{"id":12109,"date":"2024-05-03T18:41:25","date_gmt":"2024-05-03T18:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.greendot.org\/?p=12109"},"modified":"2024-05-03T18:41:25","modified_gmt":"2024-05-03T18:41:25","slug":"art-i-am-my-cathedral-jessica-miguel-mateo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greendot.org\/newsold\/art-i-am-my-cathedral-jessica-miguel-mateo\/","title":{"rendered":"Art: ‘I Am My Cathedral’ by Jessica Miguel Mateo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\t

This piece<\/i> placed second for Art\u00a0 submissions<\/i><\/b> in the 2024 <\/i>\u00c1nimo Voices WRITING, ART, & SPOKEN WORD COMPETITION 2024<\/i><\/a>, which invited students to respond to an open prompt. The competition is an opportunity to motivate, recognize, and celebrate our strong student voices through writing, spoken word, and art.<\/i><\/p>\n\t

I Am My Cathedral<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t\"2nd\n

\n\t\tJessica Miguel Mateo: Artist Statement\n\t<\/h2>\n\tIn my visual art piece “I Am My Cathedral,” the main subjects of my piece are a
\nmyriad of expressive oil self portraits existing in a displaced and fragmented world of Paraiso,
\nPurgatorio, and Infierno, unified to reveal a corrupt system keeping kids from finding
\nthemselves. The first image shows the original physical works numbered in order of
\ncompletion. The second image shows how I digitally unified all three physical oil paintings
\nwith an iPad Procreate to create a Cathedral where I discover my current self, trapped
\nbetween two extremes created by society’s idealism and mental anxiety. I digitally unified
\nthe three physical works by connecting clusters with flowing rhythmic paint strokes, creating
\na stained glass pattern in hell, and repeating significant visual motifs such as skeletons, blue
\nswirling cycles of obsessions, and praying hands.\nThe process of creating this Cathedral by unifying physical oil paintings is a choice to
\nbuild a stronger me free of the requirement to mask and cover myself. The solution is to see
\nand love ourselves as we are, which is represented by my vulnerable painting of myself.
\nDissecting our truth leads to true self love and self discovery. Near the bottom of the
\ncomposition, I used Procreate to create a patchwork pattern of stained glass, conveying a
\ndiscovered beauty in facing our demons, resulting in a motivation to become unstuck. My
\nplayful cats, dancing in clown collars, hints at humor discovered in finding a way out. The
\nfocal point of the painting is my paradiso self portrait (painting 1) surrounded by a bright blue
\nsky. The repeated praying hands create convergence, pointing at me. I’ve removed my “clown
\nmask,” representing society’s expectations. The bright angels signify religion, a monumental
\npart of my childhood. The heavens and clown masks are purposely painted in unnaturally
\npure white, tying them to clown masks, conveying that religion can be an unnatural masking
\nand hiding truth. I am standing strong because I am facing my history.\nMy face is purposely rendered in darker values, looking out at the viewer, seeing the
\ntruth. The shadows on my face convey a toxic religious household, the first source of me
\nbeing stuck. The praying hands beneath me, holding me, represent my fight to free myself by
\nmaking this art. I am stuck in between my two sisters: eldest on the left, youngest on the
\nright, supported by a cold, dull, purgatory-like landscape. My siblings’ eyes are closed, not
\nseeing me; I either love them one moment or I hate them the next. To the left of the paradiso
\nis a ballerina in a clown mask that represents my yearning for “perfection”(painting 3), the
\nsecond source of my purgatory. Yet my angel wings hang low, and my cats are doubtful of
\nthis “heavenly pursuit.” The hands pulling my organs down into an inferno of skeletons
\nrepresents the omen of death, and thus my urgency to create. The truth of mortality is
\nunderscored by the natural yellowish whites in the skeleton. The overthinker (painting 2) is
\nrendered as an unmasked cycle of swirling blue lines sufferers from self doubt. Many people
\ndon’t realize that teenagers feel that once we “fix” something about ourselves we’ll see
\nanother “imperfection,” then it’ll repeat itself over and over again like a cycle. This cycle of
\nworrying about perfection, death, and religion creates hell, leaving us stuck and confused.\nBut it’s my hope that my viewer will see the whole picture of the Cathedral and the
\npath out and up the stairs.The overall visual tension between a “heavenly” idealism (painting
\n1) and a hellish anxiety (painting 2) is meant to draw the viewer in to discover a personal
\nsolution. So many kids struggle with growing up in toxic religious households. We also obsess
\nover the concept of perfection (painting 3). We don’t always look the way we wish – like a
\nballerina – and that’s okay. But we can climb up stairs towards our own heaven and find
\nfreedom by understanding that “the self” isn’t defined by circumstances such as family,
\nreligion, and societal expectations. How we respond to circumstances and create meaning
\nout of our pain, with art, makes us who we are. It’s better to step back and create something
\nfrom our broken pieces rather than to stay stuck and silent.\n\t\t\t\t\"Jessica-Miguel-Mateo-thumbnail\"\n\t

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jessica Miguel Mateo<\/strong><\/p>\n

11th Grade, \u00c1nimo Jackie Robinson Charter High School<\/a><\/p>\n

Guiding Teacher: Rachel Kopera<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

See the art piece that won second place from all of our California high schools by Jessica Miguel Mateo, a student at \u00c1nimo Jackie Robinson Charter High School.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":12381,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,38],"tags":[39,14],"class_list":["post-12109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animo-voices","category-series","tag-animo-voices","tag-green-dot-california"],"yoast_head":"\nArt: 'I Am My Cathedral' by Jessica Miguel Mateo - News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"See the art piece that won second place from all of our California high schools by Karen Barrera, a student at \u00c1nimo South Los Angeles Charter High School.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/greendot.org\/newsold\/art-i-am-my-cathedral-jessica-miguel-mateo\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Art: 'I Am My Cathedral' by Jessica Miguel Mateo - 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