NAMI ink work/ Calendar Project

These are illustrations I did for a calendar project in the summer of 2011 for my Junior Illustration class. We were told to pick a non profit organization from a list handed to us by our teacher and then illustrate every month. It was a fun but stressful project and I'm grateful for it because I feel I really grew in my pen and ink skills in this class and am pretty stoked about some of the individual pieces themselves.

The organization I chose was NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Health)

this is who they are:

NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, is the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness. NAMI advocates for access to services, treatment, supports and research and is steadfast in its commitment to raising awareness and building a community of hope for all of those in need.
From its inception in 1979, NAMI has been dedicated to improving the lives of individuals and families affected by mental illness. (taken from the NAMI website)

Each piece represents a mental illness and in the final product there was a side note about what the mental illness was as well as including a quick fact about the illness. From the bottom to the top this is what the pictures are meant to represent:

1.Autism

2. Borderline DX

3.Bipolar DX

4.Depression

5.Dissociative

6.Eating DX

7.Panic DX

8. PTSD

9.Schizophrenia

10. Seasonal Affective DX

11.Suicide

OCD was included in this series, however I wasn't too pleased about the quality of that single piece so that's why you don't see it. Overall though it was a really cool project and a great way to learn how art and community can be tied together (which is something I have been trying to seek out during my college education.) Hopefully I can have the full final project posted up soon (if the files work).

This one was one of my favorite pieces for a long time. I created it in 2011 my Sophomore year and MICA and it was one of the more meaningful pieces for me because it combined everything I had been practicing and trying to master (with pen ink and linework) but it was also a piece that meant a great deal to me spiritually as well. It speaks about a connection about what it means to seek God and conversely have God seeking you. The Bible talks a lot about the concept of election and being chosen, hand picked by God to inherit eternal life as well as a glorious inheritance laid up for his people in Heaven (not because of favoritism or because anyone is better than anyone else) but rather he makes his appeal to all people and yet calls to us individually. I know I felt this and went after it in my life (best decision ever) and so made work about it.

Although I was in a much better place in my life when I made this, I was still thirsty and still needed healing to be done on a personal level. I also saw what life was like for others and realized they were dead and thirsty too. True there is a lot of pain there, but also a lot of hope on the part of the central character and also compassion, because no one makes that light shine and dark places, it just does because it cares for people, it hears them and most of all answers them. I guess that's why I love it so much.

Factory

This is concept art for a friend of mine/ final for a drawing class. It's probably one of my favorite pieces.

New Jerusalem

This was a project I did my sophmore year at MICA. I really love public art and wanted to take advantage of how open MICA is to expressing personal ideas and beliefs. This piece is part of a concentration I did concerning the idea of Revelations 21 which spoke about a New Jerusalem established on earth. New Jerusalem also had a lot of personal meaning for me because at that time I was a baby Christian and completely awe struck by what changes had been happening in my life in such a short time.

The piece takes place in front of MICA's main building and was virtually unavoidable. I put New Jerusalem in a pit that could either be interpreted as being buried or excavated. It was symbolic of the face that people's faith and who they really are get's tested and reinterpreted through out the college experience and with their faith they can either thrive in it or "bury" it in a way.

Not only that, I got to experiment with illusionistic chalk drawing (Woo hoo Julian Beever!) and got to understand that process and what I had to do in order to create a piece this big.

Also in case you're wondering, the pictures were taken by Jonathan Trundle and the reason why the design lost some of it's vibrancy is because it rained midway through the process. We salvaged as much as we could (yes it was a team effort) and we were able to preserve a lot of it, but some of the color came up anyway. I was just thankful it wasn't completely destroyed.

High School Robots

Here is my concentration from high school. I know it's not professional to show high school work in anyone's portfolio, but these pieces are important because they represent for me that perfect blend of saying exactly what I want to say in a style that matches and is authentically mine. My later work deals with a lot of skill building, traditionalism and rearticulation of my visual voice, so this body of work is very important to me because of what it represents. I always go back to these when I want to remember what making art should feel like.

Footprint Impressions

I love this little man. He was made from a footprint. Our class dipped our feet in ink and then walked across a long sheet of paper leaving the imprint of our feet behind. When the footprints dried we were each given a print from the experiment and were told to make a small illustration out of it. The image above is the end result of that exercise. I think this is one of my favorites.

Miscellaneous ink