This is Alejandra Uribe’s art piece. Alejandra is an undergraduate student at Cal State Long Beach. She is a BFA student for the School of sculpture. Alejandra wants to one day be an MFA student and get her MFA. Her art piece can be found in the LBSU Art Gallery sort of in the middle of the gallery on the floor. Alyssa loves to work with wood which is why she chose to work with Mahogany and Sapele wood. She also chose to use jamaica or hibiscus juice, a very popular Latin American drink to add some color to her piece. Alejandra takes inspiration from Van Gogh, Marina Abramovic, and artwork called, “gates of hell”. She really enjoys art that gets reactions out of people and provokes thoughts and conversations. While working, she listens to music. She aspires to be a sculptor one day. She once started as a music major but later decided she wanted to switch to art.
Her art piece was a class assignment. She felt extremely happy about this piece because she thinks it has been her best work yet although she felt doubtful at first. Her piece consists of a red nonagon at the bottom and two white hands holding a flower with a face at the bottom. The hands are in a massaging gesture and are massaging the backside of the head. She had first experimented with different types of wood and later chose Mahogany and Sapele wood. Since it is made of wood, it isn’t brittle, it is pretty sturdy, especially because the bottom piece is very big in comparison to the smaller piece on top. The jamaica was used because of its almost blood red color, but when used on the face, it turned purple, which was unexpected. The hands are very neatly made hands. They are very well shaped and as well as the base. At first, what the hands were holding was confusing because I had no clue what it was, but then she said that the face was facing down to the red base so it made more sense that it was a face.
Alejandra said she takes inspiration from artists that are good at getting reactions from the audience. She told me a story of a time where she made moldy food and presented it in her class. Her classmates were obviously disgusted by it for its appearance and smell. She aimed to get some sort of reaction from her class and she got one. Alejandra also explained how she uses art in order to express her feelings. A year ago, she worked a full-time job and went to school at the same time. Apart from all the stress, her grandmother passed away and she used her art to express how she felt, while at the same time she was getting a reaction from the audience. As I saw this art piece, I was very confused and I was kind of disgusted by it. Mostly because I don’t like that shade of red nor the super white hands. I felt as if the white hand belonged to a demon that was rising from a pool of blood and was asking for my soul. It kind of freaked me out.
In sum, her artwork definitely got a reaction out of me. Since that same day, I had watched a scary movie and a video about the scariest things caught on tape. The white hands sort of spooked me which made me become a little bit disgusted by them and made me not want to really write about this piece or even look at it. However, I think her piece is unique and has much more meaning to it. When I got there, she was mentioning that her piece was in response to issues in New York, and I didn’t really want to ask her what she meant by that and felt that I wouldn’t be doing my self nor her work justice by letting her tell me what it’s about. I thought that I felt as if the hands are the lower class, rising from the pool of blood that comes from all their hard work and violence they witness while living in impoverished areas. I see this as the lower class lifting up their people or the whole city of New York.
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