IB Exhibition

As an aspiring architect, I am interested in examining the interactions between people and environments. I am curious about how different environments—parks, landscapes, and building interiors—impact people’s moods, feelings, or movement.

I captured my curiosity and understanding of this interaction through architectural and two-dimensional pieces that vary in scale and techniques.

 

I began my artistic journey by working with Sigma pens, a medium I was already comfortable with, in the artwork “The Five Senses as Seen Through Architectural Works.” This project along with being the first piece I made for my exhibition, was also my smallest project. After getting comfortable working on a medium-scale, I decided to branch out and apply some of the techniques and details I had used in my next artwork called “Building A World Together.” This collage piece was the first large scale project I created where I integrated the use of a medium I was less comfortable with: colored pencil. While experimenting with a new medium was nerve-wracking, I found it to be a very valuable experience as it allowed me to explore new forms of artistic expression. Other new mediums I experimented with are charcoal, three-dimensional architectural modeling, and graphic design. My next project, “Una Vida Magica” was the beginning of my exploration of Magical-Realism which has become my favorite art style. I discovered this style after I was intrigued to explore ways in which I could combine my love for realist depiction with the abstraction I had integrated into “Building A World Together.” Creating this piece made me confident in my ability to share my messages, opinions, and thoughts through my art. 

 

I made my artworks with the intent of educating the viewers about interactions that are harmful to the world around us as well as interactions that are important in defining who I am. My piece “The World Above Us” aims to make the viewer aware of the negative impacts that the industrialist expansion is having on the natural environment. I was inspired by the contemporary works of artists Paul Bond and Vladimir Kush who pushed the limits of their imagination by making unconventional elements such as a whale and a violinist in the artwork seem natural. I applied these artists’ styles into my artwork by turning the dark clouds in the sky into the turbulent sea through which fish are swimming while skyscrapers simultaneously shoot out from beneath the clouds spearing some of the fish. I wanted the viewer to feel distressed when viewing the scene, specifically the puffer fish’s worried expression and the speared fish, to show the unseen impacts that non-ecofriendly construction on our planet’s ecosystem.

 

There are two main experiences that have influenced my work. The first is the time I have spent in Ecuador, immersed in my culture and heritage. I have created artworks that have been inspired by different aspects of Ecuadorian culture such as the importance of family connection which is represented in “Una Vida Magica” through the gathering of people around the large orange. The second experience is a summer pre-college arts program I attended at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. I took an Interior Architecture and Design course that made me aware that I want to continue designing spaces that change the way in which people move and feel. This experience encouraged me to pursue architecture in the future and made the projects I created during my second year of IB more architecturally focused. 

 

I will display my architectural models on low podiums to allow the viewer to have a birds-eye view of the layout of the models. I decided to display my two pieces “The Five Senses as Seen Through Architectural Works” and “The Merge” together on the left-hand side of my exhibition since both pieces were made using pen and ink and their contents are mainly comprised of buildings. To the right are my artworks that include the most color. These pieces are non-architecturally related. On the right-hand side of my exhibition are my two pieces “The World Above Us” and “Building a World Together.” Both of these pieces include central elements, the pufferfish and the car, facing opposite directions: left and right respectively.