My art is influenced heavily by how I feel, and different pop culture references. I combine the styles, creating my own, unique art pieces, mostly sketches. I see art as something people should enjoy, without any strict rules, which is why I consider my art a bit laid back, mostly in the manga style, which is where a lot of my drawings have been inspired by.
The other half comes from what happens when you take pure insanity, and try putting it on paper.
After that was finished I free-hand painted a sunset over water. Without and real purpose other then to paint a killer sky. After about forty minuets I somehow painted the sky to appear like it was bleeding. At the time it really spoke to me and came off as beautiful, although the longer I look at it the less beautiful and more garish it comes off. Another thing I created was, one sharpie sketch of Jack Skellington’s face. The original idea was to use that completed sketch as a stencil to carve my jack-o-lantern. Later on in the process of putting the stencil on my squash I realized that it was way too small, and the stencil walked all the way up the sides. That combined with having to cut the top off made it seem completely unrealistic to carve that on the squash. Instead I just carved a star on it free-hand. I thought that it would look nice, and would be fairly easy to fix if I carved it too small.
After that I was supposed to sketch a self portrait. Although I didn’t do that I did take a self portrait. The picture is grainy and its obviously not drawn, but it is black and white and I figured that was better then nothing. The real reason I didn’t sketch the portrait is because I can’t draw faces, or even humans really. So I just gave up before I started.
Really the only thing that inspires me for my visual art is what I see and feel in the world around me. I guess the reason I can’t draw people or their faces is because I try not to look at them while I’m out in the real world or on the streets. Not because I dislike people or have an issue with noticing them, but really because so many people in the world can only see themselves and the people around them, so I try to look beyond that and see the things around everyone. Seeing the background makes everything seem less chaotic, and more simplistic, so I try to zoom in on that and use interesting colors to make them stand out as much to everyone else as much as they do to me.
I would have to say that my favorite piece of work from this quarter were my ceiling tiles, because I worked very hard on them and they came out looking great. The hardest thing for me though was the drawing that we got to choose. It was hardest for me because I decided to draw the eiffel tower and it it is very detailed and complicated, but when I finished the drawing it looked almost identical to the eiffel tower.
I am excited to see what assignments we will have in Q2 and how much more they teach me about art and expressing my feelings through drawing and painting.
I find art to be a therapeutic way to release inner feelings through the various mediums. I believe that art should be a statement of what you are passionate about. We are all unique individuals with diverse opinions, values and standards. We are all unrepeatable and I express myself through my sketches and strokes. Everything I made, I put a little bit of myself into it which helps me relieve stress and feel free to not on by anyone else’s standards. My art is for me and nobody. If I cannot be happy with my own individuality, I will not ever be happy. Art is the perfect outlet to be free in your thoughts and turn them into visuals.
“Ebieh mou fey,” my mother said to me.
“I want some food from the chinese store,” I replied.
My mom said, “Didn’t I tell you to respond back to me in Mandigo?!”
“No English at all,” mom said.
I said, “How come.”
“You think you American now huh huh,” my mom said.
I replied, “I was always American…”
My Mother Aissata Camara and I always have this argument about why I don’t want to speak our language back to her. She’s always trying to make me speak, for what? I don’t understand the importance of speaking it back to her. Every single time I respond back in English, we always just go back and forth with each other.
Mandigo is a special language that comes from Cote D'ivoire. My whole family speaks that language. The first language I ever learned was English, but I knew how to speak Mandigo like it was my first language and as if I was from Cote D’ivoire. We usually speak in Mandigo to each other whenever we gather together as a family for a whole day.
“Nahya,” my uncle said to me.
“Alright.” I responded back to him
Uncle, “Why you always want to speak english all the time like you american boy?”
“Because I want to speak english,” I said.
“You used to be good good boy until you get older forgetting about our language and hang with them american boys,” My uncle responded.
I said, “I still know Mandigo and I never forgot about it and I’m still a good boy…”
My uncle said, “No, no you want to speak english all the time.”
“Sometimes I respond back in english and sometimes I respond back in Mandingo.” I said.
I also said under my breath, “Maybe I do want to be a fully american sometimes stupid, annoying ass family….”
My family and I always have this big huge argument about why I don’t want to speak the language. I know as a kid I used to speak Mandigo all the time, but ever since I started 3rd grade that was when everything started to changed. I started to speak english on a daily basis. I started to speak Mandigo less and less with every passing every week. My family and I were getting to argument more and more as I started to speak less Mandigo. The argument was about the same thing over and over. I thought they would never stop with arguments in my ear every other day.
I don’t know if I was shy about knowing a whole different language or if I just didn’t want to speak it. Sometimes when my mom speaks to Mandigo to me in public, people always stare at us like we are crazy and we aren’t from this Earth. When my family are together and we are in public and they are speaking Mandigo, I just sometimes space myself away from them like I don’t even know them. It’s not even about being shy, its about being bullied and many other things. Part of the reason I stopped speaking Mandigo is because I used to get bullied because I spoke something different and because it sounded weird to other people who didn’t know the language. I used to get called many different horrible words at school by students.
I was used to getting bullied and getting called horrible names and words, when I used to go to ESL. I was born in the United States of America, but I still had to go to ESL. English was my first language, but I didn’t know much of it. I used to speak more Mandigo than English. Every single time I used to come back to class from ESL or my ESL teacher used to come to my class and pick me up I used to hear them call me out of names. The bullying stopped when I stopped going to ESL classes and started to speak english more and more better. I stopped going to ESL classes because I passed the test and they said I didn’t need it anymore because of my huge improvement.
Why do my family care so much that I don’t want to speak Mandigo? All of these questions zoom in and out of my head. Why, why, why is Mandigo so important to this family? Most other families lets their kids speak in English, most of the kids I know don’t even know how to speak Mandigo. My family should be grateful but all they want to do is argue all the damn time. I understand my family wants me to pass down this language down when they die and when I have kids, but I don’t want my kids to go through what I went through when I was younger.
In the future, as of today, I will start speaking Mandigo more to my family. I won’t be shy and try to hide that I know a different language. I will just be Fodie Camara and just be me and won’t be someone different or even try to. My family and I perhaps will stop getting in huge arguments about how come I don’t speak Mandigo anymore. They won’t have anything else to say about me speaking Mandigo because I will be speaking it more. As far as my future kids, they will be learning this language also so they can pass it down to their families and we’ll keep it going on forever. I finally understand why my family doesn’t want to stop speaking Mandigo.
