I like to make an image that it is so simple you cant avoid it, and so complicated you can’t figure it out

Alex Katz

Poetry and Self-Portrait Reflection

For my second quarter of portfolio art I decided to do a lengthy project as well as some smaller pieces. I typically like to do large projects, but at the end of the quarter I decided to go back to my roots of poetry. As 2018 came to a close I decided to wrap up the year by finishing some pieces I had started but never gave thought to. New years are about new beginnings and I wanted to start fresh and be ready to learn something new in the third quarter.

I went on a trip to the Colby College Museum of Art and discovered something about myself as an artist. I don’t like museums! However, even though I didn’t seem to connect with the traditional art at Colby, I found myself to really enjoy the work of Alex Katz. Katz’s paintings people in a way that shows both the front and back of them, and he also depicts them in social settings. I found that my friends and I did a small impromptu photo shoot with some of his work, which is what I added to the back of my portrait. I my charcoal self portrait I disregarded technical drawing skills. I want my viewer to see that you don’t need drawing skills if that isn’t where you want to focus your time. I looked at myself in the mirror and simply drew what I saw, but more importantly I drew what I felt and what I think many people feel. I drew shadows under my eyes because I’m tired not only of sleep deprivation, but also of the mundane routine of a typical nine to five. The image I created of myself reflects me and also what I see in the world where people fall into a routine and are too busy working to get out of the rut. My poem “Vanilla” connects directly to this drawing because the theme is about the draining lifestyle that is the American way. I feel that this is one work with two pieces and I love that about it. I want my viewer to see the image and feel the words. I also want to mention the feedback I got from the lovely, one and only Jasmine Cayford. Jasmine is a friend I met through writing and I highly value her opinion of my work. It is so ironic that Jasmine said what she did about my poem because Mr. Demello had just told me that once your artwork is out into the world, the author is dead because their intent is lost, especially with poetry. My intent with the poem “Vanilla” was about challenging the idea of a mundane rushing society that doesn’t make time for enjoyment. I wanted the viewer to see that there is a cycle when it comes to us teaching our children to get on the hampster wheel and run until our hearts burst. However, my intent died when Jasmine commented on my poem because she took it as something about white culture. Jasmine thought that vanilla was referring to white people and how they produce white culture in a cycle. I found this extremely interesting because that was not my intent at all. I am interested to see other interpretation of this poem.

My other poems are separate pieces but I wanted to add them to this collection because they are part of me as an artist wrapping up unfinished works. “Synthetic Smiles” is about people teaching kids to be themselves when the parents don’t follow their own advice. I find that people often are hypocritical when it comes to life advice, and I wanted to put that into perspective for my viewer. Café Rendezvous is about how technology has changed the way people see their self worth. I depicted the girl in the poem to only see her reality through a screen, while someone that loves her sees much more. At the end of the poem the boy gives her help to find happiness but she made the decision herself to start seeing the world without the constraints of social media. I’ve personally felt the toxicity that that social can bring to people, especially about what should be valued. Rather than appreciating life in the moment, people now tend to try and capture moments so they can show it on social media. That being said, social media is a great tool, but I want my viewer to understand the repercussions of the misuse of social media.  “Cliché Goodbye” was a prompt I got last year in creative writing. The prompt was to write about something people say instead of “I don’t love you anymore”. I chose the cliché of “It’s not you it’s me” because I feel so many people have heard this during a breakup. This poem isn’t personal, however, I wanted to connect to the majority and I accomplished that by using a cliché goodbye story. I enjoyed working on these pieces this quarter and learned that there is no time limit to unfinished pieces and life can be put back into any work of art.