Advisor: Lorena Salcedo-Watson + Jason Paradis

Overview of Zoonami Exhibition, April 11th – April 19th 2024

Zoonami is a show that is a culmination of my work for the last semester and a half at Stony Brook. The name of this show comes from the content and quantity of work I produce. My work focuses on the depictions of animals as well as the culture, history, and science that intertwine with them. The show consists of two main series, the Chimera series and my Tattoo Animal series. These two series embody my core values as an artist, my process, my personal beliefs, and a little bit of comedy.
Art to me is the equivalent of freedom. While the subject matter of my work is not emotionally charged, the output and quantity is. One of my beliefs is that most of my problems can be solved by producing more artwork. If I become bored, I’ll produce more work. If I need money, I’ll produce more work. If I become angry, I need to vent, so I produce more work. If I lack technical ability, I’ll produce even more work. A portfolio is required for most jobs related to art, so I’ll produce more work. Having too little or inadequate work is a problem I never want to encounter. I learn from trial and error, again and again. I believe that the time trying to find a shortcut is time I could have spent learning from my mistakes.

Untitled, 2023-2024, Acrylic Marker on Leather Shoes, installation

Untitled, 2023-2024, Hand torn prints, installation

The pile of failed prints in the corner of the room reflects what I have gone through. For every print I made, there were at least 2-3 failures. For every image I produce, there are hours I have spent studying the form of my subject matter. As well as even more hours I have spent honing my linework, studying form, examining shadow, color, perspective, composition, etc… I have become so familiar with the form of some of my subjects that I can imagine three dimensional shapes being rotated on a three dimensional plane inside my head. This gives me great confidence in my proportions, linework, and understanding of fundamentals without having to sketch or plan. This makes it very easy for me to produce more work in much less time. This is one of the reasons why I named the show “Zoonami”.
I compare myself to artists that are far more skilled and successful than me. This fuels me to keep making more work. There are also others that expect me to fail and wish for it. A lot of different things become fuel for my work, anger, jealousy, spite, happiness, greed, and pride. However, above all, I love what I do. I express these emotions in the way my mind imagines it, as an ocean, or a tsunami of work.

Main Wall of Prints Zoonami Exhibition, April 11th – April 19th 2024

In the exhibition, there were 82 pieces in total, consisting of 29 different images and variations. Of the 82 pieces, there were 17 plexi prints, 3 copper plates, 3 paintings, 1 installation and 57 lithographs. Despite spending most of my time as a painter and only recently printmaking, lithography in particular, has become the medium I gravitate towards. Printmaking in general aligns with my goals to produce not only a vast quantity of work, but also many different colors and variations. With Lithography I find it much more liberating than plexiglass etchings, linoleum, or copper plates. This is due to the many possible variations of mark making that I can achieve. My favorite technique in particular is my irregular mezzotint. With this technique I draw negatively with gum arabic using very small brush tips, usually 0/2-0/4 sizes.
This technique has everything I would want in a medium. It is unforgiving, utilizes a brush, has an emphasis on linework, and is difficult to imitate. Through this method I produced my tattoo animal series, while my chimera series usually utilizes plexiglass prints, with some exceptions being lithographs.

Giving Thanks Dinner, 2023, Irregular Mezzotint, 10 x 14 inches

My first series, the “Chimera” series explores absurdism and the melding of imagery, mainly consisting of organic forms and living subject matter. A chimera by definition is an imaginary depiction of a living thing that contains at least two different sets of DNA. In the case of my work, at least two separate elements meld together to create something new. These elements can be anything, fish gills, human arms, forks, tentacles, airplanes, cultures, marble pillars, crimson lilies, dead frogs,myths, semi-trucks, etc.

