KARLY HOU

From fifth grade through high school, I worked under the instruction of Mr. Yunhua Fang at Fang Art Studio, where I worked mostly in the media of graphite and charcoal drawing, acrylic painting, and printmaking. We focused on abstraction, idea formation, and technical skills.

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My younger work delves into my experiences of growing up as a girl with all the ups and downs of adolescence. This is a special period of my life where I am constantly learning about the world around me, while also trying to make sense of who I am: who do I want to be, how do I want to interact with the world, and what matters to me? Other pieces explore the beauty in mundane objects (for example, chairs) and the intersection between art and technology. Both art and technology are integral to my identity, and while I’ve seen how art empowers my technological creations to be human-oriented and empathetic, my piece Silicon Suburbs also demonstrates how tech can help create art. I digitally colorized, spliced, and arranged SEM images of silicon wafers to create a visually dynamic triptych.

 

Often, my pieces begin with a message I want to convey or a problem I want to highlight. From there, I experiment with conceptual sketches, different compositions, and varying color schemes before creating my final work. Many of my pieces also start with observations: I might draw the shadows cast by a chair or the texture of tree bark. From there, I use abstraction, deconstruction, and reconstruction to capture the essence of the object and its beauty while adding new visual interest. I strive to create novel compositions.

 

I draw inspiration from the work of the Bauhaus and artists including Henri Matisse, Oswaldo Guayasamín, Egon Schiele, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Stuart Davis, Andre Derain, Robert Antoine Pinchon, Franz Kline, Wassily Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, Wang Huaiqing, Xu Bing, and Chen Haiyan (oops this just turned into a long list of artists I love).