Artists

Fall 2022

with Miguel Luciano

11^th Grade, YI Artists Thursday
Greenwich       

I don't live in the village but I spend most of my time there, for classes, and just to hang out with my friends. I love it, but every time I come downtown I’m reminded of what it used to be, an artist haven. Now, although there are still some cool creative people it’s extremely gentrified and most of the authenticity prevalent in the 60s, 70s, and 80s is gone. In my piece, which is a collage using a map of the village, I tried to capture the chaotic nature of my time spent there and its history. I used acrylic and gouache paint, newspaper and magazine cutouts, and stencils.

10^th Grade, YI Artists Thursday
կեղծ հայ (Pseudo Armenian)           

I am Armenian, but I don't speak the tongue. I don't bake lavash with my medzmama. I don't even have the identifiable “-ian” suffix in my last name. What even makes me Armenian in the first place? Through this painting, I attempted to map out my incongruous cultural identity. This is an acrylic rendition of my mother’s sweet sixteen photo where my mother, grandpa, and grandma are collectively intertwined in a joyous embrace. Their hair is the same shade, a sea of deep brown, communicating their inseparability. Familial bonds transcend all. In this painting, I alluded to several symbols representative of my Armenian heritage. My family is flourished with blooming poppies and they wear a cloak with traditional Armenian motifs. My great-grandmother lived on an opulent opium farm with her family in Malatia, Armenia. She was forced to leave her family and her luxury behind due to the systematic massacre of native Armenians enforced by the Ottoman Turks. Although the Armenian Genocide concluded a century ago, internationally Armenians still bear the repercussions of this cultural erasure. Disparate around the globe as we were all once asylum seekers, we try to reassemble the remnants of our culture. The Turkish government, among many others, still refuses to recognize this tragedy as a legitimate struggle in our history. So, we must continue to fight to be represented and heard. Despite how removed I am from Armenian culture, I am still Marygrace Berberian’s daughter. I am still Andrew Berberian’s granddaughter. I am still the product of my Mariam Garoklanian and Jack Hagop’s resilience. I embody the persistent survival of my ancestors, manifesting their endurance in this new American age of my family line. 

11^th Grade, YI Artists Thursday
Heal     

The intent of my art is to represent the steps and support one needs in order to heal, heal from trauma and grief. The seven hands are layered on top of each other in order to represent the support from other people as well as the seven stages of grief. The main idea of my artwork is to convey the steps there are to heal as a person and the vulnerability it brings to lean on others for support and reach out for help. My inspiration is from my own healing process, I hope to achieve peace and be content. I observe that my family has passed down cycles that are only now beginning to break, they weren’t able to heal from their problems; “monkey see monkey do”. When I consider the obstacles many people face I begin to understand why we subject ourselves to remain stuck in the same loop we were taught was normal. For my process I used a pencil to sketch out the grid and hands outline and painted the background and moved to working on the center of the piece with paint. The purpose is to give viewers an image of unity, strength and healing, it is up to the viewer’s interpretation of how it correlates to them personally. The medium of my painting is acrylic on canvas.

10^th Grade, YI Artists Thursday
Conversing Blindness

I am a 15-year-old 10th grade student who goes to school at Quest to Learn, in Manhattan. 3 years ago, I was diagnosed with a brain cancer, which led me to be partially blind. I use a white cane to safely navigate around the city and my environments.

12^th Grade, YI Artists Thursday
The Male Gaze

A few weeks ago, I saw a social media user making videos and claiming he had mastered the “female gaze”. This person inspired me to start thinking about the male gaze and what my interpretation of it would look on paper. I decided to make this piece have a creepy feeling to it, though the irises in each eye and the red lines going down the paper. I added this to reflect the feeling the male gaze can convey. I drew this piece digitally and it was printed out for the frame.

9^th Grade, YI Artists Thursday
Ups and Downs

Visiting Romania has become a regular thing for me, as well as accompanying my parents on hikes throughout many mountain ranges. I slowly grew a fascination with being outside, surrounded by mountains which took my parents and I on many adventures and branched into various passions. I gradually started to philosophize about the similarities between life and mountaineering. The paths that wind up a hill, just to reveal a valley you have to trek across are as mind torturing as the ups and downs of life. All of the inner battles one fights while hiking unending trails with your parents complaining how slow you are, are rewarded with the unbelievable views and feelings of accomplishment from the summit which are comparable to the emotions one feels after reaching a meaningful goal. By flying my drone, I hope to immerse people in the beautiful views of mountains.

9^th Grade, YI Artists Thursday
Pandemonium

The intent of my art was to implicate a little bit of everything I like. I like camo and the matrix. One of my colleagues drew an eye at the top to incorporate one of the things they like. Something that keeps me motivated when making art is what the outcome would be. It may be very difficult to know where you are going when making art but if you keep pushing, your end result would be legendary. My initial thoughts of this art piece were interesting because I didn't know what I should do so I just did the first thing that came to my mind. Draw random lines. Then it hit me, I should draw a camouflaged base. I made it using a canvas and acrylic paint markers so that if I made a mistake, I could just wait for the acrylic to dry and redraw over it.

