Artist: Jean Iwohara
Exhibition: Glass Eyes
Media: Painting, Illustration, Sculpture
Gallery: Dr. Maxine Merlino Gallery
Website: jeaniwohara.weebly.com
Instagram: @jelly.jean
Jean Iwohara is an undergraduate student at California State University Long Beach studying in the College of the Arts as an Illustration major. Iwohara is working toward her Bachelor of Fine Arts in illustration. She is currently in her last semester of her fifth year here as an illustration major. Her work in this specific gallery was less oriented toward illustration, which she describes as commercial or editorial work, and was more geared toward painting. Illustration, in her perspective is more finalized or commercial. She mostly works in acrylic and gouache when creating her art and attempts to work in digital if possible depending on the work of art.
Within the gallery, Iwohara had on display two sculptures and 6 paintings. As a whole, the colors were pastel and vibrant. Iwohara used colors like pastel blues, deep purples, and bright and light pinks. The art all had the same tone brought by the overwhelming purples and pinks. The sculpture that caught my attention was braided. It was small in size, and made you move closer to see the details. This specific sculpture had many intertwined lines forming a sort of braid or rope that enveloped the purple figure. There were also copper chains attaching the limbs (arms and legs), which had been dismembered, back to the torso. The braids and chains had the same texture of being looped within each other with links. The main colors, purple and pink, were vivid but not bright. They complimented each other well for the work. As for her other pieces, there were many geometric shapes and straight lines within the majority of the works. The purple and pink also appeared in the majority of the rest of her pieces in the gallery.
The works of art presented in this gallery by Iwohara were about anxiety and the internal and external forces that create that anxiety. In her work, she portrayed intimacy and femininity in different ways. For the braided sculpture, Iwohara portrayed the pressures of femininity through the braids coming from the hair, a strong symbol of a woman’s femininity, trapping her and strangling her. The figure in the piece is disembodies to symbolize that pressure that comes with having to live up to the standards of portraying yourself as feminine even if that is not who you are. In Iwohara’s dance with me illustration, there is a definitely struggle between femininity and the individual’s personality. It seems like a constant internal fight between fitting in and learning the ways of being a woman and being true to yourself. The same work expresses the anxieties of growing in a world with overwhelmingly incredible but also harmful technological advances. The looming factory in the background i presumably the one that created the exquisite dancing robot girl. Although the product is pristine, the effects of its construction and fabrication are not. Such themes provide for a deep reflection at our own world when reviewing the work.
As a viewer, I related deeply to the works. The themes of femininity struck a cord with me. As a female, I struggle with not meeting the expectations of society of being feminine. Looking through the work, I personally felt the struggles of having to do what society expects of me versus doing what I want to do. Being in the Computer Science major, which is a male-dominated major, I feel a push and pull between wanting to portray myself more like the people in that major versus the pull of having to express myself as more feminine. My personal perspective is that no person should be forced to express certain long-held views of being feminine or masculine. In our Art class, some students expressed their views that women should be the people to care for a baby after it is born because they are more maternal and just better at the task by nature and although I do feel as though I would be maternal toward my child, I do not feel that it should be expected of me to care for the child. In my life, I feel that my husband will be the one to take care of the baby after it is born for more practical reasons. Obviously I may have to pump my breast milk to support the child, but as a person who is gearing toward having a career in the technology field, it would be more beneficial financially for me rather than my husband to go back to work. Being expected to be the “stay at home mom” places a pressure of being judged on me. So, seeing those inner thoughts displayed in such a beautiful way in the works in the gallery were powerful. Iwohara displayed great topics in a very compelling way.
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