Artist Interview - Leila Velasco

Artist Interview

            The name of the artist that I chose for my interview is my friend Ronal Lopez, he's a young draftsman artist that has been working for about four years in an architecture firm called Artist of Tomorrow. Ronal’s grandfather was an oil painter and he remembers that when he was little he would always watch his grandfather paint, Ronal got influenced by his grandfather when he decided to show him some of his art tricks, but one of his grandfather's specialties was painting houses so his grandfather decided to teach him how to hold a pencil and how to draw houses, and that’s what made him have a passion for architecture. One of his best artworks about New York is a cathedral that he did it an axonometric ink vellum paper; he was inspired to do it because he wanted to test himself of what he was capable of. I got a chance to see some of his artwork and I really liked it because I saw how talented is he, he also let me take some pictures of his artwork and some of the tools that he uses to draw the buildings and houses. Besides the New York painting he did, I also liked one he did about a bear in a golden scratch paper and also a similar one he did about two wolves, I was impressed by his artwork because is impressive to see how many young talented artists are out there. I asked him if he had an advice for starting young artists out there and his answer was "My advice would be is to love what you do. If there is no love then there is no passion, no commitment. Don’t let others make you do what they want fallow your own dreams; it’s the only way to be happy in life."

SOME OF HIS ARTWORK PIECES:

"Art is Silent Poetry!" - Ronal Lopez

Bridge - Ronal Lopez 

Drawing of a house - Ronal Lopez

Wolves - Ronal Lopez

Sketches - Ronal Lopez

Bear in Golden Scratch Paper - Ronal Lopez

Cathedral - Ronal Lopez

Elephant - Ronal Lopez

The tools he uses for his architectural artwork

9/11 Memorial Park - Leila Velasco

9/11 Memorial Visit

            My experience on going to the 9/11 Memorial was interesting because I’m that type of person that loves listening to stories about important events that happened in the world, I’ll say that I was fortunate that I was not here when it happened since I was in Colombia at that time, however, my mother was so I was worried for her life because I didn’t know if she might be working in one of the towers or that she might have been anywhere near the towers, I’m looking forward to visit the museum when it opens because I want to see the artifacts that workers collected from the 9/11 rubbles. When I went to the 9/11 memorial park I got to see all the names that were inscribed on both of the two pools, I noticed that in each side of the pillars there was some printed numbers which to me it was interesting because I think that was a way to know how many people died on September 11^th. In my opinion, the people who constructed the pools chose a good way to symbolize the many tears and sadness that the families had to go through when they saw the two planes crashing, the towers falling down and even the people who were jumping out the windows when this tragic event happened. When I was looking at the holes in the middle of the waterfalls I wondered "what could there be beyond that hole?" but at the same it made me think that that hole in the middle of the two pools was also a way to symbolize that there's still a hole in every heart of the families who lost someone very close in the World Trade Center. It was interesting that the day the class visited the memorial it was a cold and rainy day so when it started to rain I saw the small drops in the names as if the souls of every person who died in the World Trade Center was crying. Going to the memorial was a wonderful experience and I liked it so much that my favorite part were the waterfalls, I liked it so much that I even took a 10 to 25 second video of both waterfalls because I wanted to show my mother and sister how beautiful the waterfalls looked and how big they look, I want to go back during night time because I’ve seen some pictures that they turn the light on at night so people can appreciate the waterfalls at night

David Smith visit at the Whitney Museum - Leila Velasco

David Smith: Cubes and Anarchy

Whitney Museum

           

            During my visit to the David Smith’s exhibition at the Whitney Museum I was able to find interesting artwork from this artist. For example, there was one I saw called 5 1/2 which was a sculpture made from painted steel and I like it since it looked very similar to the Tetris game because it had the “L” shaped piece at the top of the sculpture, I also liked it because the artist used beautiful colors to make the sculpture stand out more for the viewer using the gold colors. Another one I liked was Zig IV because I liked how the artist used the paint in the sculpture and how the steel was able to preserve the paint without staining it, I’m sure he had to use a special paint to for the steel sculptures so it can stay there for a long time and make sure the sculpture didn’t moist otherwise the colors in the sculpture would look like the greenish color in The Statue of Liberty, I also like how Smith was able to mix the paint with the original color of the steel on this piece because the gold color makes the sculpture look colorful in the steel and that makes the sculpture look interesting for the viewer. The last art piece I liked was Cubi XXI, this piece also reminded me of a popular game called Tangram which consists on building different specific shapes such as the silhouettes of a house or a cat using the geometric shapes like the square, two large triangles, one medium triangle, two small triangles and one parallelogram to built the desired shape you want. This sculpture reminded me of that game because I think this artist used it as an inspiration for his sculpture because when I saw this sculpture I saw the two triangles building the squares but this time in three-dimensional shapes. 

Bad Drawing - Art In NY

Leila Velasco HUN 195 - Art In NY

A) Art Resource - African Mask from the Metropolitan Museum

A) Deformation of the figure - Headpiece with Crocodile from the Metropolitan Museum

D) Fantastic Content - Buffalo sculpture from the Metropolitan Museum

C) Non-Art Resource - Mouse from the Computer lab

 

 

9/11 Memorial Park - Leila Velasco

Some of the video footage I took at the memorial park from both of the waterfalls:

Still Life

This is my still life painting, I painted the New York Yankees hat because I'm a big fan of the Yankees, "The Big Apple" because is one of the common nicknames that New York City is know of so that's why I painted an apple, a metrocard because is what all New Yorkers use everyday in the subway, a travel coffee mug because that's what some New Yorkers drink everyday whether is cold or hot, the Colombian colors by the hat because even though it has the Colombian colors I wanted to represent a piece of all the Hispanics that live here in New York since 75% of the population in New York are Hispanics, and behind the hat I put the World Trade Center since it was one of the most important symbols that represented New York City. For me this painting defines New York City because its the things that you can only find in New York like the metrocard or something that mostly New Yorkers are know of like the World Trade Center. I think New York is the only place where you can find a variety of races because it was one of the first places where immigrants emigrated to. It might not look very New York City like but if the viewer sees this painting the first thing that would come in his or her mind is New York City. It was harder to find a way to paint the black in the metrocard band and the little stripes in the hat but I was able to use at least a very dark purple to make it look as if it was the color black since I'm not allowed to use the color black in the painting.

Egg Painting

The first thing I painted was the eggs, then I put them in a small bowl on top of a table. Since I had to include something Contemporary I made the table cloth look abstract to give my painting a nice effect. At first, when you see my painting you might think the window isn't proportional to the table, but I made the eggs to make them look as if they were closer to the viewer and the window to make it look further for the viewer. I only added color to the paintings in the background, one is a flowerpot and the other one is my name with a red heart behind it with 3 colored dots in the left and right corners. I wanted to add something of my own and that I like to do a lot and that is making stylish letters so that's why I made it. I also added clouds, birds, a house and a building to make my painting look more interesting. I took painting classes before in my old high school, but I always had a weakness with darks and lights on a painting so I tried my best to give some shading on the eggs.