The Color of Music
National Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated in the United States from September 15 to October 15 each year. It honors the history, culture, and contributions of Hispanic and Latino Americans. For the next four weeks, we will feature the work of Hispanic and Latino American Artists.
Brooklyn, NY Eugenia Mello
The work of Eugenia Mello leans heavily on her heritage and culture, but it wasn’t until she moved out of Latin America that she realized how much of her work and expression was influenced by her background.
“I realized I have carried the music, the tastes, flavors, sounds, and nature from my childhood in Chile, Argentina, Costa Rica and Venezuela with me. The rhythm of all these places are a part of me and thus a part of my work.”
See
Let’s look at her work and see if we can see the influence of music in her visual art.
Installation at the Atlantic Avenue Barclays Center
Detail
A Big Wave for Patagonia: Proposal to Install
Guggenheim promotional illustration
Mello was invited by the Guggenheim Museum to create illustrations promoting exhibitions on Vasily Kandinsky and Etel Adnan. With full creative freedom, she immersed herself in the experience, imagining colors and shapes cascading from the paintings onto the museum's rotunda. Her vision interpreted the Guggenheim as a space for marveling at art, using its architecture as an energy chamber. She created illustrations of larger-than-life visitors flowing through the space, echoing Kandinsky's shapes and Adnan’s vibrant colors.
Say
Music and movement are clearly important to Mello. Besides the dancing figures, how has she used color, line, and shape to illustrate music and movement in her art?
Her sketches give us a glimpse into her process. Study her sketches and note the specific changes she made. How do her changes enhance her art illustrations?
Do
I love the concept of synesthesia and thinking of ways to makes music visible and colors felt. I love turning feelings into motion and using that as a vehicle for communication in whatever medium I am working with. -Eugenia Mello
Synesthesia is when your brain routes sensory information through multiple unrelated senses, causing you to experience more than one sense simultaneously.
What would happen if some of your senses overlapped? What would that experience feel like? In this special 360° episode, you will see what it's like to have synesthesia. Make sure to get the full experience! To “look around” drag the image with the mouse.
Get out some colorful drawing materials and some paper. You will listen to music and draw what you hear. Let the music guide your lines. There is no right answer. It is about the process, not the product. Try to select different genres of music, how does Jazz look different from Classical or R & B? Fill in using colors that feel “right” with each piece.
How do your drawings illustrate the music? Did drawing the music make you hear it differently?
About Eugenia Mello
I am an illustrator, graphic designer and art director. I identify as Argentinian, was born in Lima, Peru, and was raised in Central America and the Caribbean.
My work is rooted in the joy that I find in the diverse vibrancy of humans: their way of moving, their tempo, their flavor. Being an only child and having moved many times as a kid, I think I developed a talent for observing behaviors. Later, I developed a love for admiring and studying the details that make each of us unique and the abundance of that beauty. So, in every piece I make, be it editorial or branding/advertising or a picture book, I try to incorporate music and different sounds by drawing or building characters with specific gestures and motions that evoke the power and personality of their individual beats.
Instagram, X, Behance, Facebook, Linkedin, eugeniamello.com
Twin Cities Readers! Interested in tapping into your creativity and chilling out on a Saturday morning? Make a beautiful fall Circle Weaving with me!
Saturday, September 28, 2024, 10:00 AM -11:30 AM
Sign up now @ https://www.heartspacetherapy.org/events.../circle-weaving
Join Wonder Mob, a community of ‘wonderers’ like you! Please share your reflections with me by replying to this post, or post and tag my Wonder Wander Facebook or Instagram pages!
