Charlotte Holper was born in San Francisco and currently resides in Orange, California. For the past couple years, she has worked alongside many amazing artists and professors, creating her own style and form. From painting to performance to curating shows, she has explored many different paths of art. She enjoys using vibrant bold colors and lines to create wacky landscapes and compositions. Mixed media is an infinite realm that she would like to further explore. Collaboration is an effective way to curate shows and events and she is more than happy to work with fellow artists that would like to work within a community and build connections with others.

Artist Statement

“Worm”

For my final project, I have chosen to create three 18” x 24” drawings in reference of my 2016 performance, titled “Worm”. My performance consisted of a ten minute duration of myself army-crawling around the piazza. I slithered in and out of the fountain, creating wet trails on the ground. I wore a black shirt and black pants, constructing a consistent costume for the performance. The purpose of the performance was to contrast the movement through the Piazza. As people moved through the center of campus, I distracted the uniformity of the flow of passer-byers. For the final project, I used frames from videos of the performance. Watching the videos, I wanted to choose frames that included a close-up shot and two wide angles. I used colored pencils and crayons to create pastel hues and the color palette included yellow, blue, and pink. Using pastel color fields, I wanted to establish a sense of how I felt during the performance. While army-crawling through the Piazza, I felt my surroundings disappear, along with everyone who witnessed it. I concentrated on my body movement and endured the rough ground underneath me.

The drawings are a sort of documentation that represent my performance in the Piazza. The body within the blocks of cement creates a questionable scene of a figure struggling to move around a whimsical landscape. Furthering this project was initially inspired from Marina Abramovic’s Artist is Present. Her three month performance consisted of her in a wooden chair, sitting across from viewers that visited the museum to activate her piece. Before my performance in 2016, I was not aware of Marina Abramovic and her disciplined performances. The Artist is Present was a performance that engaged the viewer, yet Abramovic remained consistently calm and still during each silent interaction. Even when the curator of the show told her he was worried about her physical health, she was completely opposed to stopping the performance. During my performance, I began by lying in the fountain and creating circles in and out of the fountain. When people called my name and attempted to distract me, I focused on completing the motion of the army-crawl. Without noticing during the performance, I received bloody elbows and huge purple bruises on my hips. Like Abramovic, I was so focused on my performance, I ignored my physical limitations and continued the journey.

My final symbolizes particular aspects of my performance. Drawing the emotion of my face and my body parts interacting with the ground enables a sense of reproduction within the piece. I used soft colored pencils to render the perspective of the composition. Using these pastel colors, I was able to gradually build up value within the three drawings. This project considers a deep reflection on my past work and is recommended to others.

Reference Images

Final- Artist Statement & Bio

“Girl”

Artist Statement:

As an artist, Sammy Keane would say she is a perfectionist in the hopes of becoming more fluid. Lately, she has been finalizing works with light hatchings to add shading and depth. Keane enjoys working most with pencil, however, she is in the process of trying to expand and become more comfortable working with more drawing materials. Keane is still trying to find herself as an artist, but she is usually guided by emotional and physical influences. She has always admired Jenny Saville’s and Jean-Michel Basquiat's works and how they create a form with such fluidity. However, Keane has learned the most from her own mistakes. She constantly tells herself to step back and put her work on the wall when she becomes frustrated, it allows her to see her own pieces from a different perspective.

In Keane’s series “Girl”, she has four consecutive works that describe how she feels girls should act nowadays; strong and unbothered. In “Girl”, Keane used materials such as graphite, watercolor, marker, and glitter. This series was inspired by her own personal identity along with attitudes and actions she has noticed from generations coming after her. Keane is most proud of this work because it connects present society to the future. Some themes that Keane focuses to incorporate into her work, “Girl” especially, are strength, feminism, freedom of speech, and overall equality. Keane feels that the textual piece is the most powerful in this series; it ties all the other works together. The other three drawings construct and illustrate moments where women should take power and stand up for what they believe and think. For this work, Keane looked to artists such as Diego Fazio, Jenny Saville, and Rik Reimert to notice their combination of mediums and works that have a consecutive looking series. She also looked at many reference photos to give her inspiration and make to force her to not just copy each photo, she is working to add her own artistic flair to each piece.

For most of her works, Keane combines photos that she has saved with her imagination and life experiences to create something that is most pleasing to my eye. The more Keane gets lost in found photos, the more she becomes excited about what theme she will try to convey. While Keane is creating, she tries her best to remind herself that she is ultimately making this work for herself and no one else.

Bio:

Sammy Keane was born in Detriot, Michigan. She started making art in High School in Orlando, Florida. She is currently working to get her BFA at Chapman University in the Spring of 2020. Her work as a fine artist is mainly influenced by life experiences that connect to her physical state and emotion. Keane mainly works in pencil, however, she has created pieces in all mediums. She has presented work at SACI (Studio Arts College International), OTIS, and Chapman University. Her work is visible on Instagram (@sammygraceart) and on https://sgkeane.wixsite.com/mysite.

Rik Reimert

Reference

Diego Fazio

Reference 

Rik Reimert

Jenny Saville

Bodies of Knowledge: Anatomy and Transparency in Contemporary Art

        "Bodies of Knowledge" describes a history of humans' relationship to the inner and outer body. Aristotle was interested in dissecting cadavers to learn the secrets of life while later in the 1800s, it was shameful to host public dissecting events. Viewing the inside of the body has changed drastically because of advanced technology, including x-rays and ultrasounds. Advanced technologies have changed our perceptions of viewing our anatomical features. From breaking a bone to having a baby, we strive to create the best technology to aid health benefits. At the same time, this has changed the way artists are able to work. In the Contemporary art world, artists have used these types of technologies to create work. Since anatomy is so commonly seen in everyday life, artists utilize these tools to understand our inner and outer parts and how they relate to our lives. A great example of this is Farrah Karapetian. She uses inverted black and white images to depict large-scale x-ray images of trucks. Her work references x-ray machines at the border of Mexico and the United States. It also portrays a private versus public event transpiring. The military obtains advanced technology in which we are all affected by it, but are not always aware of it. Farrah's pieces create a conversation about what is private and what is public. I am also very interested in Frida Kahlo's portraits. She uses the interior space to express her traumas and experiences. Many traumatic experiences I have had connect with the inner workings of my body. A lot like Frida, I have gone through many physical experiences that have changed my life. Frida got into a trolley accident that resulted in her being bedridden for months. She began to draw while she spent all her days alone in her room. My physical traumas have led me to focus in on what is important. If I am disabled to make art, my life would deteriorate. My current mediums have become so differentiated that I have many ways to make art. This result is from being exposed to new technologies I have never used. Humans are so capable of overcoming physical traumas, purely because of technology aiding our weaknesses. Watching my dad, who is paralyzed from the chest down, transfer himself from his wheelchair to a car with a wooden plank is only one of many technologies that will aid him for the rest of his life. I now know that humans will exponentially become limitless in life. Health care and anatomical studies will only become more advanced, drastically changing the way we observe and experience our surroundings.