This week my classmate conversation was with Alanna Godinez, who is currently a freshman here at CSULB pursuing a career in Psychology. Since the  9th grade, Alanna had already decided on what she wants to do with her life by heading toward the psychology field. One thing that I found out that is a true accomplishment is that she is the first amongst her family to attend a four year university, which gives a more of a reason to pursue her career. Even though she is a full time student, she still manages to have a job as well. She works at Norwalk Regency Theaters on weekends. When I found out where she worked I was sort of surprised because I used to to go there very often but never noticed Alanna or I just don’t remember seeing her. Also, she likes her job but sometimes its the opposite, but who doesn’t have that feeling about a job you’re not planning to keep forever or as a career. I found Alanna to be friendly and very optimistic; I’m glad I got the chance to formally meet and converse with her.

Artist: Nancy Young
Exhibition: As The Crow Flies
Media: Printmaking, Ink Through Relief Painting
Gallery: CSULB School of Art, Dennis W. Dutzi Gallery
Website: None
Instagram: None

For this week’s artist conversation I had the pleasure to meet with Nancy Young  who is currently working in her BFA in printmaking. The exhibit she had this week was actually her last since she will be graduating pretty soon. Although it is her last showcase, she has had the opportunity since she’s been here at CSULB to showcase all of her work. The year that Nancy arrived at CSULB was 1984. Unfortunately while she was here, she was forced to leave because of her academic probation. The reasons why she went into academic probation and left was because she had issues with substance abuse and her bipolar disorder. Even though through her hardships, she decided to come back and pursue her passion, and here she is now.

In her work, Nancy uses different methods of printing, not only one. But the two main types that she specializes in are intaglio and photopolymers. For those who don’t know how intaglio work, its actually really simple according to how Nancy explained the process to me. First, she lets the ink rest on the block, next she draws into the ground to expose certain aspects of the metal she is using, and lastly exposes it to acid. Before going onto the other process, her work consists of printmaking on several surfaces such as metals, rubber, paper, and has many pieces with flying crows; hence, the title of her exhibit. The photopolymer process involves printmaking in a digital sense, meaning not by hand. So for this process it involves having many pictures being exposed to UV lights which causes the polymer to harden while on the plates.

The inspiration behind her work actually comes from a deep personal level. In other words, things that have happened in her life which have had huge impacts on her life. For example, some occurrences she has used as inspiration was her dos, griefs and losses, and lastly here husband which unfortunately passed away a few years ago. By using these parts of her life gives her work a sense of deeper meaning which could explain the reason why she uses crows flying a certain direction in her printmaking. I believe the meaning behind her work and the crows is that it is a reflection among us as humans and the things we go through in life cannot break us, but yet we keep moving on to better or hopeful things. Lastly, one thing Nancy mentioned was that getting inspiration off the internet isn’t the best idea since anyone can success it and can get inspired by something that perhaps someone else had already seen or have been inspired by. Therefore, she believes having your own personal influence and inspiration is key.

Overall, I really enjoyed this weeks gallery and exhibit listed by Nancy Young. It has demonstrated to me that no matter what you go through in life you can always prevail. This was evident through how she used her loss of her husband and incorporated it in her work. Not to mention the substance abuse and bipolar disorder she had, she still decided to come back and graduate. So far, this has been the best gallery showcase because it connected to me in a personal level.

In my representational drawings and pictures I chose to do a sketch view of the right side of the Japanese Garden from when you enter. As you can see the walkway, the fence, the trans, and the lake along with the ducks that were there. My second one was about how a certain bush that had pink flowers looked so genuine alongside the stone rocks and lake. My last representational drawing and picture was a view from the back side of the Japanese Garden looking towards the entrance.

For my abstract I chose to do it on a fish in the lake, someone walking into the Japanese Garden, and what seemed to be some sort of little lamp statue. Of all three, I’d have to say the hardest was to draw the person walking in because I find it difficult to show motion within a drawing. Same goes for my the fish drawing, because it was moving, I tried to show some sort of motion. The last one was the easiest to me because it was static and not dynamic. Overall, I really enjoyed this weeks art experience over the classmate conversation and artist conversation.