Greetings Summer II Sculpture Students: I am really excited to meet all of you and get to know you over the upcoming years as your TA. I have prepared a short slideshow about my work and life to introduce myself and work to you. My work has a few common themes: it typically starts from a narrative about my personal experience. You'll see work based around my dating experience, feelings of loneliness during my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer, and about homesickness. While these all sound like negative themes, I try to create a twist of humor and a splash of beauty to my work to make fun of myself and add lightheartedness to my situation(s). I typically gravitate toward using insects as the subject of my illustrations and sculptures. For my illustration series, "Crush," the bugs represented my feelings about dating by comparing my experience to the absurd fear humans (and myself) have of these tiny creatures. In "Moth's Wings" I use scale to create abstract sculptures based off of the microscopic view of a moth's wing. These sculptures are then suspended and caught in an intricate web. I try to utilize all repurposed and recycled materials in my sculptures. When I display my paintings I repurpose frames that are donated to me or bought at second-hand stores, giving a second life to the display. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave a comment on this blog post or email me at [email protected]. I am always available to brainstorm and critique work or answer general questions. Kind regards, Jahni
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As I look forward to becoming an Islander in January 2021, I would like to share my goals for study and corresponding portfolio images. Jahni Ittel
7553 Jones Road College Corner, Ohio 45003 January 23, 2020 Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi Recruitment & Admissions 6300 Ocean Drive, Unit 5744 Corpus Christi, Texas 78412 Dear Faculty of the Department of Art and Design: I am reapplying for the Texas A&M Corpus Christi 2019 MFA program in Studio Art with a concentration in sculpture and an interdisciplinary focus to investigate sculpture, painting, and printmaking, with a conceptual interest in integrating biomedical research in my studio practice. In 2019 I was accepted to the TAMU-CC MFA program but unfortunately needed to postpone enrollment while filing a visa application for my husband. I am more hopeful for a positive visa review this year. When my undergraduate senior thesis installation (Portfolio # 17-20) became a group effort to collect wasp specimen, the process developed into a community-based engagement project. Following this experience, I gave more direction towards community engagement in a later painting series titled, Crush (Portfolio # 7-10) where I created opportunities for story submissions and title suggestions from my audience. From 2017-2019, I served in the Peace Corps in the Republic of Georgia creating community engagement through extracurricular activities. One particularly successful activity was a mural project (Portfolio # 6) that I facilitated at my school. Prior to coming to Georgia, I volunteered for an art outreach initiative in the small town in Ohio that I grew up in doing fundraising, planning, and promoting community art events. One of the reasons I am applying to the Texas A&M Corpus Christi MFA program is because the website emphasizes that the program fosters community engagement. I believe I am a strong candidate for the MFA program because I plan to continue focusing on socially conscious, community driven art throughout my master studies and career as an artist. From my service in the country Georgia, I have first hand experience that the combination of health, education, and creativity can foster an environment for underprivileged children to thrive in. Some of my most successful projects in the Peace Corps involved combining art with medical or socially conscious projects. For example, I brought in medical professionals to do dental demonstrations on how to have proper oral hygiene. Following the presentations, I helped my students to create a poster campaign for the community to inform adults about oral hygiene, and reinforce what the students learned in a creative and fun project. I am particularly interested in TAMU-CC’s nursing grant to incorporate arts into medical care and can see the massive impact combining art and healthcare can bring to a community. ( https://tamucc.edu/news/2019/05/hrsa-nursing-grant-art-and-ipads.html#.Xionki2ZNBw). I hope that my combined academic experience with art and science will make me an ideal fit for the Texas A&M Corpus Christi campus. Another successful project I worked on with my students during my time in Peace Corps was a giant litter clean up and education project for litter prevention. Reducing my carbon footprint has always been a focus in my art and life, so I was excited to share my practices in cleaning up public spaces with my students. In all my work, I utilize materials that have a low environmental impact. I always use recycled frames to showcase my paintings, and my sculptures Moth’s Wings (Portfolio # 11-16) are made from repurposed paper products such as grocery bags, coffee filters, and newspapers. An additional reason I’m applying to Texas A&M Corpus Christi is to work with Leticia Bajuyo due to her use of environmentally minded material. While at Corpus Christi, I want to explore ways to transition Moth’s Wings into more permanent forms. Another aspect I aim to further develop is the dynamic relationship between realism and abstraction in my sculptures and paintings. I concentrate on abstraction through scale with my sculptures. Moth’s Wings are large scale paper sculptures modeled after a microscopic view of a moth’s wing. In my paintings, I try to achieve realistic dimension and shading but abstract the color pallet to create ethereal portraits (Portfolio #1-5.) I can see similarities in my color abstraction in portraits to Ryan O’Malley’s Stencil Portraits, and hope to explore this abstraction and practice of portrait painting further while studying at TAMU-CC. In summary, my goals for exploration in graduate school include: to produce community engaging art that has a biomedical focus, to transform my sculptures into permanent structures, and to examine and develop a balance between realism and abstraction. I am interested in the interdisciplinary option for the MFA to build a more cohesive interdisciplinary studio practice that is conceptually driven and social practice in nature. After completing the MFA program, I plan to pursue exhibition opportunities around the globe and to work in developing communities around the world. I also plan to combine my creative and scientific interests to build a career for myself both in the art and medical fields. My experiences with sculpture, installation, and painting, in combination with my ambition for creating community engaged and socially conscious art will help me to be a strong candidate for, and future member of, the Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi MFA program. I am looking forward to a positive response. Kind Regards, Jahni Ittel |
Jahni Ittelis an artist residing in Tbilisi, Georgia after serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer. She has a BA in Studio Art from Hanover College (2011), She is available for custom portraits, murals, invitation design, and other art projects. Archives
July 2020
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