Concept

After working on the Pairs project and channeling the passion I have for investigating romantic relationships, I felt that it made sense for me to focus on my own relationship. I realize that I have been preparing for this project in an unconscious way for a long time, by compiling pictures of me and Moses and documenting our relationship in various ways. I also wanted to include aspects of the current political situation (which I have increasingly tried to ignore with little success) into the series. When we first met we bonded over our mutual disgust of recent politics, and the social climate felt overwhelmingly pessimistic. Both of us have had apprehension for each others safety. I know that I deeply fear for his well being as a black man. Although he has not expressed this to me explicitly, I know the huge rise in visibility around sexual assault may also make him question my bodily safety. Although the current political climate is terrifying, I cannot help but find so much joy in the love that he and I share. So this project is meant to express the love we have and our conflict with the world. The personal is still very political, and our identities are in part formed by these politics. In this project, I focus on political events that have informed our relationship or happened while we were together, such as Donald Trump’s election, the massive uncovering of sexual assaults, as well as the Charlottesville and other protests and counter-protests. I keep in mind that our love was illegal not too long ago in this country.

Medium/ Materials

I was very excited to finally use the huge photography backdrop my mom had given me which has been sitting in my room for a year. I used the gray paper for its political undertone- there seems to be a lack of gray in the strongly partisan feeling of our political scene. And the gray is also a joking mix of Moses and my races, but it is meant to tone down the differences between us and give neither a visual upper hand. This gray paper is strong and soft, perfect for holding graphite. I decided to work in graphite as it was a medium I had not used large scale before and needed something that would hold up when rubbed. I found the process of working with pencil much more inviting than I had with charcoal, the ability to control the medium was a welcome change. I think it was important that to capture Moses and me, only gray tones were used. In the critique, people commented a lot about how this tonal closeness created intimacy in the work.

Besides the grey paper and pencil, I also used a transferring/tracing method involving chalk pastel. I used red to trace out the news headlines that affected me, and blue to trace the text conversations between Moses and I. I also traced some scenes out in black charcoal, three from news broadcasts but one of our intimate life.

Process

At first, I had to re-immerse myself in the news to find my source material which was upsetting. Reliving the feelings I felt during the inauguration and the Charlottesville rally was not fun. These events had a damaging effect on my psyche which is relieved when I see media from these events. I think most people my age feel the same way, that we all were attacked. Once I had done the work to find the source images, I found the overall process of creating this work extremely cathartic. It was so nice to spend hours looking at photos of Moses and I spending time together and having good experiences, it was almost like living inside that feeling while trying to recreate it visually. I got into a meditative feeling that I don’t think I really had during prior drawing projects. Through this work, I unexpectedly gained peace and solstice by contemplating our relationship. Seeing how happy he is with me by actually studying his face in these photos allowed me to deal with some of my own delusions.

Reflections

I discovered things about our relationship through looking at these photos and visually analyzing them for hours. I found things like his deep affection that shows in photos even from when we first met, as well as my submission and preservation of the relationship. This project started to feel really successful for me when I began layering the text. I think I captured the confusion and cacophony of our lives, as well as our intimacy. I think it was important to only outline the news videos, to make the klansmen that are still living into characters. There is a conceptual complexity of this project that I think may have been a bit overwhelming at times, but in the same way, the elements of our lives are also overwhelmingly complex. Unlike many of the other drawings I have created so far for this class, I felt confident for this project that drawing was the right medium to create it in. The drawings mean more to both me, and I assume the viewer as well, because of the love I am attempting to capture and recreate in physical gesture.  

Overall I didn’t really care about what anyone else had to say about this project except Moses. His reaction when he saw the pieces in person was priceless. His description of the project felt very accurate and was also validating for me. He said that it was “ a perfect mix of our intimate moments juxtaposed with the world” and that “We are a bastion from the other stuff going on” as well as that I “did what [I] set out to do.” I think at the bottom of this project is my desire to communicate the complexity and beauty of our relationship that is hard to describe in words.

I am very lucky to be in an almost fully recovered state from my disordered eating. There was a time in my life when the sticker would have resonated with me deeply. There was a time when almost every thought I had involved counting calories, weighing food options as if they were ethically good or bad. I was in a pit of obsession for many years to varying degrees. I was very lucky to read the book Intuitive Eating and adopt the principles and recover quite a bit. Not everyone is so lucky.

“5-10% of anorexics die within 10 years after contracting the disease and 18-20% of anorexics will be dead after 20 years.” – https://www.mirasol.net/learning-center/eating-disorder-statistics.php

The words on the vending machine sticker blew a hole in my newly developed positive self perception, I was launched back to the darker time, feeling how it used to feel. This feeling was like a grenade exploded in front of me, which inspired my first inktober sketch. I decided to take something hurting me and rework it into something powerful.

I began thinking how prevalent and deadly the phase of the sticker is when I found the second sticker. Calorie counting is primarily used by people who have eating disorders or who are dieting, creating unhealthy mental obsessions. Dieting is truly negative, as it destroys people’s innate abilities to regulate hunger. I hate how companies target people’s insecurities to try to promote their products like this. Using the original shape of the sticker to inform the piece, I was inspired to draw a skull that cannot see, with rotting teeth.

Since the skull image was more accessible visually than the grenade, I decided to put it back where I found it. I added the text “deadly belief” to create dissonance within the work. I have found and replaced 3 stickers and will continue to find and replace any more I see.

My goals with doing this project are that:

• • Someone reconsiders the normalcy of calorie counting
  • Someone will think about the student who created the image, who was hurt by the sticker
  • Someone will consider the students with eating disorders on campus
  • Someone will see the image and be confused by it, think about it for a while

I am not sure how to tell exactly when theses little sketches are done. Usually with anything I work on it takes me a few days of playing with the piece before I feel comfortable moving on. I need to feel comfortable with the ideas and the visual I am working on, which requires me to have time to sit with the inherent and developed meanings of the piece.

Jan Van Eyck had time to reflect on the pieces, and maybe find deeper meaning for himself. I decided to go back to my doodles from previous days if I want to. Giving myself space is needed for this practice, even if there are parameters outside myself. I enjoy the challenge and have been drawing a new piece about every day so far!

I have been relaxing and letting myself play more with familiar concepts while still challenging myself to try new things, or try old things again. Here are a few of the recent works that are kind of similar. 

I had more fun and felt more comfortable when I moved on from blind contouring and began playing with the tablet and Photoshop tools. I decided to set an aesthetic for myself that involved filling in any open, empty spaces with blocks of color from the sketches near them. I used the lasso tool to create clean shapes and filled in those shapes with my paintbrush. I also adjusted the opacity of the edge shapes so that the line work underneath was still visible. I think the end result was interesting for sure. I spent more time on this aspect of the process more because I enjoyed the control of the medium.

I think aesthetically I am more into the first rendition of my chair but I appreciate this assignment as a way to hone my skills of sight.

Clicking back and forth between the process photos is exciting thought because I can see every little adjustment I made. I can’t wait to continue to refine and define the work. Who thought a chair could be so interesting?