Quarter 1 Artwork

In the beginning of the quarter I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do for my pieces or what I wanted my pieces to convey but as I worked through all of the assignments I learned more about myself as an artist. When actually sitting down to work on a piece I found it wasn’t that difficult to be inspired. I would just look around me and see something that inspired me or I would think about something happening my life and would be inspired. I found that I didn’t have to know what I wanted a piece to symbolize before I started working on it but that I would find what it symbolized by working on it.

I collaborated on the ceiling tile with Kiamesso DaSilva. Initially, we wanted to paint steps, which would be inscribed with words in Arabic which would translate to “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” leading up to a golden door. In the background there would be swirls and other similar decorations. We decided a ceiling tile would not be the best medium to create this and decided instead to do ceiling tile inspired by sari patterns. We decided on painting a big pearly white swirl that would take up to tiles and decorate the edges around the swirl with small dots and other shapes to create an intricate border for the swirl. We chose to use cool, light colors for our piece because we wanted it to seem wintery. My favorite season is winter and we wanted the piece to remind people of snow and ice and the winter in general.

For the choose your own drawing assignment I chose to draw my cat. I adopted my cat just two weeks before I started on the assignment so I was feeling very inspired by her and I was very excited to draw her. In my drawing I wanted to capture my cat’s calmness and serenity and inspire a sense of serenity and peace in others. I also wanted my piece to express my love and appreciation for her.

For my jack-o-lantern I decided to carve Hogwarts. When I was younger I loved the Harry Potter books. I thought it would be fun to carve a castle and decided I would do Hogwarts. It was a lot harder than I expected it to be but I enjoyed the process and I am pretty proud of the final result. I wanted to piece to remind people of their childhood and the books they read and loved. To carve the castle I printed out a simple drawing of Hogwarts and taped it onto my pumpkin. Then I used a pumpkin carving knife to cut along the edges until I had the shape I wanted. After that I drew in a few details with a sharpie.