Artist's Statement

I’m a person whose neutral state of being is really fucking stressed out and anxious and frantically racing from thought to thought. It gets worse when I have to sit still in one place, like in class or at work. So I draw to calm down. It’s the only time all day I feel peaceful. Drawing for me is like what I think sex is for some people, or alcohol, or pasta. It’s not that I don’t love all of those things, because I absolutely do, but none of them give me a feeling of purpose and productivity and self-worth like drawing does. I mostly draw people in clothes. I like to draw made-up famous people on made-up magazine covers and made-up photo shoots. I also like to draw made-up famous people getting their photo snapped on made-up red carpets. I draw women way, way more often than I draw men. In class, most of my doodles are women in dresses, or part-naked, or just pictures of their faces and hair. But I draw men, too. I usually just draw people straight out of my head—characters that I’ve been thinking about that I want to visualize.

In high school I would come home from school or play rehearsal and spend hours drawing the men and women I saw in ads for Dolce & Gabbana, and Calvin Klein, and Versace, where the men are mostly oiled and shirtless and the women are mostly legs and lips. I didn’t even realize then that I was just as much doing it for the soft-core porn as for the anatomy study. But I like drawing models. I know they aren’t an accurate representation of the human body, but the people I draw come from heightened realities.

I like drawing weird people too. People with flaws, minor or major. Sometimes I draw really obese people, or people with only one arm. Usually they only have one arm because I get lazy and don’t feel like drawing both.

I draw creepy people a lot. People without irises or pupils, or with extra large eyes, or razor-sharp cheekbones, or ethereal, skeletal bodies and wild, fantastic outfits.

The other day I was sitting at the welcome desk and I drew a creepy guy with an amazing jacket that I imagine would be crushed green velvet in real life. That drawing, as well as my friend Magi Calcagne ‘17, inspired me to see if I could start combining my passion for visual art with my passion for comedy. I want to draw weird cartoon images with funny captions that are fun to look at and laugh at. That’s my next project.

The drawings included here are mostly ideas I’ve had for menswear. I wanted to do a fashion show full of queer looks. When I go to department stores I’m always astounded at how little variety there is in men’s clothing as opposed to women’s. I’m writing a thesis about why there’s such a disparity between men’s and women’s fashion. Originally the fashion show was supposed to be part of the thesis, but I got lazy so now I just have these detailed sketches of outfits I intended to create but never did.