Tag Archives: student art

Be Well: The Art of Self-Care

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The student art gallery in the UGL is inaccessible to all of us for the time being. But we didn’t want to let that stop us from showcasing artwork by some of the talented students at our University. After a call for submissions this summer, we have selected a couple of pieces to exhibit here. Both works beautifully align with our theme Be Well: The Art of Self-Care. They go beyond the idea of self-care as something you can buy, like an expensive facial or a fancy candle. Don’t get me wrong, expensive facials and fancy candles are great. But truly caring for ourselves and our communities, especially during a pandemic, requires digging a little deeper into the meanings and possibilities of self-care. These artists show us that engaging in self-care can mean asking yourself difficult questions and responding with compassion and remembering that all our well-beings are interconnected.

Samuel Feathers

Red flower with branching vines on a speckled grey/black background. Paint drips down from vines, the flower, and the top of the painting.

“everything’s greener when you’re colorblind” Simulated watercolor. 2020.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

“Done during the initial weeks of COVID-19 before I could go home. During that time, I was isolated alone on campus. I already was having respiratory issues from unrelated causes, so paranoia was starting to set in about getting infected, and it got me into a bad head space. For me, it’s super important to go out and make the best of a bad situation, but stopping to smell the roses in this case felt dangerous. As I got to a better place mentally, I started viewing the piece differently. Starting out, I could only really focus on the grime and imperfections, the flower and green vines were secondary. Now, the petals and gold of the flower are what I look to first. There’s pleasant and rough parts to it, but they are all mixed together. Like the quarantine, what you focus on determines how you interact with it. Do you make a choice to focus on the positives, or do the negatives grab your attention? Keeping that question in mind is how I make sure I’m taking care of myself.

It fits the theme not in a depiction of self-care, but as a question. How are you choosing to interact with the world right now? Are you choosing to focus on the bad? Or are you treating yourself with love and compassion and focusing on the good in the world, even though it is scary and confusing right now? It’s so easy to get down, so treat yourself with care and make a conscious effort to stay positive!”

Tiffany Teng

A person wearing blue with their head tilted back receives a massage from their mother, seated above them, wearing green and a cross necklace.

“Her Healing Hands” Watercolor. 2020.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

“Remember the healing and provisions that your friends and family have restored you with throughout your years together, and use it to look after one another as sheltering in place threatens to wear us down.

I recently had a migraine due to various factors including a lack of self-care. So, I gave myself a day of rest but didn’t feel well until my mother responded to my discomfort with an incredible head massage. As independent and self-reliant as we may want to be, we’re relational beings. We can’t uphold our well-being on our own. Part of self-care is not only knowing our own limits but also knowing that our well-being is made up of relationships. The relationships we have with family and friends are the passages that bring us love and care from others to build up our health.

Part of being well is knowing how to practice self-care with others. This piece illustrates one of the moments I relaxed with my mom, just chatting and massaging one another. In those moments, I often feel comfortable and at peace.”

Thank you to the artists for sharing their work. If you’d like to keep viewing, making, and learning about art from a safe distance, check out these resources:

 

Written by: Izzy

Edited by: Nicole

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Illinois students’ artwork brings creative flair to the UGL’s Student Art Gallery

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The first display case of The Undergraduate Library Student Art Gallery with the current set of artwork.

The Student Art Gallery’s first display case

For the past couple of months, artwork created by a handful of Illinois’ creative undergraduate students have filled the UGL’s Student Art Gallery after a call for student submissions during the Fall semester. The artistic works, ranging from collages to photography and paintings, have drawn the eyes of thousands of students, faculty and staff, community members, and all who visit the UGL.

Undergraduate Library graduate assistant, Stephen, was able to ask the artists a few questions about what inspired their featured work, their creativity in general, where we can see more of their work, and more.

Stephen: What was the inspiration behind your featured art? What inspires your art in general?

Yi Zhuang: Life is hard in college and will become even harder after graduation. I want to convey a sense of hope and light to encourage myself—maybe other people as well, if that’s possible. Some inexpressible words can be blended into a painting.

Taylor Chism: My inspiration for the pieces I put in the show and for much of the work I create is thinking about how much technology, media, big data, etc. is advancing and how we all interact with it on a daily basis. Much of technology we use today was nonexistent 30, 50 years ago, and it now influences our lives in huge ways. I also think about my work as another perspective of reality—in the way that the majority of society live their lives online—and seeing that as like its own digital world hidden within reality. I find it all fascinating, so I express this through my form of art. #DigitalChaos

A painting that references images of the a ride home on the 130s Silver Bus.

Grace Han’s “MTD Ride Home”

Stephen: What was the process like creating your submission?

Sammy Al-Asmar: Both of these were made on Photoshop. For the first one, I really had to push what I knew about my own design. I nearly made the green one look just like another artwork of mine and I got really sad. But I found out a way to make it different from something I have ever made before. For the second one, that came about as I was making a different graphic. I was taking a break because I was not enjoying it, and I then started to look at this photograph I took over the summer and just pushed it until I was tired of it. That was a good experience for me as it took me a short time to work on it, but I still knew how to exhaust myself in a shorter time to make something fulfilling for me rather than working a whole week straight and doubting myself.

A green background with Mais printed three times. Over the top is a black quarter with gold outlined text and rims with the heads side showing. The eyes are X'd out and 3 red lines go down from the eyes.

Sammy Al-Asmar’s “Beggars in Buenos Aires”

Sammy Al-Asmar’s “Beggars in Buenos Aires”

Ji Hyun Han: My paintings that are displayed in the Student Art Gallery were works from my painting classes. They vary work time from 2 to 3 weeks. For my 130 Silver bus painting, I used oil paint and for my “Battlefields” painting, I used acrylic to paint and other medium to make the surface three-dimensional. My bus painting was made with a reference photograph that I took myself. I carried a DSLR camera and walked around campus trying to capture some photographs for this project. On my way back home on the 130S Silver bus, I tried taking shots at random things like the pole with the stop button or the trash can. I was doing what I had to do, but everyone on that bus probably thought of me weirdly.

Stephen: Is there anything you’d want students and all of the U of I community to know about your featured art?

Emma Sielaff: I don’t really know… My art doesn’t really have a purpose—nor do I think most art does. I make art because it’s what I want to do, and because it’s what I feel is fun. I may be selfish in that way, but all art is.

Taylor Chism: Just to view it with an open mind and almost reflect on yourself about how much you spend attached to your devices or to think about how much your life may be influenced by technology and media

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A huge thanks to the artists for contributing to both this blog post and adding beauty and unique sparks of creativity to the UGL’s Student Art Gallery. A full list of all artists currently featured in the Student Art Gallery and where you can find more of their work is below.

The second display case of the Undergraduate Student Art Gallery.

The Student Art Gallery’s second display case

Taylor Chism (TV Head, Digital Bus). Find more of their work at their Instagram or Facebook @majestic_platypus.

Grace Han (Battlefield, MTD Ride Home). Find more of their work at www.jihyungracehan.com.

Sammy Al-Asmar (Born Slippy, Beggars in Buenos Aires). Sammy’s work will soon be featured on the cover of The Collective Magazine. Their work can also be seen on their Instagram (@ibn.said) or at www.sammyalasmar.com.

Allison Garetto (Alma).

Yi Zhuang (Untitled).

Holly Situ (Untitled).

Emma Sielaff (In Wonderland, In Wonderland Part 2, & Land, Sky and Space).

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Interview and blog post conducted and written by Stephen-Margelony-Lajoie

Edited by Zander

 

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