"Pieta"

"Black Soap

"Afloat"

          Last semester ( Spring 2012) was my first exposure to printmaking.  I enjoyed it and found it  interesting that I could use printmaking to communicate the same themes that i carried over from ceramics--->painting. The product was extremely different though , my handling of the mediums took me to a extremely tedious perfectionist place( which happened alot in painting), where i would rework or redo a piece until i was satisfied. There are pros and cons to that but it wasn't until my final print "Afloat" that i just allowed the piece to communicate to me when it was done or how it should be worked. The themes in this class were a crossing of contexts from different realms of art, era, and understandings. My "Pieta" was a reference to the love of a mother and how the emotions communicated in Pieta are not that much different from the emotions arising after the birth of a child. The image of the woman is my really close friend, and as this is her first child i wanted to commemorate the experience and growth(that arises during motherhood). While also bringing to light the instinct of love and caring and how naturally it occurs.

"Black Soap" was my first print, at the time I was completing portraits in Oil Painting class and wanted to cross reference one of my images. I chose a distorted smashed and pulled image of my face and created a story of self-examination and critique. Referencing black soap as my under-layer as i cut and peel away my culturally known facade. The reality of me is as dark, natural, and clean as "Black Soap"

"Afloat" is an image of my sister/friend Ochuole , its of an memory. Ochuole does natural hair and was actually the person to convince me , and later on help me start my dreads ( which are now a very well known part of my identity). When we stayed together we had sessions of meditation with incense lit from within a smoke box( that had little holes to let out  the smoke). Instead of meditating i would watch the smoke which would place me in a mode of meditation. Smoke forms are so calming ,playful, and sensual which is why they intrigue me. I wanted to use there forms in a sketch so while Ochuole was doing a friends dreads i drew her and juxtaposed smoke forms for dreads.