Fall 2021 Semester Plan

WHAT work you will make this semester?
 
My focus this semester is to make at least one portfolio piece.  I want it to be a life-size medical experience installation.  I want to play with including video projection or a small screen playing video within the work, similar to the heart monitor found in hospital rooms.  I also want to include lots of wires, cords, and tubes, since patients are covered with those materials when in a hospital.  I want to continue playing with printmaking and crocheted yarn in my piece as well.  If I have time, I would like to do a second portfolio piece.  I am trying not to put too much pressure on myself to make a million things this semester, so I can put the high level of detail and focus that I think this story and piece deserves.
 
WHY are you making this work?
 
            I am making this piece because I have been wanting to make it for a while.  I haven’t made it yet because I didn’t feel ready to include so many new things, but after my recent stay at the hospital and many reference photos I took, I realized how important that experience is in my work.  I felt the need to express that side of myself since it dominates a lot of my lived experiences as a young chronically ill person.  I also haven’t felt I had the time or patience to create such an elaborate and intricate piece until this year.
 
HOW MUCH work do you intend to make?
 
            I intend to work on my one hospital installation from start to finish.  I also intend to finish one piece from last year that is ready to be assembled.  I also won a chronically ill and disabled artist grant from Suffering the Silence called We’re Still Here.  I will be making a smaller figurative piece to show and possibly sell for this grant!
 
What TECHNIQUES will you use?
 
            I will be creating a figure, not so closely focusing on hyper-realism, but more on form, expression and texture.  I want to think more about the emotion and feeling it evokes, instead of only wanting it to look realistic.  The hospital and doctor’s office experience brings lots of uncomfortable emotions that are far more important to the piece than how believable the figure appears.  I will be creating a bumpy, crumbling textured surface, including some cell forms that structurally make up the piece.  I will then take this ceramic piece after being fired and focus on the found objects and materials that make up the hospital environment.
 
What are your GOALS through making this work?
 
            My goal for this work is to express deep, chilling emotions that come from the experience of hospitals which disabled, and chronically ill people experience.  My goal is always to preserve these disabled experiences, show our community’s resilience, and show a side that disabled people experience so frequently, that others may have no idea about.  I also want a successful portfolio piece that shows the different materials that I can use together.