The Portfolio of Justin Simoni
Currently Working On
Featured Work
Words (Kerouac)
The Portfolio of Justin Simoni
Words (Kerouac)
Also check out the Nursery School Zine!
A collection of twenty-six mixed media drawings (oil pastel, inkjet prints, various acrylic mediums/varnishes and watercolor) on hot press (smooth) 90lb watercolor paper. The original drawings were done on recycled sketch paper with a crow quill pen and waterproof drawing ink.
When I was in nursery school, we learned The American Sign Language Alphabet, one letter at a time. One gesture to denote each letter. It's a memory I've kept with me. I frequently use memories and imagery from my childhood - much of what I feel I've become stems from these memories - often from artwork and just plain arts and crafts projects. I don't attempt at nostalgia, but instead just see those past projects when I was very young as the starting point from where my life is currently going. Everything is a journey.
Currently, much of my work compromises putting a visual symbol next to a literal symbol and seeing how the different types of medium of communication influences each other. As a person who doesn't use sign language in their daily life, it's interesting for me to at least explore different modes to communicate such simple ideas. The alphabet being the building blocks of language, of written and verbal communication - although this isn't either, its gestural.
I've always been curious with signs, symbolology and gestures. Another memory growing up: my family owned a small sailboat and its cabin was filled with chart books and marine handbooks. Another visual alphabet can be found in flags - flags that denote specific things, such as, "Diver!", or specific flags to denote specific letters, much like Sign Language.
These twenty-six drawings are all drawn from life - they are all of my left hand and thus all self portraits of myself. Unlike usual illustrations of the American Sign Language, these hands aren't attempting at looking clear, common - simplified or the lowest common denominator - they're my hands and it's interesting to see how some of the drawings look almost, "wrong", since they're not what we're used to seeing in a, "sign" of a hand showing a letter of the alphabet. A sign sometimes attempts at universal and not at signature.
Hands are one of the things I personal inspect when encountering a new person. Hands are as individual as faces to me and I haven't ever seen two pairs of hands that look quite the same. Indeed, we use the fingerprint in law enforcement to prove that a suspect was at a scene of a crime and a vast database exists of fingerprints of people who have been arrested.
Like faces, the features of hands seem to be hereditary - I can look at my own hands and see a bit of my Father and my Mother. I can visit my Brother and feel closer to him, with the way he moves and gestures - how he personally uses his hands to gesture.
If I were to use this sign language, I would most likely use my right hand to sign, instead of my left. I thought about manipulating the drawings by reflecting them so as to make them appear to actually be made by my right hand, but chose not to. The other interesting things about these drawings is that I'm basically signing to myself, so some of the drawings appear quite different from the sign they're attempting to make - indeed, don't use these as any sort of official sign language guide.
I chose to exemplify these aberrations by adding text that is also reflected so as to be almost intelligible at quick glance.
The text, in contrast is very stark and quite boring (to me, anyways), as this specific typeface is incredibly common in graphic design, posters, billboards (your daily life), etc.
The coloring of the ink drawings was influenced also from the very first paintings I could find made by myself - also from nursery school. Usually done in watercolor, the technique, if you could say that, was to just cover area with mass strokes of color. Usually beginning with a coloring-book illustration. It was nothing but having fun.
For these drawings, I attempted to lose control of rules I've learned throughout the years about color theory, light and shade, how to create depth, etc and just allow myself to play and experiment. Obviously, there is some use of color theory in action - especially the use of discords, complements, and tone/value work. But, the majority of these pieces are experiments - many do not work at all, some work really well and all of them were from the almost haphazard work of laying color and medium upon each other, until the work seemed complete.
Each drawing is approx. eight inches square. I've attempted to keep the color values the same in the scanning process, but some differences may be apparent, due to the RGB color space and my image manipulation programs.
