Abby McPhillips is multi-media artist from Thousand Oaks, California. With an emphasis in printmaking, she investigates a connection between the mental and physical realms. She displays her work as a sense of self, identity, and exploration of mind. Utilizing the process of a printmaking and its multiple forms, she expresses the idea of oneness through self reflection.
I have never viewed my art as a solo effort; the pieces I create are a collaboration between myself and the medium I’m working with. Printmaking is the outlet through which I express the world I inhabit mentally. This series of work focuses on bringing an intangible realm to a physical one. Through the use of printmaking I am able to externalize the environment my consciousness occupies. These pieces each hold fragments of my life; the experiences and thoughts that I held at the time of creation are observable in the intentional and subconscious aesthetic choices made in each piece. The assorted styles in this collection reflect the undulation of self in my life; this self wavers and evolves throughout my pieces, sometimes completely straying away from what it has known and other times recalling its past identity. Living through a pandemic has enforced a time of self reflection. Comfort was something that I had to find within myself instead of others and the life I used to occupy. I hope through these pieces to express the oneness and solace I was able to find through contemplation in solitude.
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Visit Irwin 2021: Fabricating Solace exhibition in the 3D virtual gallery.
The 2021 Irwin Scholars are Abby McPhillips, Caroline Alfonso, Cassidy Skillman, Chloe Calhoun, Connor Alexander, Kalen Meeks, Klytie Xu, Louisa Balderas, Lucinda Gold, Saul Villegas, Sydney Geisinger, and Zoe Forsyth.