9^th Grade, YI Artists Thursday
Moon man

The art pieces that are a part of the collection are called: Moon man, Pandemonium, Ravage. The point of these is to create art piece about collaboration. Usually when you make art it’s a singular craft. The main part of making this art piece was figuring out what colors would go together. Also, to work together to find what themes would go for each piece. The only changes the art works went through was when we were deciding the colors. When making the paintings we used magi acrylic paint markers. The purpose behind our art work was to come together and make three pieces of work that we had collaborated on.

11^th Grade, YI Artists Thursday
Shanti  

Being South Asian, the family dynamics in both my immediate and distant family were heavily centered around nuclear roles of men and women. Women in my family were the sole caretakers as their husbands worked around the clock. With these respective roles, I thought about how aunties, cousins, even my own mother had no room for themselves. Their lives were often fully centered around the lives of their children. I wanted a painting would depict a South Asian woman without the children. Without the husband. I wanted her to just exist in her own world. That’s why it’s such a simple painting. A woman in a sari, eyes closed, lounging around. I named the painting Shanti because in Hindi as well as Bengali, it means “peace”. It’s also the name of my favorite movie, “Om Shanti Om”.

11^th Grade, YI Artists Thursday
I’m all ears

When I first started this project, I was focusing on the listening aspect of voice, in order to be an efficient speaker you also need to be an efficient listener. Communicated through the earrings, they represent different aspects of hearing. I was inspired by all the sounds around me when I was creating this project, and the earrings that I chose to create represent desire, secrets, sadness, and confusion. It was challenging to Translate an emotion into a tangible picture. I created the earrings by drawing on shrinky dink paper, and then adding gems after I had baked the sheets.

9^th Grade, YI Artists Thursday
Rushed Frenzy / Ravage

The true motif of my piece was collaboration between artists and the liberation that collaboration brings. My colleagues and I have worked on a collaborative series of 3 pieces on canvas we dubbed Pandemonium, Moon man and Ravage. We’d be finishing portions of each other’s canvases and swapping them to add unique touches with no actual theme. Just randomness in general. We were inspired by the idea of the composite corpse and added our own aspects to the concept by first making mostly geometric shapes with sketching pencils and going crazy while sketching— my favorite part of the process. Then, we colored our sketches with the magi acrylic markers, giving a sense of vibrancy to our pieces through our odd designs and bright colors and contrast that attract your eyes.

11^th Grade, YI Artists Thursday
With Love From NYC   

This semester, we explored the idea of identity and voice, and where we see ourselves reflected in important places of our lives. When thinking about this, I realized that a huge part of my identity is down to where I live and grew up, New York City. This work, With Love From NYC is how I chose to represent this part of my identity. All of my extended family lives in the UK (both of my parents moved here in the late 1990s). For important occasions, like holidays and birthdays, I usually send my family postcards I’ve painted of places that have significance to that person. For my project this semester, I decided to use this as my inspiration, creating a series of hand-painted postcards adapted from photos I’ve taken around the city. New York is a very important place to me and has had a huge impact on who I am as a person, so when it came to creating a project to represent my voice and how I see it reflected around me, I wasn’t able to choose just one place or thing. I ended up arriving at the conclusion that my voice is, in fact, represented all around me simply because of where I live. This project is based on my favorite art style and my favorite places, and as such it perfectly captures my voice in just a few small images. 

10th Grade, YI Artists Thursday
My Dance

My personal work has always been about how I shape my feelings or thoughts art, whether it be character design, colors, or words. I find myself using events that have happened to me and emotions that I have felt towards them as a way to make a character have a strong backstory or personality. Similar to character designs, I use colors and shapes to make the viewer feel how I feel. Pairing my writing with colors and shapes make it even easier to convey my feeling to others.

I use digital art to create my characters for whom I have individual stories for. I create their design based off of friends that I've had in the past, people I see on the train, or people that I wish existed. I create representation for people who do not see themselves in books or on TV, either gay, trans, or POC. My poetry follows the same mindset as my digital art by creating some kind of representation for those who are not heard or written about as much as they should be. I also write about my own personal issues like mental heath, sexuality, gender, and race/ethnicity. My poetry is there for people to relate to or take solace in. It is free form and usually follows no specific structure, although I have written sonnets and Terza rima style poems.

This work titled "My Dance" is a poem reading paired with moving shapes and colors to help convey feelings. The shapes and colors start off light and easy to look at, but progressively become more sharp and dark. The animation ends with a beautiful array of purples and pinks, indicating a positive change.

"My Dance" represents the day of someone who has Tourette's, a condition that causes quick and sometimes painful uncontrollable movements and noises called "tics." I have this condition as well as many of my friends, and I wanted to combine all of our experiences together. The poem follows the story of an unnamed child trying to deal with this condition and it slowly getting worse as the day progresses. It ends with their family comforting them and reminding them that their condition is not something to hate and something that the family loves them for.

My Tourette's does not currently look like the stereotypes shown in the media, but it used to. I had no idea what was happening to me when it first started, and because I had no way to cope with it, my condition was painful and depressing. Although I have found ways to understand my condition and lessen it to an extent, there are people out there who, no matter how much help they get, still live the 'stereotype' that people see and are ridiculed. This piece is for those people or people who want to learn about the condition through an artist's point of view.