artist statement

Shi En Chu

06/12/2021

Isolated, But That's Fine

In this drawing, you see a lot of things. The big cube like thing at the middle of the drawing with a bunch of furniture inside is supposed to represent the isolation. I also drew things that were special in this pandemic year such as the hand sanitizer bottle and the face mask. The yellow flowers around the cube represent the outside world and how sometimes I do want to go outside since there’s sunshine and you get to see the sky more.

Inside the cube, you can see a bunch of furniture as I have said before. The furniture inside represents almost all the things I have learned. For example, because of this pandemic, I had more time to try cooking with my mom. Although when I tried cooking some recipes, it failed. That’s why there’s a bin with a pan inside. Because of the pandemic, I was able to have the time to make a schedule so that I can try to get enough sleep as well as pace myself when doing work. Sometimes I could keep up with the schedule, sometimes I couldn’t.

A decision I made was to smush everything into one room. I did that to show the isolation but also because I felt like rooms like a bedroom or a bathroom didn’t really impact me during this pandemic year. Nothing really changed with it. I continued to sleep in a bedroom and I still used the bathroom in the same way.

I feel very happy about my work because I added many details and that made the cube not look too spacious. I’m not the biggest fan of living in places where there’s just too much space. What I would do next time would be to color the things that needed to be colored with marker first before adding the linart. There are a few smudges in the drawing made by the markers. Also instead of using black, I could use a light blue to not make things seem more happy. I hope that in the next school year, we wouldn’t be pushed to suddenly get used to in person learning. I’m not really sure about how to do that but it would take a little while for me to get used to in person learning again.