Project Proposal

            The project I wish to do at the Honolulu Academy of Arts through the Orvis Artist in Residence Program is a series of large scale paintings based on my current topics of study at UH Manoa. These include; storytelling and narrative, self portraiture, and mental and emotional health. The works I am including with this application are either video self portraits or painted self portraits. The narratives of these works are based off of my life, my daily interactions and while they are stylistically diverse they create a continuous autobiography, often using reoccurring personal symbolism. Currently, because of my various roles, as student, domestic partner and employee, my paintings explore the idea of the multiple self and the different, internal persons and personalities I believe we all have. (for a more detailed explanation, please see the attached Artist Statement).

           While I am creating a body of work at the Academy I will be recording the process to create a time-lapse film. Since I am working with autobiographical narrative, I want the film to be a visual storybook directly reflecting (and some what myth-making) my experiences at the Honolulu Academy as an artist in residence. The film will be a moving "book" in six chapters, one for each week spent in residence, exploring my interactions with visitors, fellow artists, professors and employers and what I feel I have discovered as a student and artist while living in Hawaiʹi over the past year.

            Also, as I am working, I will encourage visitors into my studio to either submit ideas to my story line, watch the film as it has progressed thus far and/or add to the current painting in progress. Anyone who wishes to add to my piece I will list as a collaborator at the end of the film. I believe that this collaboration not only encourages audience interaction with the work, literally and figuratively, but it supports my current interests in multiples. Instead of creating the multiple realties and viewpoints out of my own imagination, I will be using these visitors as the multiples selves. Their experiences will be added into the storyline, visually and externally creating the conflict and contradictions I believe we all feel internally as a result of our many inner personalities.

            What I am expecting to create within the six week time period are six large scale paintings and a final time-lapsed film composed of six 10 minute chapters each showing the process and progress of the final paintings.

            I find that this project will be feasible to accomplish successfully because of my previous experience with film editing and painting in a large scale. I feel very comfortable using these two mediums and I am excited to marry them together in a long term, large scale project. In the past I have mainly kept these two disciplines separate but have always wanted to do a project of this nature; recording and time-lapsing the painting process, but was unable to do so due to lack of space. I was unable to keep a camera stationary for a time lapse project lasing more then a few hours, even at UH Manoa, because I was working on other projects simultaneously and was forced to move the camera or the painting. However with this opportunity to use the space at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, I will be able to work on this experimental project, and leave the camera and painting set up without disrupting my other, current body of work at UH Manoa.