High School Portfolio

This is also the short blurb I wrote about myself and my art career through high school. 

  During the last three years, I investigated a variety of mediums and visual approaches. I worked in drawing, collage, sculpture and photography, both within the structure of high school coursework and independently. I like design: through my art, I have worked with the arrangement of shapes on the page. Another interest of mine is the conflict between two and three dimensions. 
   A recurring theme in my work is the idea of a picture within a picture. I love to take three-dimensional ideas and make them two-dimensional (or take two-dimensional ideas and make them three-dimensional). I enjoy this approach in my photograph “Martial Arts 43.” This is a three-dimensional scene depicting two men fighting. However, if you examine it closely, the photograph sets the action of these men in front of a two-dimensional wall painting behind it. The contours of the fighters act like the painted figures in the mural—blurring the distinction between the two and merging the realities.
   The same approach is used in my drawing “Congested View of Life.” I drew a corner of my desk and the window behind it. Although at first glance it looks like one image, in reality it is many: the desk and the computer; the screen of my computer; and the scene behind the printer and outside the window. 
   This is the same strategy I revisit in a photograph I took from one of the upper floors of the Oriental Pearl Television Tower in Shanghai, China. The photo is titled “Through the Camera Glass.” It layers the near image (a hand holding the camera) with the world seen through the camera display –which contains not only our feet, but also the view down from one of the tallest buildings in world. 
   In contrast, in the sculpture “Friends” I took a two-dimensional idea, words, and made it three dimensional. I outlined the word “friend” in five different languages, built them into wood blocks and then jumbled these “written” characters into a sculpture, representing how my friends have different ethnic backgrounds but work and play together. I coordinated the languages with the signature color of each country (red for China, yellow for Spain, etc.). 
   In this way, I try to incorporate into each of my pieces how I attack life. Because I am colorblind, color doesn’t interest me as much as other factors. For this reason, I focus on other ideas that most people might not consider. Since I am dyslexic, I have learned to organize myself very effectively. My work is highly structured, and expressive of the beauty of clear organization. In both my art work and life, I look for ways to see ideas within ideas or ways to look deeper into life itself.

70 eyes of Kingswood-Oxford's graduating class of 2012!

70 eyes of Kingswood-Oxford's graduating class of 2012!