Finding Your Inner MozArt Contest – Digital

This post contains submissions for the Finding Your Inner MozArt contest – Digital Art (in alphabetical order by artist name). Artists were asked to create art work with the themes of music and/or synesthesia. See What is Synesthesia? This art contest is sponsored by the Mainly Mozart nonprofit. The winning art will be auctioned at the Mozart & The Mind gala at Oceanside Museum April 11, 2020. Read the submission guidelines here. The judge for this contest is professional artist and art instructor Will Weston. Winning artists will be notified in February.

Thank you for all the great art that was submitted. The other category which will be coming soon is Fine Art.

Angela Weddle

Angela Weddle is a locally, nationally, and internationally exhibiting visual artist working in digital and traditional media. Weddle’s work is informed by a drawing based practice. Weddle seeks to create a sensory immersive experience with her art from a range of diverse influences including autism, cerebral palsy, synesthetic aspects of music, especially jazz, light, sound, rhythm, daily life, urban and natural landscapes, and perceptual and psychological experiences.

Austin John Jones

My name is Austin Jones, and I am an artist and a passionate, kind person who wants to use his art to make the world a better place. My art is about things that matter to me: my stories, characters, my struggles with autism, my friends and family. My art is an ever-changing entity; no two pieces I create are the same. Some pieces appeal to my interests, and sometimes my art is about the very subject of change, because as my life changes, so does my art. I am on the Autism Spectrum. While this is a fact, something I live with, it doesn’t define who I am. I do my best each and every day, and that is what is most important to me—that my disability doesn’t hinder me, or weigh me down. Because just like everyone else in this world, I have the right to live my life the way I want to.

I hope my art will make a difference, open people’s eyes, and bring a whole new perspective to how wonderful our world can be. One of my dreams is to make the world smile. I hope through my art work and the things I create that I help the world to be a place of acceptance and happiness. In my Beethoven and Mozart pieces, I wanted to bring them to life in a new way so people could see them and appreciate them. To me, it is important for people to appreciate people’s art no matter what the person looks like.

Caitlin Meleski

“A Quiet Night at Home” is almost a self-portrait. As a graphic designer, days can be quite stressful sometimes. In all honesty, I hate it when people come up to me and say that being a graphic designer is the easiest career choice when it’s actually the opposite. When I am having one of those days, I just want to spend the night listening to my favorite music on my phone until I fall asleep. Music helps me ease my anxiety and either helps me relax or get me moving to achieve my goals, depending on the genre of music I am listening to.

I am the type of person who would listen to music at any opportunity I get. “Ruby on the Subway” features the more cartoon-ish side of the work that I do. I have always loved the art style of the old school cartoons from the 1920s/30s (think “Steamboat Willie”-era Mickey Mouse and Popeye). This piece features my original character, Ruby Heart, listening to her favorite songs while riding the subway home after a long day of work. My dream job as a designer is to live in New York City doing poster designs for Broadway productions.

Caitlin Meleski is an autistic freelance graphic artist from Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. “In my traditional artwork, I sketch out my concept using traditional pencil and paper, then, after scanning said sketch into my computer, I use Illustrator and/or Photoshop to finalize them into cartoon-like portraits. Using Illustrator can be intimidating at times, but patience is key to achieve successful results.”

Dylan Somberg

My name is Dylan Somberg. I am 25 years old and I have Autism. I created Blue Jazz by first taking a photo of a portrait model’s hand, a man that was playing a guitar. I was drawn to his hand due to the texture of his hand and that his fingers were making music by touching the strings. I then took the photo and digitally enhanced it with Photoshop. I like the color blue and it reminds of jazz music. I like all kinds of music. Thank you for inspiring me to enter in your contest. I enjoy art.

Hope McKee

This entry depicts the bright and lively “Allegro” from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart This musical piece was a natural fit for Hope to use as inspiration for this year’s theme of Synesthesia.

Hope is from Nashville, TN and was diagnosed with autism as a toddler. As a disabled artist, Hope strives to showcase we are all differently-abled, doing her part to change the world. She works in a variety of media (painting, collage, mixed media, glass, ceramics, photography, drawing, and digital art) with a current emphasis in illustration.

