Muybride Artist Statement

The Visualizer

            The Visualizer is a piece that not only engages you visually, but also aurally. The Visualizer is made out of a wooden board with nails hammered at 56 points that make up seven octagons within each other. A stop-action film was created from photographs of different colored rubber bands moving around the points to the beat of the song Hubble by Actress, which is also played in the film. This piece tries to touch base on the notion of what a sound would look like and the kinetic properties this experience would have.   

Bahia Shehab

Street-artist Bahia Shehab states that, "graffiti is like flowers. They are beautiful, but they don't live long." The government constantly tries to cover up Shehab's and other artists' graffiti work, so it's a good thing she has plenty of paint to replace them. 

Shehab's pieces are about recording events and keeping memories alive. People have a tendency to forget things, and Shehab doesn't want people to forget the atrocities her and other people have gone through. Her works are also about facilitating change. She believes that dreamers are the ones who can change society, so Shehab tries to make her art influence as many people to become dreamers as possible. Shehab is also interested in the written language, especially Arabic calligraphy. This interest in language has evolved into a piece where she created 1,000 symbols that protest unjust governmental actions. 

Her pieces range from cartoon like to semi-realistic and mostly depicts her symbols and people. The colors she uses are also unrealistic and are sometimes used conservatively and other times liberally. 

Shehab's artworks are really about getting an idea out. She claims that, " you cannot resist ideas. They can travel into any mind." And through these ideas she hopes to influence change in society and people.

Information provided by:

ArtBabble. Indianapolis Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.

Dick Bruna

Dick Bruna is the creator of Miffy, an adorable white rabbit that has captured the hearts of children everywhere. 

The medium Bruna uses to depict his cute characters is paint. 

Bruna is all about children. This is evident in the way he paints. He notices how direct children are and is the reason why he usually has his characters looking at the viewer. Bruna is also very conscientious about detail in his work. He'll spend a considerable amount of time to make sure his pieces are to his perfection. 

Bruna's paintings are very simple and flat. His art is influenced a lot by artists such as Mondriaan, Rietveld, and Henri Matisse, so he tries to simplify his works as much as possible. He states that he tries to "reduce things as much as I could, leaving only the bare essentials." Bruna also uses colors very conservatively and uses thick, black contour lines to depict his characters (which are mainly animals). 

At first, Bruna made a living at making covers for books. In fact, he made over 2,000 of them. His calling, however, was making children's books. Even at his ripe old age, he's still doing what he loves.

Information provided by:

ArtBabble. Indianapolis Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.

Maya Hayuk

Maya Hayuk feels that painting is a "deep meditation of a kind," which is probably why she does it so often. 

The medium Hayuk mainly works with is paint. 

Many things influence the outcome of Hayuk's works. Everything that's around her finds its way into her paintings. One can see influences of pop culture and different painting techniques in her pieces as well. Even where she's at physically with a painting affects the execution. It's also very important to Hayuk that her works are accessible and easy to look at, whether you're inside or outside of the gallery. 

Hayuk's pieces are very colorful and bright. Her works are almost like looking through a kaleidoscope although there are no kaleidoscopes present. Her non-representative paintings are these large-scale murals which are comprised of both organic and geometric shapes. 

Hayuk explains how she really enjoys making gestures and how she created those gestures from nothing by listening to what her art wanted her to do.

Information provided by:

ArtBabble. Indianapolis Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.

Chris Johanson

When it comes to public sculpture, it doesn't matter to Chris Johanson what the sculpture is about or if he even likes it. He thinks all public sculptures are great. 

Johanson makes some public sculptures, but he dabbles in paint as well. 

To Johanson, anything can be considered a sculpture. So structures like ATMs and billboards are seen as sculptures by Johanson. With this mindset, it's a "breath of fresh air" when he sees sculptures (like public sculptures) that aren't trying to sell him something, which is why he makes his public sculptures. Johanson's works are also about evoking questions in his viewers. He wants his pieces to make people question life and what they're doing with it and about death as well. 

Johanson himself describes his art as very simple. There's no tricks up his sleeves, he means what he depicts. Johanson doesn't restrict himself to a particular style either. He creates both non-representative and representative pieces. The subject matter Johanson depicts are people and you can find geometric shapes throughout his works as well. 

Johanson wants his art to communicate to people the bittersweet quality of life. However, just because life is bittersweet, Johanson states that that doesn't mean life isn't fun. 

Information provided by:

ArtBabble. Indianapolis Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2014. 

Matthew Szosz

According to Matthew Szosz, becoming a glass artist was actually an accident. Szosz was originally trained as a furniture designer, and so had no formal instruction in glass making. This has led him to teach himself in his own unique way how to make his glass sculptures. 

Szosz's works are really about the work process itself. He likes experimenting with the glass medium since the material unfolds in unpredictable and unexpected ways. Through his exploration of glass, Szosz learns different techniques that inform him on the direction he's going with his work, why he's going in that direction, and what his next artistic direction will be. 

Szosz's pieces are non-representative in nature and employs the use of many different colors. His works also have a translucent quality to them due to the medium he uses. Szosz's pieces take on a variety of convex and concave shapes as well. 

Szosz believes that an era is closing and a new cycle is beginning when it comes to glass art. In this new cycle, glass art is more integral to the art and craft world and its techniques more complicated and sophisticated. 

Information provided by:

ArtBabble. Indianapolis Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.

Gu Wenda

Gu Wenda believes that artists should be diplomats and aid in making peace around the world. To do this, Wenda uses human hair and Elmer's Glue to make his pieces. 

Wenda explains how is art is about transcendence. For example, he took something (hair) that he considers to be waste from the body and what pretty much everyone else thinks is gross if it's not attached to someone's head and made beautiful, intricate works of art with it. Wenda's works are also very cultural. He states that instead of physically depicting the different races that make up our world, he collects them in his art. It is his hope that his pieces unify not only races, but people as a whole. 

To make his works, Wenda first thins out Elmer's Glue until it's a workable consistency. He places the glue on top of a sheet of plastic afterwards. Wenda then arranges the hair (which he collects himself from various people) based off of a pattern he places underneath the plastic sheet. Once dry, he peels off the glue and hair concoction and attaches it to rope. The end result are these translucent, rectangular sheets of swirling and intersecting lines that reach towering heights. Text also plays a major role in Wenda's works. They mimic the look of different languages, but on closer examination, they're just gibberish. This represents the misunderstandings that can happen during a cultural exchange and how these misunderstandings are actually a creation of another culture.

ArtBabble. Indianapolis Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.