This is a collection of work that I created for my senior art and design course at Bethel University. The work features themes of memento mori, cartoons, and memories of youth. I completed both digital and physical applications.
Physical Prints were made and sold of these prints
Vinyl and wood applications below
ARTIST STATEMENT
As a kid, I always loved waking up early for Saturday morning cartoons. Some of my favorite memories are being the only one awake and silently laughing to myself each week. That being said, cartoons have had a big stylistic impact on the ways that I create art. Artists like Pendleton Ward, Keith Haring, and William Hanna are big inspirations for my work. The colors and playful way that their characters and environments come to life is something that I strive to recreate in my own art.
In my work, I draw on the computer which allows me to get crisp lines that can’t be created by traditional drawing tools. Each drawing is exported to a vinyl plotter, cut and pasted onto wood panels which are painted with bright colors that are specifically chosen as an ode to cartoons. Even colors like black and white are used as a nod to the earliest of cartoons. The vinyl perfectly replicates the computer generated lines and displays the work in a stark contrast.
Alongside this imagery and inspiration from cartoons, I chose to incorporate a contradictory theme of memento mori. Memento mori is a latin phrase that is meant to remind us that nothing lasts forever. The concept is a long standing tradition in art history and has its roots in the philosophers of classical antiquity and Christianity. It also appeared in funerary art and architecture from the medieval periods and onwards. I find that the interaction between this theme and the genre of cartoon provokes interesting thoughts and ideas. The association that cartoons have with childlike imagination and innocence forced into a narrative of inevitable death creates a unique tension within my work. Memento Mori is represented in my work through skulls and flowers alongside the other cartoonesque drawings. As the viewer takes in the work, they will see that the skulls don’t really fit into the rest of the drawing.