Samadhi Jones

My art does not reflect any particular known style, but what I believe encompasses the American Black experience throughout my usage of color and emotions.

From a young age, my mother would always say, “You're always on that phone.” After hearing that phrase so much, I started to wonder about the effects of constantly being on my phone and/or technology in general. So through research and experimenting with “touching grass” and decreasing my phone usage, I found myself understanding how the media I was consuming was keeping not only myself but my creativity in a bubble and closed mindset. Which I realized was something I not only suffered from alone, but it affected my community. Therefore, I decided to base my sustained investigation around not being slaves to technology and rising above the programming that comes from digital/social media.

While developing my sustained investigation, I experimented with using interdisciplinary practices and a variety of materials to create a mixed-media body of work. For example, paint, embroidery, colored pencils, school uniform pants, beads, sequins, and watercolor, etc. I practiced ways of stitching patterns and layering my pieces to create additional texture/richness throughout my investigation that catches the eye.

At the beginning of my investigation, the work I originally started with was digital. As I started to think cognitively about revising my work, it felt inauthentic to my practice and my overall message of humanity over technological advancements. Therefore, I decided to use a more hands-on approach to creating my pieces.

My intentions throughout my investigation are to inform the uninformed and further unite my community to break the confinements of what we deem as normal from government programming through technology and social media. We’re losing the values of what’s truly important and must protect the world that sustains us. This is why the materials carried throughout my piece reflect the helpful everyday materials that are dismissed.

The materials I used throughout my sustained investigation are items that I used in my day-to-day life, just like social media and technology. These materials are just as important in my day today but so undermined because it’s deemed as the standard. Examples include school uniform pants, safety pins, buttons, sewing needles, yarn, thread, bedsheets, and cotton (stuffing), all man-made items. This in turn also reflected throughout the process of layering and combining all the materials in my work.

From the moment I took my 2-D Art and Design teacher’s course, Mrs. Espina supported my vision and created a space for me to challenge my thinking soI could create an abundance of well-thought-out work through my creative lens. This in turn has helped me research and inform the consumers of my work through the use of my materials, process making, and concepts to create a message throughout my work that’s much bigger than myself.

My advice would be to start with what you know. Stop outsourcing on social media. Build upon the community/world around you because everyone’s perception of this world around them is a unique experience. Once you figure out the world around you through your lens, not through the eyes of the media or someone else’s perspective, you become open-minded and discover yourself, finding problems/issues that not only affect you but your community as well. Use your artwork to create a space to uplift and devote change in conversation to fix those issues within your community, even if it feels like no one is seeing your work. Everything starts small and underrated until it takes off, so continue to create change for the betterment of your community.