CHANNELS
A digital illustration of a crystal cocoon hanging off a thin branch jutting out of the ground behind which blue rings of iridescence shine ou
Home Art 4.0, Issue 4 Summer 2021, Visual Art, Visual Art 4.0

Brittney Frantece — Digital Illustration

July 23, 2021 | by

Brittney Frantece — Digital Illustration

My Rebirth

A digital illustration of a crystal cocoon hanging off a thin branch jutting out of the ground behind which blue rings of iridescence shine out.

“Cocoon”

A digital illustration of text that says “re-creating myself” in a multitude of colors from the other pieces including indigo, purple, blue, golden, pink and several gradients therein.

“Recreating Myself”

A digital illustration in which at center is a human figure in blue looking at the viewer with a golden glow in their eyes, a set of blue spirals in the palm which is also lit in gold, and butterfly wings attached to the figure’s back with linework and hues of blue, purple, and yellow.

“God”

digital illustrations | 5 x 5

Artist’s Statement

 

I created My Rebirth during a time of transformation for me. This Illustration series allows me to think of myself— my persona, aesthetics, body, desires, needs— as something that I construct. Which then allows me to bring in my imagination. Which is almost always in another world. The first in the series “The Cocoon” was created during a time when I felt a sense of somatic ambiguity— I felt like mush, but not in a bad way. I didn’t quite know who I was, but I knew I wasn’t who I was before. I felt raw, confused, and excited. The text “Recreating Myself” was when I was able to ask this mush feeling questions, and then I understood what the feeling was. To put it bluntly, it was me in the act of self creation, and I saw power in this. “God” helped me to honor that power by allowing me to ask, who would I be if I created myself in an image of my own liking.

Brittney Frantece is a writer, artist, educator, curator, and PhD candidate in the English Department at the University of Washington (UW). She studies Black feminist speculative fiction and art through cultural studies readings that are centered around concepts of speculation, experimentation, surrealism, and horror. In her dissertation, she considers the ways Black literary and visual arts distort reality to reveal the ecstatic practices of Black communities and peoples, herself included, to transcend limitations and queer reality. She teaches for UW’s Expository Writing Program and has conducted workshops for The Northwest School and Henry Arts Gallery. Her writing has appeared in Variable West, Black Embodiments Studios Journals, Hawai‘i Review chapbook, and various art writing collections. Her art has been exhibited at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery in Seattle, The Manifest and Lana Lane Studios in Honolulu, and The Beans Gallery in Chicago.