In the artists' words...
My work was done for the remembrance of homes and memories. Old abandoned homes scatter through most of the world today, homes onced lived in seemingly forgotten for one reason or another. These homes strike a sense of longing, a building so lived in that it has fallen to disarray. The idea of a family home being lived in over and over by different people, the house seeing children grow up and start families and lives of their own. After all this however, houses are not permanent, they can be abandoned or torn down once they can’t serve their purpose. Pieces of the house remain, scraps that let you put together an image of the house and people that lived there.
There is a feeling of mystery that comes along with these buildings, questions of who lived there, why they are abandoned. In this mystery there is a sense of creativity and imagination. A sense of wonder as one makes stories for what these houses have seen as well as how nature and the elements have led them to destruction. One can day dream about what a house may have looked like before it fell into disarray, how it may have been to live there. My work has a sense of emptiness, such as the empty houses but a spark of questioning for how to fill this void with creativity. In the same way one can wonder what pieces of the work mean, what they come from, and reflect on something similar in their own lives.
The relationship between two people can be complex sometimes, my projects expressed the hurt of a relationship that is too intense. If you know someone too well, you know the words that are going to hurt them if you say them out loud when you are mad. Inspired by “rest energy”, Marina and Ulay were standing face to face and staring at each other intently. Pulling a tight bow with a poisoned arrow was facing Marina's heart. Because the tension of the bow and arrow makes their body rhythm tilt backward, the poisonous arrow could go into her heart.
Some may be able to see the trust and love in the intimate relationship, I see the fragility in the relationship between people. In an intimate relationship, it is actually very easy to cause pain. I want to make jewelry that can be worn by two people, with bows and arrows on the collar at the same time, or some objects with sharp spikes, which restrict the two people from approaching each other in any direction. Once they are close, the spikes on the collar will cause harm to the other one. The point is that it is necessary to keep a distance even in an intimate relationship, otherwise it will easily cause harm.
Reviewing the old photographs took in Seattle let me lose track of time and stuck in my daydream as if they bring me back again to the cafe around the corner of my apartment in Seattle. This series of images are mostly taken while Wanyi and I were walking through the displays of exhibitions in Museum or streets; therefore, going through them brings up the relaxing memories and feelings of then. By looking through them, I could again feel the comfortable and carefree atmosphere of Seattle city, which has been long gone since I came back to Taiwan, my home country. Being in my home country sometimes makes me long for the rainy Seattle more than usual, especially when Taiwan is providing people more a stressful and hasty vibe. Soon after returning to reality, I got the idea of why not creating a particular space to zone out and enjoy their daydreams as me sensing the atmosphere of Seattle?" That is how the initial purpose and concept of "Space Out" came from.
In this work, I want to convey my visions of recreating Seattle's relaxing scene while I was daydreaming by presenting different kinds of interactive sounds and visual collisions of nature and human-made buildings such as the white church by the beach to trigger audiences' inducements of spacing out. Every conversation, every view, and every interpersonal dialogue or interaction between humans and their environment have their own unique frequency in an environment. For instance, the frequency I have interacted with old photographs that I took in Seattle and collided with a new frequency led me experiencing the vibe of Seattle again. I collected and edited these collisions and frequency of sounds and visions, creating something that allows the human body to perceive this penetrating sound via an audio-visual experience and develop a whole new frequency for the audiences.
Chyna assumes she has artistic abilities, but wouldn’t categorize herself as a particular artist for the time being. She is new to the scene and spends most of her time in her bedroom experimenting with different art mediums. Being at home, “stuck” on the island of Kaua’i has been both liberating and constraining. Chyna is inspired by the “stuff” surrounding her at home and often uses random household objects to create something that she considers art. She invites you into her space because there’s nowhere else she can be right now, so why not join the party (from a distance).
