SOVA Senior Show 3 - Spring 2019

“Flowers wither earlier than expected.” I was told by my mother who has been taking care of the flowers in my photographs and video.  Those precious flowers now are far away, on the other side of the Earth-- my home, in another country.  It is with that most familiar place to which I cannot return, and my mother’s flowers that I cannot touch, that I start to illuminate and memorize the limited lifetime of the flowers.

The photography creates unique atmosphere at dim light and demonstrates the texture of flowers naturally and abstractly in a blurred way of capturing.  Through the limited amount of sunlight, flowers show themselves as illusory paintings instead of clear images.  Differently, my video focuses on creating a transition of double exposure and exploring an atmosphere of moving images over time.  The original quiet atmosphere of photos changes in a movement of slow layers coming up.  This process of double exposure in the transition and every small and precise moment in this process is its success.

We cannot stop time, but we can memorize precious time passing in our own way.  Through the light and dark in my works, I find my precious and sincere time of experience.  That is what always drives and motivates me to step forward in my own way of making art.

Mulin Chen, 2019

I consider my work a collection of locations resembling a personal map. I’m very attentive to the detail around me, and I am fascinated by the overall composition of a room. I grew up in a family that acquired a refined sense of detail and interest in creating functional space. My father was a house mover by trade and my mother is a self-proclaimed interior designer. It was a game to find what my mom rearranged around the house, and I marveled at the floor plans flung across the kitchen table. Only recently did I discover I had been unconsciously making art in response to my parent’s obsessive tendencies.
 
As I navigate through life, I select places that are the most significant and where I spend the most time. This allows me to give each location enough attention to observe its forms. I find that my abstracted visual language is a translation of how I was taught to see the world.

Elizabeth Snyder Fernandez, 2019

Dreams are stories and images where anything is possible, and this is where the journey begins. The mind is capable of changing the way we view the real world in many different ways. Every perspective is built upon the way our brain processes information, emotions, and memories. In my case, I have come to the realization that here is a common theme that ties every dream together. In my dreams, I find myself constantly moving, searching for something or someone that never comes. Most times, I get so caught up in worrying about the outcomes of life that I forget to live in the moment and enjoy the journey that will lead to my destination. Working through dream-like video is a way of telling myself to slow down and embrace every second that is given, before it is left behind in the place of lost memories.

The footage reflects multiple locations, places where something was constantly happening at different stages of my life. I took on the challenge to find the movement that I have envisioned with every mode of transportation that I have taken. While some images are clear, other video is transformed. Abstracted images blur the surrounding vision and represent the peripheral details of dreaming. Auditory elements reveal faint sounds or actions with a constant resonance that ties every segment together.

In this piece, I take the viewer on a continuous journey in a space detached from the real world, and explore the subconscious space of dreams and adventure. Memories and emotions of my life are transformed and manipulated in my mind. Explore the sensation and misperception of the story I am telling, in a place where there is no control over what is happening.

Alexa Mantilla, 2019

 “Take advantage of five before five: your youth before your old age, your health before your illness, your riches before your poverty, your free time before your work, and your life before your death.”
-The Prophet Muhammed (SAW)
Some things can take you back in time, back to a previous self you forgot you were. It can be something as vague as a smell or as literal as a photograph. Then suddenly, we fall back down to reality as time continually chugs along, and we attempt to stay afloat. And yet for just a single moment, we can be sitting at our childhood table, eagerly awaiting a meal. Or feeling the warm embrace of a mother, preventing any harm from reaching us.
When we reminisce on the past, do we have regrets? Things we wish we had done or said? People we wished we had thanked or appreciated? Do we carry these regrets as weights on our shoulders? Or do we allow them to set up our futures? Just as the seasons come and go, so too do our memories. The lines between past, present, and future become blurred, and we are left with a feeling of emptiness that seems to never be filled.
So, what is truly valuable? What are the things that are really worth carrying? And for the limited time we have, what are the things that we surely could never live without?

Tariq Rakha, 2019

I like to lie to myself and pretend I approach my work like an architect, that if I created a good enough blueprint the rest of the work will effortlessly follow. The truth is I’m always improvising. I enjoy myself the most going after gut-feelings and letting my work grow from small ideas stacked on top of one another. Abstract Factory is the expressive and spontaneous side knocking over every plan that the architect tries to make.

Abstract Factory was born from a desire to combine my love of music and animation into a single unified piece. It is the spontaneous drawings of a compulsive doodler come to life, combined with the equally frantic sound they make in my head. The movement of the lines and shapes push and pull on the music, and by extension the music changes how the visuals interact and combine. The end result is a work connected sonically and visually.  

Kyle Robey, 2019