Shawna X

0:00 [Applause]

0:06 I have a hard time following up to Professor Eric I feel like I went to college hi everyone I'm Shawna [Applause]

0:16 welcome to the day of my life no I'm just kidding I start all my talks with this photo it's a photo of me I was eight years old I was in an art class I took every Sunday and my English tutor I'm from China I moved here when I was eight she named me Shauna because she thought it sounded similar to my Chinese name which is Xiao Yung that means Little Summer that's where the X comes from so sometimes I wonder like why do I just let some random white lady name me but you know here. I am that is my Deviant Art name since middle school.

0:50 And I just kind of stuck with it you know longevity really counts here you might if you live in Brooklyn you might have seen some of my work such as this mural outside of House of Yes and Bushwick yes thank you I also love talking about my birth and labor if you want to hear My Placenta Story please feel free to come I'll have a whole talk about it you know or my sculpture about accepting a lot of my cultural mannerisms or maybe you've seen that some big company ripped it off and put on kids award show. That's another topic but I do believe my deep inspiration comes from process of mothering myself and now my two kids and the things I'm introduced to in that process whether.

1:42 That's therapy because we all have to I don't know we I love therapy so I'm Gonna Be A Champion for it or like a good open-minded toys like a children's toy this is Bruno Mars plus and minus that my daughter is playing with it's just a bunch of transparencies with different layers of interesting images and she puts it together and makes a story. And I love watching these two kids they're two and four you know to absorb the world with such curiosity and I believe for me my choice of color palette comes from that champion that I have Within Myself for all the childlike wonder and all of us I think we all have that childlike curiosity and I just want to bring that out and my potion to find that is enjoyment on little things and not too much pressure and that's why I start all my work on my 14 inch laptop so I can watch a trashy reality TV show at the same time because there's no pressure you know and and honestly that's the screen I I start digitally for everything.

2:43 And it goes into a mural or sculptural work or AI stuff you know. Actually Eric who has been instrumental in helping me get into Ai and I really appreciate that.

2:57 But yeah I love starting everything on this little thing. And I don't feel like I'm confined to any mediums because translating worked from 2D to 3D to 4D is just such a natural process and we live in a world where it's very accessible like you can go on Tick Tock and find out how to fabricate anything it's just how it goes now. And I love that.

3:20 So I'm here to talk about this project and how I translated something from 2D to you know a giant scale and and how that came to be so in 2020 height of covid I was asked by the MTA to pitch for this installation at a train station in Elmont and Long Island City or sorry Long Island sorry totally different place it's a train station and after doing some research I realized that it started as a Farmland over a hundred years ago occupied by various farmers of various religions and now it's a big suburb primarily Haitian population and apparently like the biggest zip code of families that speak Urdu so it's very diverse very interesting and the proposal itself called for 10 glass windows in the metal gate and for me as somebody who likes to look for themes I did a lot of research to find a theme that connected the transition of all the communities throughout its time and one place that really stood out to me was the Belmont track that the station will be next to and they're building a new Arena and it's the place where everybody gathered to watch horse races Air Races and honestly it's a very iconic you know image and I saw it as the one unchanging Staple in a very changing community so as someone who's drawn says symbols I utilize a track shape as like the grounding Motif and created a series of form to focus on the expansion and transformation.

4:51 And this is what I pitched to the team of like 30 people who has all to say in the world about what goes in the MTA and also 2020 this is the height of kovid so I was a new mother of a two-year-old and I was pregnant at the same time which is like insane so things of transformation felt really natural to me. And I realized looking back because I don't look back as much but my artwork at that time had a lot of distortive quality to it.

5:22 So I wanted to bring that like Vibe of metamorphosis into this work as well.

5:29 And in my mind so you first see the gates that looked very graphically bold and very minimal and you walk up the stairs and you walk through a hallway of color and I like the idea of the color glasses being far away so you have to actually be inside of the experience to feel the colors and I I did this proposal in I think two weeks and it was like a full brief and I actually wanted I didn't expect that at all. And that's basically how I got it and honestly MTA has open calls for everybody so you too can also pitch I just want to make that clear I didn't know this until I did this project I was very streamlined in creating the Gate of the MTA Station because I think it just I really resonated with the theme of expansion itself and also it felt like design you know.

6:20 That's where.

6:22 I started and I felt like I was very drawn to the track lines and expanded upon it I think the Simplicity of it really worked well with something.

6:32 That's very vibrant which is my obviously signature look and feel and for the windows itself I added figures to hone in the human connection and you know this whole process I I had a hard time like writing this because this process took two years two years and as someone that's like worked on a project for longer than a month you know how it goes and I'm a Gemini so it's like this stuff is like anyway I iterated this until the very last second until it's like I I have to send this to to give to the people to make sure it's delivered and as someone that works with MTA for the first time I didn't know.

