Autobiographical Reflection

Mixed Medium: watercolor, colored pencil, 11×14

Family Art

Acrylic Paint: Painting number one by, Ariel Gioia, Painting number two by, Irwin Gross

Growing up I was surrounded by art through my grandparents. My parents weren’t very artistic. My dad worked with his hands which has become helpful over the years making odd projects. He taught me how to use tools and make promises to myself on the integrity of my work. My mom is not creative at all but has an appreciation. My parents always accepted my love for art but were hesitant about my future. “What will you do for work? You must teach, or you will be a starving artist!” When I went to investigate culinary school they said, “you will never wake up early enough for class!” Even though glass blowing studio time was at four in the morning and kiln firings went all night. Part of what they said was true because I did end up dropping out, mostly due to issues at home. However, I did graduate with my Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2020. So, ha!

My grandparents always had random art from their travels that I have since taken after their passing. In fact, I live in the same town where they had their vacation home. It’s five minutes away. As a child I would visit their vacation home that was wall to wall art. My grandmother Josephine was the artsy one of the two. She was involved in the local library, started a preschool that I attended and created many forms of art. When I was young, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. I never had the chance to have a conversation with her that I can remember. As she got older and sicker, I cared for her as a nurse would. The only way I could form a relationship with her was through her art. I even use her wheel and kiln that was in her vacation home and is now at mine. I have little of her art but how you decorate your home speaks volumes as to who you are. Mine is filled with naked women but hey lol. The last thing she ever made was a quilt. It took her about a year to sew and I remember her giving it to me, it was just before she became a “vegetable” (for lack of a better word). I am so afraid to use the quilt that it just stays in a bin tucked safely away and it is too big to display on a wall. I think the lack of being able to speak with her about art pushed me to explore it more so I could better understand who she was as a person.

When I met my husband Max in middle school twenty years ago, he mentioned that colorblindness runs in the family. As the years went by, we remained friends and he was at one point living at his grandparents’ house. I came over and he showed me all his grandfather’s artwork. His name was Zadie (well that’s what they called him, his real name is Irwin) and he was the one who passed down the colorblindness gene to max. Zadie was the principal for the high school of Art and Design in Manhattan. Since his passing we have accumulated all his work. My basement is filled to the brim with boxed paintings. Over fifty at least and he of course had to paint on huge canvas or old doors, so these are large pieces! As I kept visiting Max over the years, I would examine the walls of art. There was always something off about his work because of his colorblindness. One painting bothered me so much that as a gift to Max, I remade it using what I considered the correct colors lol. I do like both for the record. Even through rough years of not talking Max still hung onto the painting. So today in my home I have the one that Zadie made hanging up and the one I gave to Max, at least 14 years ago. I have never met Zadie, but I have been told that he would have loved me.

The Giver

Mixed Medium: Watercolor, chalk pastels, colored pencils, paint pens, workable fix

When I think of giving or having been given something, I consider what the significance of the gift is to me. Not if I wanted it, if I liked it, will they like it? But does it make a difference for the better? I am the type of person who really likes to consider the gift of giving the perfect gift. Will that other person or being really appreciate and get use of their gift? Will it make their lives better? Is it helpful? The only other thing in the world that I think considers this, is the honeybee.

Honeybees never ask for anything, they just give! They are the reason earth can provide for us, the reason we can sustain life. That’s a huge statement! “Honeybees play a significant role in agricultural systems, increasing crop values each year by more than $15 billion in the United States alone and pollinating more than 80 percent of all cultivated crops. Without Bees, We’d Lose one hundred percent of Almonds and ninety percent of apples, onions, carrots and blueberries.” (https://thebeeconservancy.org/why-bees/) That is a big problem. Something that provides such sticky sweetness to the world. Without wanting anything in return other than life, is dying and our food follows. The honeybee only gives and that’s why I choose it as what I think a giver is. A person or being who gives without wanting profit. It also doesn’t hurt that ninety percent of the honeybee hive populations are female! Support your sisters!

The honeybee is the most selfless creature this earth has created, and we do nothing to help it. With habitat loss, climate change, chemical pesticides, invasive plant species and diseases. We share our home with 21,000 species of bees who are in danger. It appears no one is as concerned as I am, that is why I chose the Honeybee for my project. I want my art to make people think of the bees, the number one provider of this plant. I want my viewers to consider the various ways we can help save the bees. I personally don’t use plastic items in my kitchen or home, I only buy cans or glass, compost, garden, leave the dandelions, buy from local farmers and then some. In conjunction with reducing, reusing, and recycling.

