Emma+Connell

__**Quarter 1 Artist Statement**__ This cardboard replica of Philadelphia is meant to reflect the diversity among the city. Everywhere i go i see diversity of different ethnic groups. Packed in the city of Philadelphia there is Chinatown, the Italian market, a Jewish center, christian churches, Catholic churches and much more. not only is there the diversity of cultures but the diversity of caste systems. In Chestnut and Society hill there are those of the wealthier, while in south and north Philadelphia there are the middle class people, while the poor roam the streets of center city. Even in my own school i see people of different races interact peacefully. This replica simply reflects what i see everyday. The different colors and decorations on the boxes represents the diversity i live among. The other day I was in the waiting room of my dentist's office flipping through fashion magazines. I became so absorbed in them. I wanted all the clothes i saw, i wanted the perfect hair, the shoes, the bodies, etc. I entered a fantasy world completly forgetting of my surroundings. Then all of a sudden the dentist called me in and i snapped from La La world to the real world. It was a huge dissapointment. i left the bright colors and high style fashion to look down at a pair of old jeans and basic tee. In that momment i realized that the media, primarily focused for young adults and teens, doesn't portray the real world. it shows the high celebrity fashion and works our hopes up to things the average human can't afford/doesn't have. I have two collages. One displays the certain media geared towards teens and young adults while the other shows all different aspects of the world and what an average human being looks like. My "false" collage shows an unrealistic view of what the world is like. It shows bright colors, beautiful clothes, flawless people, gorgeuos jewerly, and more. It creates the false illusion of what the world looks like and make young adults/teenagers believe they must look like the rest of society aka people in the magazine (who are fake). My other collage shows the reality of the world. it shows real people, real clothes, and diversity of culture.
 * __Quarter 2__ __Artist Statement__**





For this quarter i had the original plan to make something symbolic out of soda bottles and other recyclables, but i changed my mind in the middle of the quarter and switched to making a volcano. I didn't have any available clay so i had to make my own out of flour, baking soda, and water. After mixing the ingredients together i would heat them over the stove and then my clay would be done. A lot of time went into making the volcano. I messed up two times in the process of making it, but on my third try I was successful and my volcano was ready to go and get painted. The volcano was supposed to be in the center of Philadelphia. It was a symbolic figure of the corruption among our city which is filled with poverty, racism, murder, education and more. Although many people can't see these problems at first this replica of the city with the volcano was a blunt and clear symbolization of the lurking problems. Below is a picture of the volcano before it was painted. Unfortuantely, the painted version fell apart and crumbled after several days (the clay material isn't the best quality).
 * __Quarter 3__**

For my art project this year I decided to focus on eyes. People always say eyes are the windows to a person’s soul and I’ve always had such a fascination when I saw an exceptional drawing/painting of eyes. In the past I only knew how to draw cutesy cartoon eyes. Although I liked drawing such eyes I wanted to increase my artistic abilities and be able to draw eyes that carry more emotion. When I usually tried drawing eyes they would always look odd or mean, but one day I decided to devote myself to mastering the perfect eye (that wasn’t odd or mean). After many sketches I finally nailed it, I could now draw different types of eyes! My project is meant to portray how I can now show different types of emotions through eyes. It’s proof on how I progressed in drawing. The various eyes I drew show my faces personalities. Each face has a different emotion the faces range from mysterious, to happy, to depressed, to high, to pretty, to innocent, and last but not least to worried.
 * __Quarter 4__**