7:10 But I was in charge of sourcing interviewing and finding all the Fabricators so originally I wanted to do stained glass but because of the complexity of the the designs itself I found something named Tom Patty in Massachusetts that created a laminate glass that can withstand with conditions throughout time. And this entire process through covid was a lot of shipping back and forth you know samples here and there work on the opacity lines here and there a lot of post office visits but I secretly enjoyed it because otherwise I would be driving like eight hours to Massachusetts every single time I look at a sample I'm very lazy just so you guys know but thank God for modern technology and postal service thank you I mean the challenge honestly was working on such a small screen as you can see I go kind of crazy in my files for me I like having a boundary and then just go chaotic so going from small to very large scales there's a lot of discrepancies so a lot of gaps that were found in between colors that I had to like go back and spend 20 hours to fix for the gate itself there were a lot of issues with like how much the gaps were because they were afraid that people were going to stick their heads in between the metal bars I don't know people are crazy just how it goes anyway there's a lot of interesting design challenges that happened throughout these last two years. And it I think like two-thirds of the way in there's just so many emails and zoom calls I was pretty over it not gonna lie and then it was until until I visited the train station I didn't see anything about what's happening and I finally visited the grand finale and nobody was there.

8:58 And it was the most beautiful moment I remember going there at Sunset empty station a train just like coming back and forth it felt like a very Studio Ghibli moment I just I and then walking up to the glass hallway itself I was so excited my partner can attest to this everything I planned happened the layering effects I was hoping for the vibrancy of the colors the reflection of the sun it just everything just became this magic Wonderland and I guess I when I think back about it I'm just like wow I can't believe I made this I guess when you're on the screen you just don't see the the the depth of the work that you can create and sometimes you just have to take it off to experience it in real time. And I was also surprised by something so simple like these gates to have such a a big effect as well you know the Shadows that distorted the space to the metal that reflected the sunlight the sun sunset or the sunlight in general and yeah it was a very blessed moment for me. And I haven't visited since but then I took my mom who interpreted my artwork to her performative dances and made me do it it was great she was like do you gotta do this like this and point your leg out like that I'm like okay thanks Mom and also my friends who stopped by and took these very tron-like videos which I thought was really interesting through the glass itself and I I think just evoking that play and that childlike wonder is something that just keeps on coming up in my work so what have I been up to since the project came out late 2022 and honestly After High of a big project usually in the past I would just find the next big thing.

10:55 But I really paused honestly I really wanted to talk about not working but here. I am talking about working but pausing because that's really important to me after that project itself it took.

11:07 So much out of me out of me along with work and having two kids under two like I I realized after all these projects that this stuff is my life force and I'm sure it is to a lot of you guys as well and when you use it all the time for pleasure and for work it just feels like a lot you know. And I need to stay sustained like feeling rejuvenated for the rest of my life which is a lot of pressure because I'm not a machine and you know ultimately you know my purpose in the work that I want to create is to communicate and connect on deep feelings and that involves first and foremost being gentle myself so yes if there's a conference on resting I'd be the best host or speaker for it I think that's gonna be the next thing just so you know and another thing I like to do is like just make things with no pressure at all so for example like kids birthday parties I'll just buy a bunch of pipe cleaners and make my adult friends make things you know.

12:11 That's really fun or make things for glass that's something I've been playing with on the side it's totally different and no pressure and I think this is how I keep myself grounded and not take anything for granted but when it comes to going back to my work I also am breathing new life into the archives I think you know we live in a society where we have to make new things all the time like Instagram posts Tick Tock I don't know like it just feels like you're just constantly having to produce and there's nothing wrong with going back to the stuff that you've made and breathing new life into it so for example this video was part of a generative art project or art installation I was a part of and it became a pattern for sustainable children's Brands that's in London.

12:56 Actually called petite plea so yeah.

12:59 I think finding these things like working with the economy life in general is just such an important thing for me I mean this year I've definitely been feeling I'm so glad Eric brushed upon this it's like I'm feeling it from the regression but you know what it's been one of my favorite years personally because I've been spending a lot of time with myself a lot of time with my family and my friends and sometimes that's all I want to do I do feel like because of a lot of time that I'm spending with myself I feel a big shift into like I feel like I'm on the precipice of something totally new and that's like a that's more work that involves more play you know.

13:37 I just want to take this energy into the next things that I'm doing and this is the first time I don't feel as jaded as I was if you ask me to talk three years ago it was not good playgrounds or glass work with reflective materials that give a lot of light recently my friend said that my two-year-old has a sparkly laugh and I just want to have that Within Myself just like I want to be sparkly like I just want to be sparkly and I know all of us are capable for more Sparkle and so yeah thank you so much it's nice that for this opportunity to share and reflect on one of my favorite projects and feel free to find me online we can talk about whatever subjects you want to talk about thank you