Online Shrines
Artist Statement
Artist Statement
As I write, create art, and produce design, I realize more and more the stark differences in the ways each medium communicates. Music speaks a different language than the written word, and visual art a different language than design. “Online Shrines” is a zine design experiment I created to attempt rearticulate the idea behind my Artist Prints in the languages of graphic design and writing. Produced in an edition of twenty, these booklets were made through a mixture of Risograph printing and multi-colored screenprint techniques. I am interested in how we create our own individual value structures in today’s increasingly digital world. What do we believe in? What do we hold as sacred and what do we hold as secular? Where do we find love, joy, and call home? Are these locations, communities, and belief systems physical? Or do they exist online, in spaces we cannot touch but can still live in?
When thinking about these questions, I was reminded of this online lounge space from the game Donkey Kong Country. In this instance, a game whose digital footprint pre-dates the internet has had its music and textures translated into today’s online spaces to create an odd sense of community for those with nostalgic ties to it. As I designed this booklet, I wanted the cover to aesthetically mirror some of these digital spaces that have become places of value in today’s online world. The writing, in its own language, attempted to put words around these ideas and questions of online sanctuary, as well as the loose feelings associated with them. Additionally, I wanted to focus on using hyper saturated color for the booklet’s typography. The idea behind this was that even in a physical space, color can subtlety nod toward the hyper-saturated reality of the digitization we spend half of our time in today.