I decided to create a close-up image of a honeybee on a lavender flower. The lavender flower in fact, repels most insects but not bees! I started my piece by laying down a quick graphite sketch and a layer of watercolor for a background base. I then moved onto using chalk pastels to get the unfocused background and sprayed a layer of workable fixative. I wanted to really display some implied texture by implementing a lot of detail. I used colored pencils, white paint pen and black ink pen to create the realism in the honeybee and flower. Overall, I am really pleased with the way the piece turned out. I hope it turns some heads and provokes people to consider giving back to the honeybees.

Citations:

“Why Bees?” The Bee Conservancy, 28 Jan. 2021, https://thebeeconservancy.org/why-bees/.

“Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder”, Renee Johnson, Congressional Research Service 2010.

She Has a Name

*Apart of the Fertility Collection

Mixed Medium: Magazine clippings, resin, glitter, acrylic paint, rubber cement

The year is 2020, the beginning of July. A married couple has been trying to get pregnant for over a year through fertility treatments. Her second frozen transfer was a success! They are pregnant. However, society is changing and there is a pandemic baby boom happening at the same time. No matter how long she has been trying, no matter how many needles she has put in her butt and surgeries to achieve a viable pregnancy. She will always be locked into this category and so will her baby forever, even in history books. “Corona Baby”, a baby conceived during the mandatory quarantine of the Covid-19 outbreak. Although her baby was not conceived in a typical fashion, it will forever have the reputation of “Corona Baby”.

Since I have hit my second trimester, my husband and I have made the announcement that we are pregnant, but people keep calling my child a Corona Baby. She was conceived in a petri dish in a lab by some random embryologist. She was not an act of isolation. She was not a mistake and she was not unwanted or unexpected. She has been in planning for over a year now. In order to conceive we paid over $14,000 in medical bills not including medications and other procedures. She was not an afterthought. How dare you call her a Corona Baby! She is meant to be on this earth for me and my husband to love and take care of, she is our gift that we have worked really hard to have and I won’t let you take that from me, my husband or my baby.

This piece, for me, is really upsetting in the fact that I planned on what my pregnancy would be like when the world was normal. Although everything has worked out for the better because I can stay home while I am pregnant and my husband and I have been able to manage our money very well, there are still some things that I am missing. My baby shower for example will be virtual, over Zoom. No one will be able to touch my belly or give me hugs and kisses. I have not been able to see family or friends in over 9 months. My parents and sister will be here but they have to get a negative rapid covid test to see me. Even after the baby is born people will need to be tested. My child’s first interactions will be of people in masks and the smell of hand sanitizer. What makes this all worse are the people who don’t “believe” in the virus and continue to affect my child’s future by not abiding by the guidelines set in place. Normally, a mother has some control over her child’s future, but with this pandemic I have nothing except the right to speak my opinion in hopes that people will listen. Maybe when she is born people will realize the consequence, they are putting on her even though she was born only hours ago.

My duties as a mom to be have changed from the norm. I must make sure that I am healthy and not in ICU when she is born. I need to make sure that my husband is healthy and not in ICU when she is born. I then need to protect her when she is born. People don’t understand that their actions affect others and that this could mean life or death for her mother, father or herself not to mention grandparents who are most at risk. Going to the local store is a risk. Having family over for a holiday is a risk. They are risks I am definitely not willing to take or have someone push upon me and my child.

To start this piece off I went to the local stores and bought updated magazines. I scrolled through the images and ripped out the pages I thought would be useful. I saw the image of the baby and then saw the image of the nurse holding a man and decided that the baby belonged between her arms instead. From there the piece really took off. The crown is a symbol for hope in many places and as usual royalty. Did you know that a baby’s stem cells, while the baby is growing inside a mother can cure any illness she may have! That’s what I call power! Then I played around with the idea of how I need to speak up in order to make a change, that’s why you see images of people in masks and my beliefs. To tie the images together I have the man spraying hope from the baby’s mouth in acrylic paint dabbed with the back of a paint brush. You could call it anything other than hope too. Sometimes I see stem cells.

On the bottom right is the baby’s first smell of hand sanitizer. All the images were cut with an x-acto knife or torn for a different texture. The images were glued to the canvas with rubber cement and then sealed with rubber cement as well. I then poured resin over the painting that was mixed with glitter to expand on the magic of a newborn life and the pour is far from perfect to represent the amniotic fluid that comes with the baby at birth. Everything is covered except the baby who I wanted to stick out. The nurses and the one holding the baby are covered in a light layer of iridescent white acrylic to help them fade into the background, although they are angels so why not make them glow as well. The nurse’s arm reads “Planned to get pregnant” and the spraying man also covered in iridescent yellow reads “The coronavirus has changed how we come into the world, live in it, and leave it”. The power of this painting.