Artist of the week: Mersadies Heskett

Cora Astin, Entertainment Editor

Mersadies Heskett —

 

What are you doing in art right now?

“So I’m in AP Art and I’m making my concentration. My concentration is on mental disorders and disorders on the brain, because I feel like they are not really being understood the right way. So many people are going around and saying that they have all these different problems. Then, people are so quick to assume that they are making it up. So I’m making actual 3-D figures and depicting what a mental disorder or mental illness of the brain would look like. Right now I’m making substance abuse, it’s a ceramic brain and it has a hand coming out with a cigarette and an alcohol bottle. Then, it has a needle type things, and I’m going to put chains over it to show how like weight bearing and chained down you are once you start an addictive substance. I also have a wire rib cage I made, comes out and I‘m stretching thin fabric over it to show anorexia. Like how the ribs stick out and how the body forms once you have anorexia. For down syndrome, you know how they have the extra chromosome, I’m making a wood inlay piece. Which is basically where you take a dremel and you carve out in wood, I’m going to show the extra chromosome in the piece.”

 

What class are you in currently?

“AP Studio Art and Ceramics 2”

 

How did you chose your focus?

“At first I was doing cultures and there was just not a lot of interest for it. I wasn’t really into it, I wasn’t really able to design things. But, I want to be a psychologist when I get older. So going into it I’ve already taken psychology and I’ve taken a few outside psychology courses, so I already know a lot of about the human brain. It’s just a lot easier to design things. I also have a lot of people in my life who have had substance abuse and I’ve had anorexia. It’s just a lot of easy things that I can take from my own brain and put into pieces. So it’s something for me to put pieces. It’s something personal to me, but at the same time I want my art to actually say something and show something.”

 

How did you get into art in the first place?

“I think when I was like five. I used to stand on my porch and paint the sky. Then, the elementary school art classes I was always excelling in that. When I got into high school, I took a drawing and painting class. I didn’t like it because I couldn’t draw. I’m in a college art class that is mailed to me and when I’m done I mail it off. That’s like 27 credits of art. I came to the big high school, I didn’t really have anything that I was into except orchestra. So I signed up for jewelry and I’ve taken pretty much every other art course possible at this school.”

 

Who’s inspire you the most to be an artist?

“My dad, probably. He used to draw cartoons for newspapers. Not a lot of people know that because he’s a stuck up mean person. He likes drawing cartoons, he’s the one who signed me up for these art classes when I was 12. I was too young for it at the time, so I’ve been in this college art course since I was 14.”

 

How do you feel like being in the AP Art class has challenged you as an artist?

“Well I have to make seven pieces by spring break and I have one barely almost done. It’s a lot because I changed my concentration halfway through. Being in AP Art, you’re also being a role model, the Jewerly 1 kids are in there now with me. Sometimes I don’t show up which is not good, but I’m always working on my art at home, every time I bring it back there’s a significant difference in what I’ve done. It’s really challenging because I have so much to do. Like we have 12 pieces for half of our portfolio, which is the concentration. Then, we have eight which is the breath. Out of those we have to pick six or seven, which go into our quality one. It’s a lot of designing and building and picking from the ones you made. An artist loves all of their art, but you have to pick the best ones with the best qualities.”

 

Could you paraphrase your style as an artist into a sentence, what would it be?

“My style of art is really to pull on your heartstrings and I want to be the kind of artist that makes you think twice before looking away.”