"My final piece to end my studio art career is about exploring what’s left of my sanity. I have spent an entire year cooped up in my bedroom . . . staring at a screen. I already have bad eyesight, so what’s next to lose is my mind. I can tell you there are 153 hangers currently in my closet, and that my professor has worn the same shirt 14 times out of the 27 classes I’ve attended. My room gives off too much energy that I no longer sleep in there. Naturally, I’ve run out of “stuff” (nice word for crap) in my space that inspired me to create art, so I instead fixated on the screen in front of me. Why is the screen talking to me? And who are these random strangers in my bed (I use my bed as a laptop stand)? And the mind does funny things, like deciding to be a creep and secretly screenshot their classmates everyday. And the mind does funny things, like sharing said screenshots with the outside world that exist beyond the confines of the bedroom, and asking the world to create the art instead of doing it themselves. And the mind does crazy things, like turning the bedroom into an Apple store gallery that displays all the screenshot art. And the mind no longer works because it’s Spring Break and a week long sleep (on the couch, because the bedroom is still a gallery) is long overdue."
I produce art in two ways. As a direct expression of my weirder internal feelings that I feel are too abrasive to just speak, and as an outlet to put into the world what I deem comforting and appealing to my own eye. What I aspire to accomplish in connecting these two concepts is to produce a novel experience for my audience that invokes the viewer to pay attention and reflect through my use of shock value. Although not offensive or crass, my art is just grotesque enough to force a double-take. The viewer then experiences a piece of myself that is an amalgamation of various scales of complex emotion, struggle, and a mere outlandish aesthetic. These feelings and ideas a the heartbeat of my work and critical for my piece to be successful in the eyes of my viewers, plainly because I believe that my art is worth looking at because it contains aspects of myself.
My art and designs aim to convey a feeling of happy harmony, and instill peace and balance in oneself. I want my viewers to leave their troubles and be taken into my art, to feel as though they are in a dream of some sort, and my art is their new reality. In curating a visual identity I help my client to portray themselves, convey their ideals, and communicate their beliefs though using imagery and form. Through research, observation, communication and collaboration I get to know my client’s, and their audiences’, circumstances and dreams for the future. After gaining a deep understanding of those whom I hope to reach, I use color, composition, typography, photography, and illustration to initiate a dialogue. Through design and aesthetics we converse about lifestyle, culture, history and beauty. In this vision of the future we meet, connect and unite.
Huy Tran was born in 2000 and raised in Vietnam: however, he takes the next step to study abroad in Seattle. Throughout his study journey, he has studied at Seattle Central College, The Art Institute of Seattle, and finally Seattle University. With this time in the world of art, he has built good experience and skill in many aspects, so he believes art will make the world and life more interesting and colorful.
"My artworks are a combination of materials and processes that you can imagine such as photographs, design, drawing and others. By gathering those applications, I want to create an experience of my creations and enjoyment through visualization to the audience that will lead viewers from exploring colors to understanding objects. Showing beautiful objects to everyone is my priority, but it also needs to have its soul to convey messages or imagination.
The process of making artworks is mixing both physical and digital to propose the hidden meaning behind it. It will come with the play of color on different mediums to get the final pieces both on media and printed. The subject matter of these works use human and typography to mainstream the meaning of my idea."
I had to do a lot of introspection for the art I produced in this class. For a lot of what I turned in, I was directed back towards my inner thoughts, feelings, memories, and philosophies. I inevitably had to look towards the root of my thoughts on religion, which is the focus of pretty much all the art I made for the class.
I was raised strictly Catholic. My parents both being from Dublin, this was really the only option for me. Yet still I remember the first time I ever stood up to my father and told him that I was no longer going to go to church, and that I didn't believe in God anymore.This was not only my first actual moment of defiance, but it was a moment where I felt real fear. My reasoning was simple; violence. Why could I believe in something that was meant to be the epitome of everything good, when I lived in a world full of atrocities. All I could think of is how any so called religious and just man could stand against any of it, and they never did.
So this was what my art is about, frustration, anger, violence, and religion.
I am a street photographer focusing on photography of public transportation, especially with buses around the city of Hong Kong. Hong Kong has a massive transit system, and buses has been a very important character in the transit system. As being a bus driver, a part of providing public transportation services to the society, it gives me a clear thought of how the system works, and experiencing the life of driving a bus bringing people around the city. My work is to introduce the buses rolling around the city, and also show people how bus driver’s life looks like with different types of bus photographs.