My Art

Art Portfolio. Belinda Mitchell-Rice

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Engram - Solace in Slumber

First film assignment for UC Berkeley's Art 171 course taken in Fall 2017. TW: suicide, implied suicide, noose, hanging

Solace in Slumber, 2017, digital media, rope, piano, 2:26

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Quack-thulu (and detail), 2017, oil on canvas, 36 x 24″

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Final Project, 2017, digital photographs, assorted dimensions.

[Left]: Appropriated images from last photography assignment, shot through with 9mm luger handgun bullets surrounding a current portrait.

[Middle]: Photographs of death, life, and decay.

[Right]: Flower and dog.

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[160] Assignment: Letter Autobiograph(ies)

Q

I am a balloon on a windy day.

I am the lollipop whose stick sags with too much spit.

I am the noose hanging slack from the neck of a body ready to fall.

I am a recently blown bubble with a string of soap still attached.

I am a needle injecting sperm into an empty egg.

I am the head of thin-beaked bird.

I am the worm crawling out of its home.

I am a monocle with a broken chain.

I am the blade and handle of a pizza cutter.

I am a comet with a short tail.

 I am lonely without “u”.

 My existence is to provide the existence of sound. I am less of the shape, and more of the concept. Things drop in me and I let out music voices. Perhaps the mathematics of my design hasn’t been perfected yet, but as of now, I make the amateurs sound a little more than shitty, depending on how much respect I receive. I’m overlooked until I’m remembered in forgetfulness. I don’t exist on guitars.

 Π

I am so insufferable. I pop out of nowhere to exist everywhere, just because that’s the nature of things. Yum yum… look here, bitch, it’s me again! Here to fuck up your math problem with my intangible infinite-ness. Yum yum – I’m on your circles, not this sweet surprise of a cherry pie. Listen – I’m so popular even your little gremlins of human offspring waste time memorizing this voluptuous body of mine. You wish you were me. I hold infinity inside me! I have every book written, names of gods and peasants, dates of the important and the unimportant events, EVERYTHING stored inside my code. I am all there is to be comprehended.

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[160] Assignment: “Proficient Language; Forgotten Description”

We had to describe something using a language “we were proficient in”. I have music practice and music theory background (although I took many liberties) so I wrote descriptions of some people I know/knew through language. 

(These are only the first pages of the compositions).

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Project 2: “Ground Up”, 2017, oil paint on cardboard, plywood, and foam boards, assorted dimensions

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[160] Assignment: “Avoiding”

I’m Okay 

I’m okay

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I’m very tired. The walls of my mind are closing in.

Something’s wrong and I’m so close to finishing.

Well, it’s very hard to appear calm when one’s hungry.

Dilapidated soul – torn structures.

Rain.

Hopeful. Doubtful. Uncontrollable baseness.

Greediness of the generations; I feel it in my core and my… iterations.

What does it even mean to care so much that one falls betwixt judgements?

A Wind…

The fallen... a moment of silence.

Maybe the embarrassment will help me find more emotions?

I was noticed in my nostalgia.

I’m too vague and it puts me in danger.

Exhausted.

Fallen in love; risen in lust.

Nothing can be unlearned easily.

Damaged weapons and stolen goods in our voices.

Nothing I write makes sense.

Shouldn’t be repeated.

Nothing in recursion… recursion.

Stressing the stressed.

Once again… too vague.

I sleep through this lifetime.

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Blue

Blue.

Blue is what I think of.

But blue can mean many things.

Bruises, the sky, social media applications, eyes, sadness, tranquility.

It depends on the person.

I guess it depends on me right now.

This item.

It means nothing to me.

This image.

Means a lot to others.

Something I maintain a neutrality towards and yet…

Yet I feel drawn towards it.

It requires too much from me.

More than I can handle at the moment.

At this moment, I can barely handle anything.

Everything is going well for me and yet I feel this way.

There must be something wrong with me.

This image is vague like a memory.

But it holds no memories in my mind.

It must be me, then?

I don’t even know.

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Project 2: Re-living Traumas (detail).

Added for more clarity/understanding.

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Project 2: Re-Living Traumas, 2017, digital photographs, 8.5 x 11″

For this project, I revisited sites where traumatic events happened to me and took a picture of myself.

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Robert Frank - Tear Down Event,  2017, inkjet on paper, assorted dimensions.

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You Don’t Know ___ Like I Do (insp.), 2017, note cards and foam board, assorted dimensions 

Failed midterm project. 

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Project 1: Using What I Have (detail)

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Project 1: Using What I Have, 2016, oil paints, obsidian, other rocks, and human blood on canvas, plywood, or cardboard, various dimensions

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Untitled - Assignment: Rethinking Representation (unedited ver.), 2017, digital photographs, 8.5 x 11″

I couldn’t find a picture of the final (and edited) series but here are some of the prints. The assignment was that we all write down a place from our memories without naming it and the other person would try to recreate it through photography.

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[160] Assignment 1: “Numbers”

829633426685-239628334331-2733322-59418915397785586527838339;56313377791589694034338433418974334843203903;2635634858249453553494494294239;263563485548652795841589659361653163546151868;9459341236974370566728479994294569322632244973282536339

;143234319962953659654686559214395634253494323546597633425163563401860;494261543129639695686869761438686928655638401860;69743199614315344859327009459;

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1282153656341863490241991518625762863928296348-266316-585396394569230-;82165767316865595312731686593221296334909441869;2973568652928709316356341037583-5634359329638163169563481631695634999;1695733526836316531988328565634325816363529414944;83969528265953563486-772596328659334909563626367658738239638316685563549763163533973695686539239;

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 [Translations]

I wonder why it’s considered a “success” to fail at committing suicide.

The accumulation of perceived failure drives people

Whether it is for better or for worse.

Whether it brings motivation to change and try again,

Or to erase your empty husk full of worthlessness from existence.

 Are we really so bent on trying to save others before we try to understand their pain?

For what reason do you think you have in knowing their pain?

You really are a terrible support.

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As I watch the raindrops fall against my window I wonder, “Why can’t I be one of those?”

I want my meaning to be as meaningless as one drop of rain.

Something so simple and therapeutic – there goes one, and another, and another…

An object which can be alike with the rest, and yet so far off.

I do not wish to be the rain – just one single drop.

Then when my time is done I can hit the ground and become nothing else.

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Set yourself for something better than you deserve and you will know that you’re still disappointing.

You try so hard to get beneath the feet of those who are supposed to garner support and yet you end up looking like such a fool.

Such an idiot. A mediocre attempt at a pathetic existence.

Why do you keep trying? It is so hard to die, I guess that chains every one of us down.

Your mind wants to hold on to some sort of hope, as twisted as it has become.

It won’t let you die.

Your body keeps pushing in the basest form it can, no matter how starved you keep it.

It won’t let you die.

Are you still alive for yourself or for something else?

There are no wrong answers.

They won’t let you die.

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The Final Gallery Exhibit! (Minus Sins of the Father...)

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My Family as Music, 2016, oil paint and sharpie on strung cardboard lids, 15″ x 22″ each cardboard

Videos (click link): Front View and Side View (not with music)

Music made for the piece (click link): Link