Looking back over the last year, I feel as though my art has progressed quite a bit through process and design. Before deciding to do a multimedia website, I had originally been planning on writing a film script. Interestingly, if you look at those two projects they seem very different, but both have something in common, my love and deep admiration of the people that surround me and impact my life. Whether that be the life of my grandfather (which is what the film script would depict) or the many people who have entered my life in that last year, and the many people to enter my life in the future.
Even outside of multimedia work, my work has always been about people. Though, my work use to solely be drawing or painting portraits before developing my passion for film and photography, people always show up in my work. People fascinate me, I am confused and perplexed by people, I am inspired by people. I find people so intriguing. No two people are the same. Everyone has different interests and idiosyncrasies, different wants and different dreams. You can have so much in common with someone and not get along with that person at all, or you could have nothing in common with someone and they can be your best friend. People are so curious. How they function in the world, the actions they choose to take, the people they interact with, all of these things change us and enable able us to evolve over time. I find people fascinating and incredible resilient. The best times of my life have been spent with these people, and we all have these people, but they are always different people for everyone.
I am a very nostalgic person; I have been told that is because my zodiac sign is Cancer. I find that statement rather comical, as I am not so sure I believe in astrology. Something I realized over the past year while working on my website was that I do not really have a normal idea of what family is. I realized that I believe family is earned, not just a given. I feel like my family extends beyond blood. In a way, almost everyone I have come into contact with has raised me in someway. I have changed and adapted by the inspirations of others. I feel like my life is indebted to all these beautiful people who have helped me become the person I am today.
How do these ideas relate back to my project? I kind of think these ideas are my project. I want to document my experiences with these people, that is the point of the project. But, I wanted to do it in a more creative interactive way. Something interesting happened during the process of creating the site; I learned quite a few things about myself. One of them being that I cannot force myself to produce anything, the creative energy has to flow. I began the project attempting to take 5 photos a day, and have a blog and do a drawing everyday. That didn’t work out so well. I found myself completely uninspired to take these photos and found I would take photos of just about anything to get these photo assignments over with. The photos didn’t really seem to relate or get at any of the ideas I wished my project would showcase. In the end I learned a great deal about my personal process and how I function as an artist.
Sure I began the project with ideas of grandeur and while repeatedly told that I would mostly likely not get everything I want done for my thesis actually completed by the deadline, I have always known I am a overly ambitious, stubborn person. So while I didn’t get the website to be exactly what I want it be, I plan on continuing to work on it in the future. I have not put words on it yet. Mainly because I am not sure what I would want to say exactly. I also want to put my other artwork on the website, the portraits and paintings I do as the other half of my artistic fruition. I am happy with the site in its present state, but I have some ideas that I would like to explore as well. Though I realized that blogging was not my thing, I would like to work on that, maybe I can make it my thing. Who knows, I want to leave any further progression of my site open ended, because I am very indecisive and get random creative bursts quite frequently. Who knows what my site will turn into over the years, but I’m looking forward to further reflection on my personal and artistic process.