Acrylics on Canvas
Acrylics on Canvas
Acrylic on Canvas
Acrylics on Canvas
Acrylics on Canvas
Acrylics on Canvas
Acrylic on Canvas
Acrylics on Canvas
Acrylics on Canvas
Acrylics on Canvas
Acrylic on Canvas
Acrylics on Canvas
Artists in Captivity - Collaborative Project
Artists in Captivity - Collaborative Project
Artist Statement
The personalization of social issues in a serial format is the structure for my art-making. The following are recently explored topics: societal impositions upon body image, mass media perspectives about women and violence, conceptuality of intimacy, and socio-cultural burdens endured by women. Social issues are viewed through a multifarious lens of mass media, social media and art history.
My drawings are created by hand-sewing my hair into various surfaces. I have been sewing with hair since 2000. The decision to utilize hair as a vehicle for making art is informed by socio-cultural symbolism, feminism, and religious symbolism. Collecting and sorting my hair is a ritualistic act. The dichotomy of using hair captivated my interest: hair can be a sexy and engaging tactile to people or it can be repulsive – like a hair in your soup or a hair on your hotel pillow. There are religious connotations to hair which coincide with symbolism reflecting strength, sensuality and reverence: Delila cut off Samson’s hair and Mary Magdalen washed the feet of Jesus with her hair.
My drawing installations are composed of scratchy, nervous lines trailing across a wall. These large, on-site installations are drawn with conte; sometimes the drawings incorporate vinyl appliques, liquid graphite and specialty fabric. As a painter, I focus particularly on the medium of watercolor. Voluptuous layers of watercolor stain surfaces to create figurative forms. Washes of color depict the imperfections of flesh: flesh is not merely about accuracy for color and form, but it is about having an eye for the bump -- and the lump-- and the chunk of blemished flesh.
“The body – what we eat, how we dress, the daily rituals through which we attend the body- is a medium of culture. The body, as anthropologist Mary Douglas has argued, is a powerful symbolic form, a surface on which the central rules, hierarchies, and even metaphysical commitments of a culture are inscribed and thus reinforced through the concrete language of the body.” (Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body, 1993) I examine gender role expectations and prevailing stereotypes in mass media through the lens of socio-cultural structures.
Rosemary Meza-DesPlas
2019, conte on wall, on-site drawing installation, (Fitton Center for Creative Arts, Hamilton, OH), 8’ x 6’
2019, conte on wall, on-site drawing installation, (Fort Lewis College Art Gallery, Durango, CO), 12’ x 22’
2017, hand-sewn human hair with thread and watercolor, 31” x 25”
2019, conte on wall, on-site drawing installation, (Fitton Center for Creative Arts, Hamilton, OH), 8’ x 6’