I got the opportunity to take a Fine Arts elective while on exchange at CMU. The class was focused on Painting and Drawing, but what that was defined as was open to interpretation.
Our first project involved a prompt about expressing alternate forms of space and personal identity. I chose to discuss my memories of the Christchurch earthquakes. I was inspired by local artists attempting to preserve china broken in the earthquakes. I wanted to create a space that was intimate, breaking cups and saucers and then painting small pictures that are sheltered by the teacup. Each cup explored a different aspect of the quakes.
In this cup I wanted to explore a sense of emotional fragility and nostalgia for the past. The phrase "we're still here" is written faintly on the inside of the cup. On the saucer I painted a memory of my family from shortly after the earthquakes.
In this cup I wanted to communicate the phrases and graphical identities that were built up around Christchurch as the city began recovering from the quakes. Despite the bright colours, the cup and saucer are still stained from liquefaction and an EQC member assesses an empty house.
This cup remembers the abandoned and broken buildings slowly being reclaimed by the land. On the saucer is written many remembered phrases I found in street art and other projects that spread throughout the city. In the saucer is a silhouette of a figure sitting in the shelter of a door frame,
This last cup is my favourite. In this piece I explore the memories of the dark, lying in bed feeling countless aftershocks. The saucer is lined with advice we recieved during the state of national emergency. The saucer depicts two figures - a parent seeing their child sleeping under the bed.
In our second prompt, we made works inspired by poems we wrote. I drew inspiration from a watercolour I made as I read my poem, then abstracted it into a lasercut form. I'd love to make a larger version of this that stretched across a whole room. I was very focused on the shadows and spaces created by the pieces and I think this could really transform a room on a larger scale.
In my third project I decided to explore the intersection of the digital and traditional forms of creating art. We were prompted to create art expressing our identity, however I was struggling a little with that at the time - I was a New Zealander alone in America, and I didn't want to resort to the typical stereotypes of New Zealand as that didn't seem true to me. As a Pakeha I felt I could also cross the line of cultural appropriation. I couldn't find any forms that expressed my identity. Instead I tried exploring the concepts and atmosphere that makes me personally happy - something dreamy and surreal, full of transparency and refraction.
For my final project I chose to approach my lack of cultural identity in a different way. I designed a pattern based on British wallpaper designer William Morris and combined it with a Maori Cloak. I constructed this cloak out of paper and a thin flexible plastic using the laser cutter. My intentions were to express this disconnect I felt with my Pakeha culture whilst also creating something that looked spiritual, ghostly and transient.
