[Long Worked Drawing] A Reflection Worksheet

List 5-10 key influences (artists, thinkers, writers, musicians, etc.). Include both obvious heroes and surprising ones.

1- Doris Salcedo, and how she deals with grief. “A Flor De Piel” is one of my favorite pieces created by Doris Salcedo.

2- Kiki Smith, her Jars and her Deer at the Whitney Museum (2005)

3- The Millau Viaduct by Norman Foster. It’s the most elegant bridge, and piece of infrastructure. It stands out, and celebrates the valley in which it’s built.

4- Bitches Brew by Miles Davis. I love how experimental this album is. I feel like if an alien would want to understand how expansive music can be, this album should be it.

5- Diego Rivera for how sculptural his figures are. He has greatly influenced my work as a painter, and sculptor.

6- Jacob Lawrence for his storytelling and strong composition.

1- Doris Salcedo and “A Flor de Piel” at the Guggenheim Museum (2015)

It took me a minute to remember how I first came across her work. It was through the recommendation of the co-organizer of a workshop I took in Colombia, exploring the use of Guadua bamboo in architecture. Doris Salcedo had a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum when I returned to NY from that workshop, back in 2015. It’s one of the only artists whose work truly fit the architectural spaces. What I remember most were the shoes embedded into the walls, “A Flor de Piel” and the chairs cast in concrete.

2- Kiki Smith, her Jars and her Deer at the Whitney Museum (2005)

She was one of the first conceptual artists I came to love. I saw her exhibition at the former Whitney Museum, and remembered being really moved by her installation of empty jars with writings on them, and the sculpture of a deer giving birth to a woman. “Untitled, 1986” Installation with Jars & “Born, 2022” Statue of Woman and Deer.

From the Whitney Museum: Kiki Smith has explored many different aspects of the human body in her work—the skeleton, limbs, and organs, the musculature and the skin, and the body’s fluids and forms. Through an elaborate, often metaphorical vocabulary, she describes the body's forms and functions and its relation to social practices. Inspired by the calendar of prayers in medieval books of hours, this installation consists of twelve glass water bottles that resemble antique medical specimen jars. Each bottle is empty, plated with silver, and etched in Gothic lettering with the name of a bodily fluid. The named substances range from life-sustaining (semen, blood, milk) to disease-bearing (pus, mucus, vomit), and evoke powerful emotional responses. Smith's self-described "calendar" of carefully-labeled vessels lends itself to an array of possible interpretations and points to humanity's complex relationship to the body and its byproducts.

3 - The Millau Vaduct by Norman Foster

4- Miles Davis and “Bitches Brew”

5- Diego Rivera and his Flower Vendors

6- Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series

Panel 58: In the North, African Americans had more Educational Opportunities.