Unmasking Art Show Virtual Tour
"The Butterfly Effect" by Evan Chilson
Colored Pencils 21.5” x 29.5”
Artist Statement
Hey! I’m Evan Chilson, and I’m a junior at Sauk Rapids Rice High School. This is my seventh session at Portable Vision, and this time around I created The Butterfly Effect using colored pencils on toned paper. I think this is the biggest piece I’ve done ever, unless you count painting walls. Anyways here’s what it’s about.
The piece is meant to represent the butterfly effect (wow what a creative title, I know). The butterfly effect is the idea that one little thing can lead to another, which leads to another thing, to another thing, until this small action leads to complete chaos. In the image, both the smoke (which looks like lava-lamp fluid) and the butterflies are both coming out of the mask’s gaping mouth. This all together represents the world going crazy as a result of the quarantine and pandemic. Oh, did I mention the person with the mask is me, because it is. My position in the piece represents the feeling of being in the middle of all the chaos, and feeling surrounded by all the randomness that’s going on. My hands holding my own head kinda represents me trying to keep my head and myself stable. It also is like an act of resistance, like I’m trying to not let the events of the world around me control me. Also, my eyes are orange like the rest of the piece. I could say it represents me being “blinded” by what’s going on, but if I’m being 100% honest I just made my eyes fit the colors of the rest of the piece. This piece represents my feelings during the end of last school year-ish, and I just had to make a piece about it now. Yeah Covid sucks.
This piece was really exciting to work on in the start, as I had this exact vision of what I’d like it to look like. Near the final stretch of the session, when my piece was at home, I found it really unmotivating to work on, as I just had to do the tedious parts. I spent about 7 hours straight working on the smoke (my head, hands, and colored pencils all suffered great losses that day). What I’m saying is, I spent a lot of time on this, and your support of being here and reading this means the world to me. Also buy me colored pencils for Christmas if you know me personally. *wink* *wink*
This session, like most of the previous sessions, all of the mentors gave their input to my piece and really helped me along the way. I’d like to thank all of them so much, and all the people around my workspace for not only talking to me to make the work time less boring, but also for constantly motivating me with their compliments as well as criticisms. Honestly there were so many new people in this session that I’d never met before, and working with them and friends I’d known for a long time was so refreshing - especially since we couldn’t work in person last year. So yeah, if you’re reading this, you’re appreciated, thank you everyone who helped me along the way. Am I rambling? I really don’t know (or care). Thanks for coming to the show, and adios!
Oral Statement
