2024
A gift for my bestie Alexandria Redmon.
We met in high school Art 1 class by chance, something happened to my schedule and I had to switch to a different period after the first week, to the block she was in. I was a sophomore and she was a junior. We quickly became inseparable friends. She got me into photography, and I took Art 2 just so we could hang out more. Without her, I’m not sure if I would have ever gotten into art as much as I am today.
Sometime my Junior year of high school, my mom and I went to visit my uncle Karl who was working in Washington D.C. (at NASA), and so we got to go see a LOT of art. I was obsessed with MC Escher and REALLY wanted to see his work at the National Gallery of Art, so we went! I walked up to the desk and asked where his work was hanging, and they told me it wasn’t up currently. My lil face was devastated; they could clearly tell how much I wanted to see Escher’s work, and so they did something that still blows me away to this day—they let me into their library, pulled up two carts full of his lithos, and let me look through them with white gloves. I remember my hands and arms shaking with excitement as I got to go through these delicate prints, and it was at that moment I knew I wanted to be an artist.
What did I document this with? A 35 mm Minolta Alex had let me take to DC. I still have the blurry photos.
This piece would also not be possible without her; she unknowingly chose the colors, which were taken from a website she made: https://save.page/ which is a cool bookmarking website (like if you remember del.icio.us). I grabbed the hex codes from her site, put them into Golden Paints online color mixer, and tubed up my colors! They are: Alexandria Purple, Redmon Orange, Perfect Blue, Powerful Pink, Gorgeous Green, and Hover State Slate.
Thank your for believing in me. I love you.
- E