Illustration & Photo Manipulation

Overview 🔎

With this project, I was tasked (by myself and the art department of The University of Alabama in Huntsville) with producing an exhibition in UAH’s Wilson Hall Gallery to represent my senior body of work before leaving the university.

Emergence In the exhibition, titled Emergence, I focused on capturing and reproducing reflective moments, light, and layers to illustrate and inspire stories. My use of technology and vivid color stems from an interest in deconstructing and reconstructing objects like toys and other gadgets since childhood. The interest grew with me and became a vehicle that helped expand my perspectives on how to see.

In more recent years, my passion for photographic manipulation through computer software like Photoshop combined with my love of vivid watercolor paintings to produce works such as these.

In Emergence, I use storytelling to reflect on my personal experience of the quarantine phases of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on my perception of culture, faith, and transformation. The resulting exhibition featured over 15 digital watercolor and multimedia artworks, including bronze and wood sculptures, as well as an interactive projection of a butterfly made of hundreds of thousands of smaller butterflies - 🦋(a known symbol of transformation).

Process and Collaboration 🤝

The process of this body of work began not in the classroom, or inside of photoshop, but in the photography studio. Outside of class, I intentionally chose African and African American students and artists just like myself to serve as models for the exhibition.

My goal here was to impart into our photo sessions who they really are, so I didn’t bother telling them to dress or look a certain way. In a way, I thought of them as reflections of myself who I see vividly. So I asked them what their names meant and found subtle ways to layer their various meanings into the final work along with symbolism and other aspects of their identity and even posed in a few myself.

If you’d like to read my Artist’s Statement for Emergence and see more photos of the exhibit - visit the link below. Thanks for viewing! :)

Press

José Betancourt

Professor of Photography at the University of Alabama in Huntsville