Carlie G.

Carlie Garcia

The Consequences of Greed

Artist Statement

The assignment for this project was to make 10 relief prints on a conflict that I felt passionate about. An instant theme for the conflict was greed, as well as the things that come with it; for example, the destroying of forests and land for productivity. Before I even thought of putting the art on linoleum, I had to come up with 10 different thumbnail sketches, make a separate drawing of the thumbnail sketch, as well as make a “map” of thoughts and conflicts for me to choose from. I came up with greed by through the idea of the “man vs.” conflict; it involves man vs. self, society, and nature, which show definite conflict. The most important parts for me in this project were the map and the thumbnail sketches; they helped me figure out how to decide my conflict, as well as what it would look like on the printing paper. One of the parts of this project that I struggled with was deciding the conflict. This was a problem because I had many ideas, but not all of them were conflicts; and then some of them could be registered as a conflict, but couldn’t be shown on paper as easily. I overcame this problem by speaking with my classmates and finding out which conflict worked the best.

My conflict represents greed and some of the disasters that come with it. The smoke in the sky is from the factories that were created by the need of products, which shows greed from both the buyers and the businessman. Also, if you notice, there isn’t any vegetation within the print, but instead cash and coins. This shows that the businessman put money before life. The man is standing with his arms outstretched and is grinning, showing his pride at having so much “accomplished.” The man is also the focus of my drawing because he is the cause of the damage behind him, having become overrun by greed. The topic of greed is significant to me because of the damage done to the earth. Pollutions are evident to me everytime it rains because I can see the smoke and gasses on the horizon, caused by both the cars and the factories around me. All of these were caused by successful, yet greedy businessmen who still make harmful products for money.

When I was working on my print, I decided to give his hair and the background more detail; for example, before, both his hair and the background were supposed to be pure white. I then changed it to show that his hair wasn’t pure white, but black with highlights and the background went from undetailed to striped. When I made the ground I had to make sure that it looked like it was made of coins, so adding extra detail like points where light bounced off the coins and including a few outlines were necessary.

I really enjoyed working on this project. Some of the things that made this enjoyable for me were the idea of conflict and that I was able to try out print-making for the second time. I loved the idea of conflict, so when I was allowed to do that in a project, I already had a few conflict ideas in mind. This made the project much more fun to work on. I also like print-making, so this project was fun because I was able to try it again and learn more than I had the first time. I believe the part that came out the best on my print were the fields of coins behind the businessman because they were able to come out the clearest as well as exactly how I wanted them to appear on the printing paper.