Da Vonte Martin Artist Statement

When I was younger art used to be apart of my everyday life. I used to have a wild imagination of characters and future worlds so I constantly sketched them while in school or in the car with my mom. My earliest drawings were sketches cartoon movie posters ie: Space Jam , Toy Story , and The Lion King. I always began drawing by just looking at the picture and draw whatever I can. I didn’t notice until years later that my drawings were pretty advanced compared to a lot of kids I knew around my age at the time.

 I tried to farther my art skills in 3^rd grade when I signed up for sculpting classes at the Free Library in Germantown. When I was younger Play-Doh used to be my most enjoying activity. I enjoyed making people and cars specifically out of play-Doh , so I think taking the sculpting class at the library was something that I had a passion for. After a year in sculpting class my passion for art wasn’t the same as before. I some how stopped sketching and drawing suddenly and I didn’t notice that I’d stop drawing until my 9^th grade art class at Science Leadership Academy when we had to sketch a portion of our hallway. 

When I was sketching the hallway my passion for art began to grow rapidly because I was reminiscing about the times when I was younger and all I wanted to do was draw in class. As much as I love art now , I was never a fan of painting. Painting in my opinion is one of the hardest methods to perform in art because it all depends on the brush strokes. I think if the brush strokes aren’t precise then it can ruin the entire drawing. So in any of my art I would never paint or color it , I’d normally just leave it and outline specific details with a dark pencil. 

My favorite material to use in art is modeling clay. Most of my drawings in my younger years were characters that I’d created and being able to sculpt them allows the characters to come to life. I’ve never specifically used a tool in art besides a pencil and my hands, but between the two my favorite tool to use in art are my hands. I can honestly use my hands to do just about anything from painting if I have to, to making precision lines on a sculpture, and adding distinct details to my art. In my 12^th grade year at Science Leadership Academy , this is my second year having an art class since 9^th grade so I was excited to see what has changed over the span of 2 years. Our first project was to create a poster advertising the collection of bottle caps. The bottle caps collected will be recycled because if they aren’t , they’ll possibly end up in rivers and/or oceans which can harm the environment of sea orchids. Since the theme of this specific project was partly recycling, I immediately thought “Go Green” or Saving the p trees. So I decided to cut green construction paper and align it at the bottom of my poster to have the appearance of grass. I followed the grass with a large sun flower rising from the grass with a bottle cap replacing the Anther of the sunflower. I sort of used figurative language in this aspect or figurative art because bee’s take the nectar from the Anther and recycle it to another flower. So instead of recycling the nectar, they can recycle a bottle cap. I created a sun to add more vibrant colors to my poster and the sun was made of orange and yellow bottle caps. I made the sun out of bottle caps because the Sun’s Solar Energy is often recycled and converted to power electrons. So recycling the bottle caps is a symbol of the Sun’s recycling solar energy.  Previously said I chose the colors orange and yellow because they made the poster more vibrant. When constructing a piece of art I always think about the color of the paper or background because I want everything to blend together neatly. 

My favorite colors to use together are burnt orange , brown , and a neutral orange color. For our next project we had to create virtually anything out of recycled material or something that represents the method of recycling. My idea for this project was to sculpt a large sized tree surrounded by the city of Philadelphia, which will be made out of boxes and Styrofoam.  The city is going to be placed in front of the tree and in back of the tree I’m going to create the Franklin Institute. There is no specific reason why I’m going to create the Franklin Institute but it’s only because I wanted to involve our school in my project some how and the shape of the Franklin Institute is easily recognized. I’m then going to wrap a vine around the tree and it’ll connect to the city. This will symbolize that going green can power the city , and to make this more notable I was thinking of placing small light bulbs and batteries inside of the buildings so they can illuminate. 

I’m very excited that art is apart of my school life again twice a week because it allows me to be creative outside of the technology, which is the basis of our school learning.

My Bottle Cap Poster: Recycle Your Caps!

Trying to sculpt the centerpiece which is my tree. The modeling clay was so thick that I had to cut through it with a steak knife. 

The several buildings.The last two are painted cardboard boxes.The first one hasn't been painted yet.

Painting one of the several buildings out of recycled milk boxes.

The photo below is a picture of the vine I made out of clay. I used the classic rolling method until the clay grew longer and resembled a straw. Then I painted it with dark green Crayola paint. As said before the tree that will be sculpted will be wrapped with a vine made of modeling clay. The green vine will look as if it's powering the city which signifies going green.The clay was still soft while taking this picture so I can wrap it around the try I was sculpting. 

Sketch of final product. This is what my final will resemble with the Franklin Institute in the back , a tree in the middle, and the city of Philadelphia surrounding the sculptures. The image above was photoshopped. 

Trial and Error:

Originally I wanted make my tree by wrapping clay around a shampoo bottle and stick tree branches around them. However after a day or so the clay which was hardened broke apart. So that's when I decided to make the tree from 100% modeling clay.Below is a picture of the shampoo bottle after the clay has fallen apart. They white particles on the bottle are pieces of clay that were stuck. 

Before using the recycled cardboard boxes I wanted to use bottles as the buildings.But later I realized how dull it looked because the buildings in Philadelphia are all different, sousing bottles was out of the picture.