Aaron+Willmore's+Social+Issue

=Social Issue Project=

Anxiety
This is the box that the clay figure will go into. The figure will stand in a corner with arrows pointing at him. This is the clay man. He will be standing holding a sign that says What If... This is one example of the arrows that will be pointing at the the clay figure. There will be a bunch of these but with different words following the sign that says What If... So like this arrow is What if she hates me.

Artist Statement Anxiety, that is the social issue theme I chose. I have had this my whole life. My dad has it and so do most the people on his side of my family. Anxiety involves getting stressed and after the stress has gone away you are still frustrated and stressed. You think of all the, what ifs, to every situation. It seems like it would be nice to have because you assess all the problems in a situation fast but you actually only focus on the negatives. Let’s say someone doesn’t believe in God and when I say bless you to their sneeze they get mad, this is one of the many anxiety afflicted discussions I encounter on a daily basis. When I study for a test I freak out and can’t calm down. Little things can stress me and it can ruin whole days. Someone can be upset or mad and I feel their sadness and rage and it effects how I feel so in stressfully situations I amplify the stress and increase it. Anxiety is horrible to have and it has plagued my life and will continue tell I die. It used to be that I had a horrible time sleeping. I would be kept awake at night thinking about everything. My brain would work at a million miles per seconding thinking about anything and everything. There was no hit the pillow and fall asleep. This was because of anxiety. Anxiety can lead to a lot of other issues and one of them was depression. Since I had problems sleeping it lead to the depression, which brought along a lot of other baggage like thoughts of suicide and stupid stuff like that. When my anxiety is like freaking me out and I’m in a stressful situation I get really mad and people don’t care or don’t know that I have anxiety so they just think I’m a jerk who likes to get mad at people. They just make me more upset. I hate anxiety, it’s just easier to pretend I don’t have it and just be a quiet jerk. When I started this project I had found a bunch of pictures online relating to anxiety, one was a kid sitting down with arrows pointing to him on a wall. I decided to use these arrows but I would put ‘what if’ statements into the arrows. This did not work out and I ended up just writing words on the background. The background is made from sheet metal, Skylar Porter got it welded for me at the Career Center. The two ‘walls’ of sheet metal I painted white and wrote the statements on them and covered the ‘walls’ with broken glass. The bottom ‘floor’ is painted black with red paint smeared on it. It also says ANXIETY on it. My figure is a hunched man with the weight of the world on his shoulders holding a sign that says, “What if…” He is painted purple because that is my favorite color. I feel that my artwork is successful in persuading the audience of my point of view because Anxiety is overwhelming and this piece feels overwhelming. The what if statements show examples of what the figure is thinking about all the time. The smeared red paint is just filler and makes it concentrate on the word ANXIETY. The glass shows sort of a shattered world and thought process of someone affected with anxiety. I had trouble making the figure because I was upset and frustrated on the first day but on the third day I was finished, well before most people. He is not very detailed but you can tell he is a human. I wanted to incorporate chains wrapping around the figure but I have no chains to use. If I could do this again I would put more detail into the words on the ‘walls’ and not just give up on the ‘floor’ like I did.

Finished project.