Artist Bio
Eileen is a junior at Allendale Columbia School. She has a lot of unpopular ideas on current events, and she doesn’t want to get beat up for saying them out loud. Art becomes a great alternative way for her to express these opinions. She also has strong passions for human behavior, quantum theories, art history, and her dreams, which are reflected in her thesis project.Most of Eileen’s art is inspired by her imagination and originated from her curiosity. What if someone’s hair starts bleeding when getting a trim in a hair salon? What if mothers are sold in a vending machine for the homeless? Can a person be flushed into the toilet? Her work can be found on her website www.leeniezhao.com.
Thesis Statement
Fourteen-year-old me just spent 10 years in uniform, in black and white, along with the judgements, written with red ballpoint pens. Seventeen-year-old me just found my passions in ultramarine blue and pale yellow along with the supports shown in every conversation. I don’t remember when I began to ask people for their favorite color; when I began to treat art as my way of expression; and when I began to prefer naive art and surrealism over academic drawing in graphite pencil. My thesis represents my observances of global issues and their connection to my dreams. In my thesis project, I used vibrant colors, distorted figures, and childlike brush strokes to create an incongruity with the complexity of the social problems I’m addressing, which include college admission scandal, political polarization, social media algorithms, and whether a woman should shave her armpits.
My acrylic painting on canvas combined painting and sculpture. During the Italian Renaissance period, there was a lot of controversy over different art forms. Titian, a famous Venetian painter during the Renaissance, ridiculed sculpture and promoted painting in his masterpiece La Schiavona, which was also known as “Portrait of a Lady”. However, do we have to choose one over another? Contemporary artists David Altmejd combined the two major art forms, painting and sculpture, to create mixed media artworks. His mixed media work on canvas is mostly monochromatic, which inspired me to create something similar, but with colors. When I was choosing my color palette, I looked at Nicole Eisenman’s work, which also inspired me to add volume by using 3-D objects to indicate the depth of the painting. I chose epoxy clay for the 3-D part because it’s air-dry clay and extremely sticky and durable, which is ideal on canvas.
My small drawing collection documented my dreams, my real-life experiences, and my opinions and thoughts that are difficult to express in words. Every piece is deeply personal and implicit. I used various media, including fabric, clay, and many other drawing and decorating materials, both 2-D and 3-D. Some pieces used direct quotation; some pieces combined the elements of drastically different objects; and some pieces caught the movement of nature.
My most recent vending machine project is inspired by the Gashapon machine in Japan, where people can get toy capsules by spinning a big button. Most of the Gashapon Toys are licensed from popular characters in Japanese video games and anime. My vending machine’s theme, unsurprisingly, is just me, Eileen. I wrote long personal letters on pieces of fabric, telling my stories and secrets from the perspective of a 17-year-old teenage girl. The vending machine was created by deconstructing a bicycle box and painting the surface with acrylic paint to resemble the exterior of a metallic vending machine. The product dispenser basket at the bottom of the vending machine is made of torn and sewn colorful fabrics. The large pearls that adorn the machine are the influence of modern fashion design on young society. When someone operates the machine, they get a small piece of Eileen’s personality.
Gallery
The information and descriptions related to Eileen’s work are in her thesis statement.
