Artist Statement

       To Start my final piece for this class I was very clueless, But I was simply reminded to not reinvent the wheel. So I decided to go back to the list of "Richard Serra Verb List" and choose three words at random. The three verbs that I came up with are:
To Fire
To Tear
To Suspend
However, I only decided to use two of the three words for my four different images. I used "To Tear" and "To Fire". In my first three images I used to "To Tear". The one thing that I knew when starting with this verb was that I wanted to do an image with a tear through the image. I just did not know what image I wanted to use. I thought deeply about what images to use then I thought about how much love I have for sports and the athletes that play them so I resorted to my Sports Illustrated to look for images. The three athletes I found are very recognizable faces, Muhammad Ali, Michael Phelps, and David Beckham. I tore the photos out of the magazine and then made a tear down the middle of the photos. Then when I thought about these three athletes they all are very important to their own respected countries. Thinking about this, I wanted to put their country into my piece in some way. To do this I put the countries flag into the background of the piece. The flags fill in the tears in the piece. I really like all three of these images but most of all I like the Muhammad Ali photo. I like how Muhammad himself is the main focus of the picture with the tear showing the american flag to the left. Honestly, I feel that this Muhammad Ali piece is the best picture I have done yet. 
         For my final piece I used the verb "To Fire". At first thinking about this verb I thought about Donald Trump firing someone on his TV show but when I thought much more deeply about it I thought about firing a gun. Then it hit me, I wanted to to a picture that is looking through the scope of a sniper rifle. So I put a black soldier like figure in the photo firing his gun. But little does this soldier figure know is that he is being secretly looked at through a sniper rifle. At the bottom of the piece I put some text in it reading, Ready!!!... Aim!!!... I did this so the viewer could figure out my verb. I also did this to leave the viewer in a little bit of a cliff hanger because as most people know the saying goes as Ready... Aim... Fire... So what do you as the viewer think? Does the sniper fire on command? 
       This concludes my final project, overall I am very happy with my work. This project was a lot of fun to do because there was not a strict set of guidelines to follow. Also, This class as a whole was a lot of fun and a great experience. It really allowed me to realize that I do have some creativeness and artistic ability.