SUMMER
ARTIST RESEARCH: Favianna Rodriguez
Born in 1974 to Arfo-Peruvian parents, Rodriquez is a visual artist known for her activism in her artwork based in the state of California.
Artworks in order from left to right: Plantitas At Casa Favi 1, 99% (aka The World Versus the 1%), Man On The Moon, Favianna’s Jungle 7
Artworks in order from left to right: Saturdays at Home with My Plants II, Queen Bee, A Kitchen Still Life I, PlantCestors III
PlantCestors III (2022)
According to her website, Rodriguez did this piece as a series exploring her connection to plants and nature, and in turn, her ancestors and her roots, no pun intended. The plants depicted here were the plants that Rodriguez grew in her house, a passion she inherited from her father.
There are ideas of anti-capitalism and fighting against the urban feeling that comes with living in a major city in the United States. The theme could also be seen in the fact where Rodriguez remixed and recycled some designs and patterns from earlier artworks to create something new, a process she enjoyed.
Well Rodriguez created this piece using the medium of collage and mixed media and this could be seen in different parts of the artwork, mostly seen in the ball in the bottom right corner.
The cross hatching look done with the lino print technique, a truly impressive fleet considering the process and the smooth final look of it.
In the whole piece, near complementary colours fill the piece with tones of green and pinks dominate, with some shades of purple, cream and blue tucked in. There is a faint transparent feel to the vase where the part above the floor/table is lightly and bolder against the part where the vase is in the floor/table.
I have learnt that Rodriguez tends to mix her art with activism and she uses her art to portray what she wants to say and what she wants to communicate to her audience, nearly all her art have some sort of message that Rodriguez want to spread to everyone. I think that I would like to try and add a message in all of my art piece and be able to communicate with my own audience.
Reaction
The piece here is a reaction based on the works of Favianna Rodriguez using the lino printing technique that I have learnt while in college..
I have created this piece as I have not experiment with different printing techniques yet and I wanted to do some experiments on it, even if I was unable to add them to my final outcome.
I have created this piece by carving into some Lino and rolling some ink onto it before pressing it down on a piece of paper, I repeated this step three times, carving more into the lino so that different colours could stand out in the final piece.
With the quality, I got to say that I really like the final piece as I love how all the different colours stood out against the lines. However, some of the ink have not been transferred well in my opinion and some of the lines were going off the original path laid out before, so some of them look a bit wonky.
What I have learnt here is to try and find different ways to make sure all the ink transfer from lino to paper properly and to see if there is a way for my to keep all the lines in line with the previous print.
Building The Pages
Now onto the last section of Summer, YAY! I decided the do this first two piece in the shape of the sun as the sun is just associated with summer and it fits well. Plus, I could do the other side in the colours of a sunflower without making much changes so yay for convenience! I did the page in cardboard as even though it’s difficult to cut, it’s sturdy and I won’t have the issue of it moving due to different mediums being applied.
For the events page, I did it in the shape of a sandcastle as going to the beach is probably one of the most popular activities in the summer time, due to the long school holidays. I did this page in rough paper as sand can be rough and I want to replicate that.
Now off to the seasonal clothing page! I decided to do sunglasses, a summer hat and some sandals as those pieces of clothing are just synonymous with the summer season! With the actual page, I covered it using acylic paint and I added some brown paper with some cute little flowers on it in the middle, so that the page would look like a sunflower.
Now for the event page, I decided to add the holidays, the fact that school is out for most people and also pride month into this page as they’re really prominent events in Summer.
Melissa Ann Shoesmith Final Major Project - Personal Project - Level 3 Creative Design - Year 2 