I’ve been experimenting quite a bit lately with many media including watercolor, printmaking, and collage. These are media with which I was once familiar but lately have lost touch with, like that friend from middle school who added you on Facebook a few years ago but you never really talk to and whose political posts you quietly judge.
After the end of the fall semester, upon the realization I had finished all of my studio art classes, I fell into a creative rut. Not a rut actually, more like a creative grand canyon, a desert where my creative juices were as dry as a summer in the American Southwest.
As I began my student teaching I decided to push myself to work every week. To push myself to use media I’ve lost touch with. I began with collage, something I don’t think I’ve done since I was in 9th grade beginning art.
Flash back: Every year my mother waits until a few days after the new year and buys new calendars at deeply discounted prices. Typically she bought me two calendars, one with pictures of cats and kittens, and another featuring famous works of art. Two years ago, at the dawn of 2016, in the remnants of the temporary calendar store I struck gold. Two words: Sloth. Calendar. Being a person who finds hilarity in the strange and obscure I knew I needed to have it, and as it said on the cover “Sloths are the new kittens!”. This calendar was a wonderful feature in my dorm room, and never failed to start conversations. (Sometimes the conversations were about how weird I am, but it’s cool) Anyway, the start of 2017 presented me with another Sloth calendar and thus the 2016 version stepped into retirement.
Flash Forward to present day: I couldn’t bring myself to throw away the 2016 calendar, even with 2016 being hellacious, because the sloths contained in it’s pages still had some life left. These sloths were carefully cut out and turned into two collages. These sloth collages struck me with a sudden and incurable need to make sloth related art and thus the slothscapes were born. I plan to continue to experiment with sloths, and though I realize I’m making weird art, it’s alright. I’ll own my weirdness.
-LK
Libby Cruz 