Saturday, October 1, 2011

Chris' Statement

I believe art emerges from a want and or need to solve a problem creatively and not just a black and white fix. Whether it be to create something for personal enjoyment or for a more commercialized reason, putting together a design and creating a work of art with tangible things to me represents a form of beauty and satisfaction. Ever since I was a child I discovered the enjoyment of creating and manipulating things into artwork. I used to design complex models with Popsicle sticks when I was 9 years old. I can pretty much say my first works of art were incorporating the essentials, composition and proportion, building blocks which directly influence me still today. My parents encouraged my creativity by sending me to CCAD classes on the weekends when I was young. They still encourage me today by buying me the occasional computer accessory and supplying words of wisdom.

As an artist and an aspiring digital graphic artist, I have enjoyed exploring new and sometimes difficult mediums. While I have always had an innate ability to form art with my hands through drawing and sculpting, I have always pushed myself to explore and work with numerous mediums ranging from a simple piece of charcoal to create a drawing, to powdered glass to created glass sculptures. As I began my official education to become a digital artist I felt that designing would be a natural extension of my drawing and sculpting abilities as well as my way of thinking. I came to find out it was much harder to not have something tangible to form with your hands, and have it just be displayed on a screen. During my time as a student I found that all of the challenges I faced in the classes and on the computer made me appreciate how much work and thought it takes to make something that you are so disconnected from into a thing of beauty. Sometimes I draw out a quick sketch of an artwork I will create, but more often I don't, I often fit together visually aesthetic parts of a work to form it into a more composed and complex work of art. I build around the initial piece in layers, placing more objects into the artwork and increasing its complexity and depth.

One artist that inspired me is Stacy Reed. She is a digital artist as well as a photographer. Stacy said “ Chaos. Infinity. Immortality. The idea that there is something beyond what we know, something larger than our existence, yet perhaps something as simple as a single string of code. These concepts fascinate me and provide the foundation of my passion for fractals.” I feel her complexity is much more ordered and thought out than mine, but it is definitely the concept I strive for. Her concept of being apart of something greater and greater allows her and me to be more inspired to create the illusion of depth, figuratively and or conceptually, in our work. I add, bit by bit, until I feel that I have accomplished something worth my effort. The work is finished when what I imagined is on the page or screen.

It is very hard for me to describe my personal idea of what art is, as it changes from every new class I take to every new program I learn. I enjoy artistic challenges, each of which I try to put forth all of my creative energy. My work as an artist propels my imagination allowing me to think of new and exciting possibilities. “Our imaginations lead to our creations” Chris Zajd. For example, my digital work called Under The Bed resulted from the idea of another world existing within our own. The light bulb moment happened when I imagined a cross between the movies Toy Story and Cars. The difference is that I had to give the cars emotional qualities and character with out the aid of movement or animation. The art I create is imaginative, with many levels of layers and or meanings, and expressive and I feel that it’s that type of artwork that I appreciate the most from other artists.