Jenny Li
Life Through a Window Frame
Prompt: For this project, we created postcards based on a window view. We read different articles that contributed to the making of the postcards, which are the "NYC Windows", Sewanee Review "Corona Correspondences", and "True Stories of the Great Fire". In "NYC Windows", 17 artists were asked to draw what they see out there window during quarantine and incorporate their thoughts to the drawing. In Sewanee Review "Corona Correspondences", the editor Adam Ross reached out to his colleagues and the people he knew to write about how they are coping with this crisis, from wherever they're living. These letters can offer a sense of comfort, reassurance, and can help people "feel less isolated while in isolation." "True Stories of the Great Fire" is about the tragedy of George Floyd's death and the protests and riots that followed. These are true stories, of the early events, from those who are activists, witnesses, frustrated, and hopeful.
I notice that there are a lot of feelings and emotions from the people in these articles so I decided that my main concept for the sketches and texts for the final postcards will be based on how I was feeling at that specific moment and any events that my window view reminds me of. I didn’t set an exact time for each of my sketches because I feel that if it was random it evokes a lot more feeling than when it is planned, since what we see will be unexpected. For each of the sketches, an artifact accompanies it. These artifacts aren’t too fancy, but simple things around my studio that relates to how I was feeling during sketching. I also wrote my floating thoughts around the sketch, to pour out my feelings, just like in a regular daily journal entry. The main quote, that was created after the thoughts, is always on top of the page. For the postcards, I chose to use three out of the four sketches and I decided to make a collage while incorporating fragments of my sketches and the thoughts. In addition, by incorporating text and pictures into a collage I was able to depict many different things that relate to feelings. I used white paint for the main quote, on each postcard, since it would be more noticeable.
