Liz Mantaci - Chronicling Grandmother’s Life

My final project is a picture book that contains 7 black & white realism portraits of my grandma from the ages of 3 to 96. The book also includes photos of abstract art that I created on 2’ by 2’ pieces of plywood that represent my grandma’s living conditions during each portrait. On the other side of the abstract pieces, I created landscapes to show where she was living at the time. I also created snippets of written work to accompany all the pieces based on the interviews I had with my grandma. Furthermore, I used old albums that belong to my grandma as reference for the portraits and landscapes. Considering our current situation with COVID-19 and staying quarantined, I created a book to serve as my art gallery (instead of a physical one). The book uses negative space to give the viewer a chance to look at each piece as if they were in a gallery. In many ways, the book became a better idea because it can remain in our family as a lasting memory for future generations. I printed 4 books and gave one to my two aunts, one to my mom, and one to my grandma herself.

I can confidently say that I did my best work on the portraits. My drawings had good amounts of detail and followed the reference photos quite accurately. Something specific about the portraits that I seem to have quite a good understanding of is drawing the hair. I draw the hair with lots of detail and fine lines. I also did well on the abstract pieces. Although at first glance they may just seem pretty wild, I think that they are well done and have lots of meaning behind them. I also really like the colour pallets for each abstract piece, and they fit well with their portrait. I put lots of thought into what all the different details in my abstract pieces meant. For example, my fourth abstract piece explained how my grandma was suffering from a loss and I represented this by putting black paint pouring downwards to signify grief and sadness. Finally, I think my written pieces had great explaining in them. They were wrote clearly and thoughtfully. Throughout the whole project, I did a good job keeping what my grandma told me in our interviews in mind, and I used things she said and the photos she picked to display in this project. I was also able to manage my time well. I worked with patience to complete each part of this project and I am quite proud of my result.

When I started this project, I thought it would be much easier. However, with time I realized that wouldn’t be the case. Creating this project made me realize that I focus too much on perfection and not enough on production. It came to my attention that I need to start letting go when things aren’t faultless. Another major thing I learned during my project is that I don’t want to focus on art for my career. As much as I have a huge love for drawing and painting, creating it into a job would make me hate it. All that aside, this semester I created a project that I’m proud of and will hold close to my heart for the rest of my life. It gave me the chance to draw, paint, write and, more importantly, learn about my grandmother’s life in its entirety. I am honestly surprised to say that drawing the 7 portraits of my grandma from her youth to now wasn’t even my favourite part. I found the most enjoyment in doing the abstract pieces. It let me be more creative and it didn’t leave me wondering “is this good enough?” Overall, Propel was a great experience. Although it was short, I met many people that I consider my friends now and got to see all of them succeed in doing something they love. Propel was great for learning who I am and where my interests lie. Even though I still don’t know exactly what I want to do in the future, I can confidently say that I’m one step closer. 

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