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Description
This work is created for the Senior Art Exhibition 2024. This work explores the feeling of being alienated by communities.
Semester Completed
Spring 2024
City
De Pere
Keywords
community, cicada, mixed media, illustration, painting, Emma Fry, mental health, printmaking, collage
Disciplines
Art and Design | Arts and Humanities | Fine Arts
Recommended Citation
Fry, Emma, "Emma Fry, Senior Art Exhibition Portfolio, Swarm" (2024). Senior Art Portfolios. 88.
https://digitalcommons.snc.edu/artportfolios/88
Copyright
Emma Fry
Artist Statement
Community is hard to find. Every community has expectations of other people; how they should act, what they should do, and how they should present themselves. My experience at St Norbert has revolved around the idea of community. I have felt othered during my time on this campus. I don’t fit the image of what an honors student should be. I’m queer on a catholic campus. I don’t have a conventional sense of femininity. Frankly, I feel as though I don’t fit in. Everyone has felt this way at one point, and though people may preach to “be yourself,” communities often want conformity.
The consequences of being seen as “other” are complicated, messy, and hard to depict. My work relies heavily on mixed media and collage as a solution to this problem. I believe that each medium has an emotional quality to it. Ink has a different emotional quality than gouache paint, which has a different quality than acrylic paint. By mixing these mediums, I can represent the mix of emotions that comes with being othered. I’m also inspired by Dada artists who often use collages to create surreal and jarring atmospheres in their work. For this series, I wanted to create a similar atmosphere and thus used collaging in my work.
I further am drawn to symbolism in my work. For this series, I have been enamored with cicadas. They are a symbol of resurrection, as every season a new brood of cicadas will emerge. They begin their lives with their brood–a community–and end up dying alone. However, each season, without fail, a new community of cicadas will begin the cycle again. Many people see them as noisy pests but I feel a camaraderie with these bugs. Although we may feel othered in one community, there is another one waiting to be found. A cicada’s life is short and almost tragic, but there will be another brood to pick up what was left behind.