My Chimera series process usually begins with seeing or hearing about something interesting. Whether it’s on social media, by word of mouth, or everyday life, it starts with a thought or idea that I personally find interesting. Then, I search for connections. The connections I make, dictate everything. These connections can be cultural significance, biological similarities, or puns. The elements of my chimera, the animals I draw, and the composition all depend on where my research takes me. A great example would be “Buffalo Wing”: a piece that originally started with me pondering “word play”. Then the question of, Why are buffalo Wings called buffalo wings in the first place? Is it because there is buffalo DNA in buffalo wings? Do buffalos even have wings? At first, I thought of depicting a buffalo with majestic wings, however, it was already known as the logo of a famous restaurant chain. Therefore I decided to reconstruct the composition in my brain. I connected a buffalo’s head to the base of a chicken’s wing. Hence, my buffalo wing was created.

Buffalo Wing, 2024, Drypoint Plexi, 10 x 8 inches

My belief is that in the present day, many artists all use the same reference material from Google or other popular sources like Pinterest and Instagram. This phenomenon causes artwork to become renditions with the same origin. Whether it be the same subject matter, exact image, or common theme it creates a recycling of imagery which makes art uninteresting. My goal with this series is to create images that are actively trying to be original, to the point which they are considered absurd. This is done by painstakingly studying animal anatomy and then melding them back together. This process is in essence like tampering with nature. My Tattoo Animals series explores the intermingling of cultures and statements about the history of certain animals. I explore this by drawing the animal I wish to depict first then tattooing something that represents its surrounding culture or a culture that is representative of the conversation I am trying to create. The tattoos range in different styles and imagery.

Tim is a Rat, 2024, Irregular Mezzotint, 8 x 12 inches

For an example in the piece “Tim is a Rat ” a Japanese styled bodysuit is depicted on a NewYork City rat. A Japanese styled bodysuit is seen as indicative of Yakuza tattoo culture. This creates a stigma around tattoos in East Asian society. This stigma has gone back to the 300 AD in the Konfu period all the way to the Edo period which ended in 1867 for the Japanese. In that era, tattoos mainly functioned as a tool used to mark criminals up until the late Edo period where the use of them fluctuated. I combine this with the slang of “Rat”, which is used to describe traitors and informants of organized crime in American culture. This combination creates an image with eastern and western connotations.

Fly High, 2024, Irregular Mezzotint, 22 x 17.5

Fly High alludes to an event that may or may not have taken place due to negligence. In July 1937, Amelia Earhart disappeared on her attempt to circumnavigate the globe. Apparently three years later British colonists found bones near the island of Nikumaroro that were being played with by coconut crabs. It was not until later on that they suspected these bones to belong to Earhart. The bones were shipped out for analysis but were lost soon after. Here I tattoo the coconut crab with a 3 panel comic which represents the events with my artistic rendition. The tattoos are in a Japanese styled sleeve. I then titled the piece “Fly High”. The words “Fly High” is synonymous with the modern internet “comment section” where fans of recently deceased celebrities would comment the words “Fly High”. These words are also a play on Earhart’s attempt to fly high. I often compare this technical process to tattooing, because making a mistake would require me to regrind the litho-stone or somehow incorporate the mistake. I deliberately gravitate towards unforgiving mediums because I am not afraid to start over and try again. I see it as a learning experience that overtime lowers my margin of error.
Overtime I have developed an appreciation for some of the pieces I create that come out nearly perfect. I hold myself up to continually increasing standards in order to see what I can accomplish. Despite the frustration, hard work, and time spent, I aim to push myself to see how far my artwork can evolve. I aim for in depth research that takes me places where no one else wants to go. I enjoy learning unorthodox methods of working and creating great volumes of work. Though there are many things that fuel me and push me to create, in the end my work will go far beyond this exhibition. I aim to create even more absurd and interesting things because that is my nature as a being. However this exhibition was a good benchmark for what I am able to accomplish at this point in time with my current capabilities. The room was filled with my artwork which was conceived from my current interests and beliefs. The room was also arranged in a fashion that was as close to perfect as I had imagined at this point in time. Therefore this exhibition was a physical manifestation of myself, a mindscape completely of my design.