Project 13: Soar

When I took this picture, I was looking over the Geneva Lake at a swan running on water, reflecting on my high school graduation. I had always felt out of place in Switzerland, and that day especially I experienced a strong pull towards new beginnings.

Even though the swan that I originally observed may have transformed into a goose, it is now centered, and confident. I feel that I am in the right place, a place that equally challenges me and allows me to be confident enough to explore my potential and listen to my heart.

The goose will continue on running, and learning, forever. It will remain sincere to others and to oneself. 

Project 12.2: Seem

The water and the sky make mountains.

The sky and the mountains make the water. The water and the mountains make the sky.

Each part makes a whole. Every element is essential and makes up all the other elements. The individuality of all elements is an illusion, they cannot be separated. 

Project 12.1: The Trumpet Player

Project 11: Tonic

Sitting by the water on a sunny day revitalizes me...

Summer water streams
Through pigmented airy dreams
Every shadow seems

Peter S. Quinn

Project 10: Overlook, Overhear

In California, if you do not look, you will not find. During the week of Spring Break, I traveled to Los Angeles. I took in the colorful life of Venice Beach and strolled along the Santa Monica pier. 

As I walked on the board walk one day, a walkie-talkie caught my attention. It was attached to a piece or cardboard amidst some paintings, but with no person near it. As I came closer, I distinguished a voice coming from within. In a brisk tone, it was telling me to turn around and walk to the tower that was behind me.

The tower was in fact an artist's studio, and the walkie-talkie was his voice transmitted from the window. He had seen us approaching his device, and we had overheard his attempt at communication.

http://www.dcastroarts.com/

Project 9: Night

I wanted to create a landscape that changed within itself, that was stark and unexpected like every beautiful sunset. Halfway through the painting, I decided that I would wrap it and make it a source of light. This animated the image. When the lamp is off, it is night.

I enjoyed turning the image inside out because it gave an unexpected transparency and it only showed the bottom brush strokes. The shadow of the lamp was also a discovery that has inspired me to experiment more with light in the future.


Between two hills 

The old town stands.
The houses loom 

And the roofs and trees 

And the dusk and the dark, 

The damp and the dew 

Are there.

The prayers are said 

And the people rest 

For sleep is there 

And the touch of dreams 

Is over all.

- Carl Sandburg

Project 8: Tree

Exploration of Watercolor, starting with the abstract and transitioning to the human form. 

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.

Vague dream head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

Robert Frost

Project 7: True

verb

1. 1.

   bring (an object, wheel, or other construction) into the exact shape, alignment, or position required.

I have trued paper into the creases of my face.

Project 6: Guide

The colours guide me. I am like a pilgrim moving through the dunes of the desert. I see mirages of colour; I know where to go and where not to. 

I thought of the book "Pilgrimage" by Paulo Coelho when I heard the word guide. It is about a man that travels on a pilgrimage to discover himself and the meaning of life. He had a human guide, but his best guide was his inner voice. For me, that voice takes the form of colour.

“We always have a tendency to see those things that do not exist and to be blind to the great lessons that are right there before our eyes.” 

Project 5: Trace

Tracing the unknown. I like to trace memories that I cannot quite grasp anymore. I can almost make them out, I can almost see them, but not quite. It is like asking someone to draw what they see in their mind. They can draw an approximation, but never the exact thing.

Project 4: Reach

...first impressions.

When you first go to San Francisco, whether you go to the Financial District or the Marina, the buildings tower over you. Their monumental facades are intimidating. But that is not the real San Francisco. The real city rumbles in The Mission district, or the Richmond, or the Sunset, where appearances are stripped down and where the living happens.

It was important for me to reach the heart of San Francisco. Ever since I first came to California I had felt an invincible desire to come back. It was a long two years before I had the chance to do so, overcoming many obstacles. No one encouraged me to come and no one believed that the decision would make me happy. But I did it anyway. And I am sure that I will come back every time I leave.

Project 3.2: Shore

"The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to the ocean--
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition."

Robert Frost

Project 3.1: Shore

Tide: to drift with or as if with the tide. But no matter how far away you drift, that what you are trying to forget always strikes back. The red.


"I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?"

Edgar Allan Poe

Project 2: Open

Optimism does not always pay off, as it did not in this election. Sometimes being an optimist about the world prevents us from realizing that the worst outcome is still a possibility, and that in order to stop it from happening we need to act. Sometimes keeping your heart closed is the answer. "Hope" is powerless without "action".

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

Emily Dickinson

Project 1: Touch

The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.

As long as it takes to pass
A ship keeps raising its hull;
The wetter ground like glass
Reflects a standing gull.

The land may vary more;
But wherever the truth may be---
The water comes ashore,
And the people look at the sea.

They cannot look out far.
They cannot look in deep.
But when was that ever a bar
To any watch they keep?

Robert Frost

The sea touches me in a nostalgic way. It is rare that our feet get to breathe freely, but it is also rare for our mind to wonder among the waves. This work relates not only to the physical contact of the feet with the sand and water, but also the way the way the ocean touches us. The seamless landscape inspires feelings that are radically different from what we experience mundanely.

Introduction

Nature’s first green is gold, 

Her hardest hue to hold. 

Her early leaf’s a flower; 

But only so an hour. 

Then leaf subsides to leaf. 

So Eden sank to grief, 

So dawn goes down to day. 

Nothing gold can stay. 

Robert Frost

As a citizen of multiple countries and an avid traveler, my passion lies in the unknown, where I try to venture. My biggest fear is to wake up one day and realized that I am bored.

I am a senior undergraduate architecture student that has completed a graduate architecture studio, and is also interested in material sciences. I am now in the final semester of my studies at UC Berkeley. Back when I was in Russia, I attended an evening Art School (after regular school) for 4 years. There, I learned to paint with acrylics, watercolors, gouache, learned to draw with plain and coloured pencils, and was educated about art and architecture history. During my years at UC Berkeley, I also took some art classes with the Berkeley Art Studio in oil painting and coloured pencil drawing. I am quite passionate about art and its history, which I always try and incorporate into my work in architecture.