During my junior year, my father stayed with me while I was home sick; he used the time off from work to sort through old photos and found a black and white portrait of himself taken by Bob Kolbrener. The photo has great lighting composition, which I was currently learning about in my drawing class, and therefore, I figured it would be a great reference photo to draw from. My dad brought me a pencil, paper, an eraser, and a large clipboard. I spent the entire day drawing and watching TV in bed both as my main source of entertainment and to learn more about shading and realism. This was my second pencil drawing, so it mostly taught me about using pencils as an art tool and I also experimented with slightly altered facial expressions to learn to subtly change the image’s perspective.
At a young age, I experienced brain damage, which resulted in my brain developing differently from others. I often seem to feel and understand things differently, resulting in a sense of disconnect from my peers – almost as if I’m robotic. I created this piece using a pallet knife, my own hands, metal parts, and pieces of trash metal I found while on a walk. I drew blurred figures around me to show my sense of disconnect, while also a small red “heart” to show the human aspect of the robot. (which I accidentally placed on the wrong side) I created this piece to express my emotions from a long week of struggling with my friends and social anxiety.
This is a finger painting I created on a rainy night. I was listening to Jazz and pictured myself sitting at the window of a jazz bar in New York. Despite not being Jazz, I was picturing that I was a character in my favorite song, Piano Man. The city’s bright lights seemed like simple blurry dots in the rain as the raindrops slowly slithered down the windows. This piece is similar to a later piece I created depicting a band of frogs whose light in the dark is music. I also write songs as my main form of expression and escape, and hope to one day produce them.
