TERESA HILL ART 399 PORTFOLIO

Aside from the aesthetics of cartoons and video games that I was attracted to in childhood; other influences that often guide where works would go are personal experiences, our connection with nature and others, the development of the imagination, and the human eye. The pieces made from that influence contain something tied back to others, whether it is the use of various warm/cool hues, the use of nature and flowers, colorful clothing on figures, or hands and legs being slightly longer than the rest of a figure’s proportions. Artists like Yayoi Kusama, Bonnie Seeman, and Hayao Miyazaki have also impacted my creation process in unexpected yet exciting ways; especially in recent years as I continue to refine my skills.Kusama, creating disorienting bright and patterned installations in her Mirror Room pieces, allows for the viewer to become physically lost in those worlds whilst interacting with them. The use of color, lighting, and pattern in her works transforms the once ordinary rooms into a visual stimulation of a world that she sees often. Ceramicist Bonnie Seeman creates her ceramics via meshing animalistic and plant-like elements into one surreal and bizarre piece, despite there being clear elements of flesh, sinew, leaves, and seeds. The bizarre mixing and squishing of elements leave an oddly satisfying yet strange adaptation of everyday items, from cups to teapots. All the while making it seem like a single entity that is a perfect symbiosis and synthetization of both flora and fauna. Hayao Miyazaki has influenced my personal works more significantly due to his use of detailed linework, shading, and his studying of real-life people you would in everyday life. His refusal to warp the human figure outside of normal proportions whilst breaking that rule with his supernatural figures makes every character in his animations and films unique and individual in the sea of characters that are in the plot. The meticulous development of creation for figures allows for the viewers to have a much more personal connection to specific characters without other with significant importance being too close to one another in design work.With traditional drawing media, the resulting pieces often evoke the somber nostalgia of childhood through the unglossed lens of maturity. I use the grain of paper and uneven blending to mimic the aesthetic of a vintage photograph, selecting colors of varying hues calling attention to specific aspects of pieces to describe the narrative to the viewer. Some with heavier use of color abandon this common theme for a more reactionary and expressive tone in regard to heavily debated topics such as preservation of nature and euthanasia. My personal works, on the other hand, focus on character and world creation, posing, shading, and conceptual development from idea to paper. As I work on my traditional drawings, it often results in separating the focuses of personal works and public works unless I find parallels between themes and sketches.My ceramic pieces, however, focus on the shape and placement of forms that often result in resembling the scenes from childhood storybooks, warping of common elements such as eyes and plant structures, or simply call attention to themselves via color and/or patterning. Leading to much more experimentation in what looks good and what doesn’t, but also leads to more critical evaluation and more pickiness toward detail and coloration. Ceramic works consistently have a sort of plant element to them, especially with recent works due to me viewing that humanity and nature go hand-in-hand, a relationship where both affect the other in the dance of life.