#Art WANGECHI MUTU & Her INFLUENCE

Loving the effect of this collage/painting! Final touch ups in PhotoShop :-) #closeup twitter.com/seewhyNELSA/st…

— ÇyNELSA (@seewhyNELSA) May 4, 2013

  Anyone who follows me on Twitter, Instagram, or is friends with me on Facebook would have noticed how heavily influenced I was by this Kenyan Artist. Over the past week I explored collage art to create a poster for an Emeli Santé art contest on Creative Allies. I felt very inspired by Mutu's colorful collages and wanted to try new methods of creating for myself. It was exciting and took a while for me to gather all of my ideas and execute them. I went for light sketches, long gazes, many magazine clippings and etc to compose this one. The photos below show the transformation of the art from sketch to final poster. 

"I never meant to leave I needed to escape
 And now it's so far
 Who knows where?" 

  The beginning of The End of eating Everything, a short animation by artists Wangechi Mutu and Santigold, opened with these words and I found them to be memorable. Mutu's body of work is being exhibited at Duke's Nasher Museum of Art until July 21st. Below are two pictures I took on my camera, one while walking around the gallery and the other while sitting during the eight-minute animation. You can also watch an interview of the two artists.  More information about the show can be found on Nasher's site.

  Lastly, I joined other artists yesterday for some sketching and networking. We met at the Carolina Theater to draw and gathered later in Blue Coffee Cafe to discuss our drawings. It was my first time visiting the theater, so below are a few pictures I took while wandering and my final sketch. Enjoy and thanks for reading!