by Stella Perez
“This piece represents the fragility that humans are made up of. Like the snail we have an outer shell, which is seemingly easily broken. In a time like this, that’s all too real of a comparison. Our metaphorical shell as a society has been chipped, and it becomes more and more fragmented as this virus continues to spread. It shows a play and depiction of Eurocentric art as well, such as The Creation Of Adam. I wanted to give the essence of those renaissance pieces that are so deeply rooted in Religion and individuality of man. In The Creation Of Adam we see the moment God gives life to Adam, and in our world now we see how quickly it can be taken away. How quickly we are reminded of the vulnerability and mortality of the human race. During quarantine making art has been very interesting. These last few years there has been multitudes of political and social change which seemingly has manifested themselves largely during quarantine. We see how much the people of America, and the world crave opulence rather than the welfare and prosperity of those less fortunate than them. Avarice is the true reason the shell chips, and a falsified desire for freedom is what will finally make it rupture irreversibly. Being a young artist and adolescent in this anomaly is eerie and strange, and I show that through my art. My ideas have only grown in numbers conceptually, but are stunted short by a lack of supplies. This has forced me to do things such as make the switch from conventional collages to digital collages and find new ways to portray my concepts. The shift from daily contact to utter isolation has been severe for my creative mindset. I find myself imposing ideas of civic and political conceptualizations rather than the usual figure or drawing study based on improvement of my technical skill. There is a certain symbiosis of my lack of materials and my artistic ideas, the sudden shift of types of materials has shown me a world’s worth of ideas I would have never thought of if this hadn’t been thrust upon me.”
Island Icons 