Noah Lopez -

Within my Exhibition, I am working on the exploration of the human experience and the connections to the world around us. Although through the two years of Visual Arts, there was no intention of following any sort of “theme” or “message” in which all of my works connect, I see that through interpretation and also the connection between myself and the viewers could be seen. I also want to connect to the audience in the way of showing my opinions of the world and how each of us has our own problems, whether it is with mental health or coping with the division of people as a certain type of unity.

In the first year of my Visual Arts course, I have often made works that were just specifically to fulfill the assignment requirements that were given to us just to reach a certain number of artworks that I need. I had originally only conveyed landscapes that I saw without really thinking about what techniques or mediums I could explore. For example, in my piece “Vatican City” and “Train of the Forest”, I only use these artworks just as an observation of scenes in nature. In fact, I used “Vatican City” as my first Resolved Artwork only because I had already made the sketch before I even entered the course. I just happened to have it on hand so I decided to turn it in since I didn’t have any ideas of what I’d do for my piece. Although, in the exploration of artists such as Vik Muniz in his exploration of using found objects as a medium and Salvador Dali and his use of surrealism to convey symbolism have changed the pathway of my thinking. One such example is the piece “Night Fire” which was inspired by the research I have done for Post-Impressionism and Vincent Van Gogh for the Art Movement Project. His uses of monochromatism and brush stroke techniques had made me consider that I could use colors to convey different emotions in my works. In addition, since the main medium that I utilize is acrylic paint on canvas, the way in which I use the brush could also convey tones that can also be interpreted by the audience.

From this, I had made a dramatic shift in my works and my intentions with what to do with them. In the “Chopped” project, I was given the prompts of patterns and 2-D to make artwork. Through my study of artists that use patterns, I had run into the artist Bisa Butler. She too uses colors and patterns to convey meaning, such as Van Gogh. She often depicts the black community and how there needs to be more representation of black people in the world of art. Since Butler, Dali, Muniz, and Van Gogh have used their works to spread messages about their views to the world, I have started to do the same. I used historical knowledge to also explore more problems that existed around the time of the Civil Rights Movement such as the Cold War and the Red Scare to create “The Blind Eye” which conveys how consumerism and the flashy culture of the U.S at the time often masked the internal problems of the time. I had furthered this within the works of “Unity & Love (Danger)” which is inspired by my Comparative Study and the study of humanism and how even though we are all together, humans are usually divided either through political view or even through societal norms or not interacting with those that you are not familiar with. From the idea of human connection, I have decided that in order to truly connect with the viewers of the piece, I depicted some of the issues that I face as a person, rather than an artist. This is conveyed through the pieces “Bottled Up”, “Ace of Hearts”, “After Laughter Comes Tears”, and “Rebirth”. Within this series of works, I illustrate my journey of self-discovery, mental illness, and trauma. I try to use this in order to show vulnerability and possibly even relatability between myself and the viewers of my work.