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