New Website

Hello!

If you don't know me and have stumbled upon my blog, I suggest you take a look at my thesis to get an idea, but if you want the short version: I don't like empty things.

This blog also is a small selection of some work I did while a student at MSU Denver.

I am currently a freelance illustrator and painter.

The ship is boarding.

Thank you for browsing my student work.


~Salina Marie Gomez

https://www.salinamariegomez.com/

Painted Belly Casts

A dear friend of mine wanted her belly to be cast and painted. She ordered casting strips from a medical supply store online and we created her belly cast from her first pregnancy (a boy), in May of 2008. She wanted a lot of blues. I later painted the cast according to her taste in regards to color palette and imagery.

For her second pregnancy (a girl), she wanted more feminine imagery, and for there to be a lot of reds. Her wishes were my command! To this day I hope that they are holding up well. They were my first casts, and after doing some research online, I found that there is a way to make the texture of the medical gauze to disappear, which is basically to get plaster and put another layer on top of the cast after it dries, and then sand it down so its really smooth, like porcelain. If I do more of these I will use the smoothing method to relieve myself of the headache of painting on a texture. Other than that, it was a joy to do these... a labor of love.

From video journals to painting the icons of a new religion...

         An ongoing video art project that should take me well into half of the year 2010, "Global Proposal for a New Emoticon" (working title) will address issues of human adaptability in an increasingly techno-based socio-cultural experience that marks the 21st century as a cybernetic one. Out of the cold emptiness that is satellite, networked connectivity... comes the emergence of new symbols and icons that are rapidly being downloaded into the collective psyche. From a realm where nothing is real, symbols are born into the real, and then recycle themselves again and again back into the unreal, until eventually all symbols are an untraceable mix of culture, technology, science, politics, religion and human emotion... the latter of which is the area of interest that I base this video project upon. 

         Out of context and out of place, many of the daily uploads on the project's YouTube channel - underscoreblank - are intensely personal, while others are over-generalized, banal daily experiences. A further description of the project can be read about in the "About Me" section on the channel's homepage. The culmination of about 400 video uploads will result in one final video painting... a didactic icon that moves with the times.

         I am very concerned about transparency in art production and exhibiting, and this informs my rationale behind my commitment to keeping my process public and available to everyone (everyone with an internet connection, hardware and software... that is). Process is the bulk of the message - both psychological and technical - and the final product, an index that points to it.

         Keep up with me on my channel, or just wait for the exhibition in 2010. 

On the Idea of Painting

"What It Is Not" and "What It Is"
diptych set

Acrylic and oil on canvas. Each one is 2ft x 4ft. These were the last real paintings I did before switching to digital art as my concentration (previously I was registered in painting). Still haven't really picked up the brush, except for some recent video/performance pieces that deal with my criticisms of the medium that I used to use all the time, prior to this thing called a fine art education. It really is amazing, the processes we go through, to find out what it is we are trying to say and why we are trying to say it.

2007 Alexan Collegian Mural Contest, 1st Place Winner

Out of submissions by Colorado undergraduates, three finalists were chosen to paint their proposed murals on the inside walls of the fairly new Alexan CityCenter in Englewood, CO... each muralist had roughly 45 days to complete their mural, a dimension of 30 ft. x 10 ft.

I wish I had more photos of the mural... keep meaning to go back and take more pictures. I researched and photographed about 50 key locations in Englewood that had either public art or art & recreational ammenities & events, and included more than half of those references in the mural proposal (and final painting). The panorama was of Englewood and as you walked down the hall you could see the changing of the seasons occur throughout the mural. It's a slender hall and you can't really see the mural all at once; the photo tells the story.

On top of four other classes and a job and the Drawsome organization, I would go here at night and work late late late. I was a slave to this project. On the reception night I got first place, and the funny giant check to go with it. And I think I gave a half-drunk acceptance schpeel on public art and community engagement and education and what-not... whatever man, they clapped.

Selected oil paintings, 2007

"Christopher Lee" oil on canvas (one pigment: cadmium red and lots of turpentine, wipe-away method)

"Cesqua" oil on canvas