A little about me

A lot about my art

I’ve been making art for as long as I can remember, however my practice didn’t become what it is now until I attended Etobicoke School of the Arts. One class in grade 10, we were tasked with the “Heritage” project which launched me in the direction I am currently pursuing. This project asked us to think about what has shaped us as individuals; what it is about our upbringing that has led us to where we are today. I had a difficult time with this project as I found it really hard to capture one moment or thing that propelled me on the path that I’m currently on. We’re made of each and every one of our experiences. Every single moment is what defines who we become. Every decision we make and everything that happens in or out of our control will alter the trajectories of our lives. 

When I was first tasked with this assignment I began making lists. Who are the people who have influenced me? Where are the places I’ve traveled? What are my favorite foods? What are the things I find comfort in? What are my favorite places to visit? Etc. Etc. compiling lists of what I thought made me, me. What prompted me to paint lines in random directions on a canvas, I still don’t know. What I do know is that those lines, weaving and intersecting, made more sense than any list I had ever written. I began drawing and painting more and more lines creating all sorts of different shapes and patterns. I created a series called “The Distance Between Us” encapsulating the distance there is between two people when they first meet, when they begin to get to know each other, if and when they love each other, and if and when they leave each other, and all the other distances created or destroyed between them. This series was based on relationships I had built with friends and family, exploring the moments that shaped me as a person and our relationships as a whole. What lengths do we go to, to form connections? Do we stop at certain levels of vulnerability that we find discomforting? Or do we push through that heavy space and become closer? What happens when we fall out of love? Or lose friends and family to different circumstances? The distance between us lengthens, right? Where does the distance between us go and where does it come from once we’ve reached such closeness? 

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So then I began thinking about the distance we travel to get to those we love and how we close those gaps. In that moment, my art became less about the lines and more about the spaces between them. The distance between each line would create a neat gradient depending on the size of the gap which would alter the feel of the piece as a whole. 

In my first year of university at the University of Toronto, I took COG250: Intro to Cognitive Science. In this class we covered a plethora of incredibly interesting topics but three stood out to me the most. They were autonomy, 4E cognition, and gestalt theory. Cognitive science is the study of the mind and its processes, why we think the way we think and where thoughts come from. The ultimate goal is to figure out what makes a mind and how to instill those processes into a machine that becomes autonomous. To create a mind, we first have to figure out what the mind actually is. Where do thoughts come from, why do we think the way we do, how do we quantify and measure thoughts and thought processes? Where are the words I’m writing right now even coming from? And what are you thinking about as you read them? Where are you pulling those thoughts from? They kind of just pop into your head, right? You may be actively conjuring them but from where? Neurons are firing and we can see that and measure that, but what is the actual substance that creates a particular thought? 

So in terms of creating an autonomous mind, which is what it would have to be for it to be a true mind, not one that has been programmed by humans to think particular things, we would have to figure out what these thoughts were and where they came from so that we could figure out how to create them in a way that they would be naturally occurring in an artificial mind. 

The cool thing about art is that the more you create, the more you start to see it evolve. In a neat way the thing I set out to create, started to create itself. It became autonomous, evolving and developing on its own. Sustaining itself. I set out to capture connection and it became connection. It became evolution. It became a mind. It became a language of its own, able to communicate all sorts of new ideas. It became self-governing, conjuring new ideas and ways of expressing itself. It means something to me, but it means something different to everyone who looks at it. 

The next idea is 4E cognition. Embodied, enacted, embedded, and extended. Somewhat similar, all conveying their own levels of cognition, but essentially explaining that the mind not only resides within the brain, but in the body, in culture and society, in our behaviors, goals, and actions, in notebooks, tools, and other devices, in our environment and the world around us. It exists in much more than just the brain, broadening the range of what the mind really is, what it can do, and what it can articulate. 

The third concept that struck me was gestalt theory; that the whole of anything is greater than the sum of its parts. That any interaction would mean so much more than the mere interaction itself. That relationships weren't just two people coming together, and that confluence wasn't just two rivers simply merging but an entire universe unfolding. 

These three concepts really blew my mind especially given my already existing exploration of these concepts through my art. For the first time I realized how strong of a correlation there could be between art and science and how necessary both art and science were for conveying such concepts. I immediately decided to pursue cognitive science as a major, continuing to explore these concepts in school and applying them to my art. 

The work I was creating felt like a mixture of all the concepts I was learning about, especially those three outlined above. It felt autonomous, governing its own evolution and creation, using me merely as the vessel that would bring it into the physical realm. Because of this it became 4E cognition, my mind being extended through art and the art itself becoming a mind of its own. As well as conveying gestalt theory, and becoming so much more than a bunch of lines on a sheet of paper, but a whole universe articulating its own ideas. 

Inspired by all of these ideas, and continuous creation, a concise body of work developed, one that emulated these sentiments. The lines became more concrete and defined, taking on a shape and body of their own. Recognizing this, I began thinking about chaos theory and how, despite my work being organized, it still felt chaotic. It made me think about how despite my love for planning and making all sorts of lists to keep things organized, life is nonetheless messy and rarely ever goes according to plan. I begin a piece with a few grid lines and fill each space with lines but I’ll never actually know what a piece will look like until it's finished. And isn’t that kind of the way everything goes? We never know how our lives will pan out, and even when we organize an event or think we know how something will go, something happens, big or small, that alters how other events occur. 

So I began a series called Organized Chaos, which really kind of encapsulates all my pieces, but the pieces in this series have a particular look. They have structure and grid lines but the lines that fill each space move in all directions, intersect and converse differently, and form unexpected gradients. They form an Organized Chaos. I began titling each piece with the date it came into creation, partially out of a lack of creativity, but also because these pieces capture moments in time. They capture those intersections between our minds and the universe that alter the trajectories of our lives. The thoughts we have, the decisions we make, the people we run into, the places we visit, that make us who we are. Each line encapsulates a single moment at the same time that it encapsulates the entire universe. 

Each piece represents an interaction, a decision, a person, a place, a date in time. In a way, each piece became a list of its own. Defining my life, defining the structure and the chaos, and defining the connection between all things.