Isabella Terpstra

Art for me is my main passion because is more than just a hobby. It is an emotional release, whether that be negative or positive emotions. My art reflects what I’m feeling, and a lot of that is inspired by my personal belief in inner strength. As a female in today’s society, I still see that gender inequality still exists. I am a very strong believer in equal treatment, so I often draw myself showing confidence and power. I also channel that strength and emotions through martial arts. I am very dedicated to it, and it helped me to create a more confident image of myself. However, that wouldn’t have been possible if it weren’t for the shooting at my school. I was a freshmen at the time, and after it, I was never the same.

Through those months, art became my best friend, I drew all the time for weeks before school started back up. It was also at that time that redrew my own original characters, giving them new designs. I also gave them individual back stories that I still continue to develop, along with their personalities. The shooting also was the reason that I decided to actually try martial arts, and today, I am thankful I did. Because of martial arts and my drawings, I have been able to build myself back up from the shooting, and I am now stronger. I am an independent young woman, and I have decided that art means more to me than just a side hobby. It is something that has allowed me to not only grow, but heal, mentally. I want to take this talent that I have somewhere, and allow it to grow more. The shooting also helped to reveal to both my and my parents that I have Asperger’s. Throughout the years, it was clear that I struggled socially, and to handle my emotions. Talking about them to anybody at all was difficult, sometimes feeling impossible. I’d always find that art would be the way that I would express these emotions. With the help of a therapist, my parents, my art, and martial arts, I was able to overcome the challenges that came from the shooting as well as Asperger’s.

Joshua Sharpe

I was motivated to create this piece of art because there’s so much music that can be found in the world, so many different types and some you may have never experienced before. All of them are waiting for you to find them, to step inside the city to experience. You just have to open the gate and take a walk around.

How does it relate to the theme of the contest?

Dubstep is a very different type of music. It is music filled with the sounds of heavy bases and woven synthesizers. It is unique and speaks to me in a way other music does not. It’s not for everyone and that’s part of what draws me to it.

Kimberly Gerry-Tucker

Kimberly Gerry Tucker resides in Seymour Connecticut, (USA) where she is a software tester, author and artist who enjoys raising insects and building faery homes. Motivation for creating this piece was the gift of an iPad from Apple and all the possibilities of exploring expression through a new medium. This digital art is a medium Kim seldom partakes in, as her usual mediums of choice are acrylic and collage.

Kim has felt throughout her life (she is in her fifth decade) that music is personal, and necessary, like a cross-circuit training for the neurons which is essential to mental health. This art depicts how the music/mind/mental health connection illuminates the soul. Studying the brain has always been a passionate interest for Kim and lately the recent link with music helping folks with Alzheimers has been a topic of interest. Kim has had gene research done and has found that she has a 50/50 chance of developing it herself one day, as her grandmother did. The artwork shows how the brain is deeply affected by, and like a healing salve, soothed by melody. As a child, Kim assigned meaning to colors and numerals and these meanings are still relevant in her life today.

Nick Gustafson

The many different colors of music with the peace and love that it inspires.

Robbie IeRubino

My name is Robbie Ierubino (21), and I am an autistic American studying Graphic Design at Staffordshire University in Stoke-on-Trent, England. I have developed a style I call “shapism.” Shapism is a collection of shapes creating a minimalist body in different metamorphic forms through the use of colors, imagery, typography, and light. Through this form of visual communication, each piece is explained through its title.

And for my submission of the MozArt contest, I created a digital art piece based on a new song I’ve listened to. It’s called “Frail State of Mind” because it is based on a song by The 1975 with the same title and its about anxiety. It shows a spectrum-colored squares forming a human brain and a creak where its points connect with the slashes featured in the typography of the song’s lyrics. And for the “synesthesia” effect, I want to include the link to the song for my work (https://youtu.be/x3B2cpy7ob4), so that the viewers wouldn’t look at artwork, but to “hear” the artwork. I created the art piece based on the song because when I first listened to it, the sound, lyrics, and music gave me some flashbacks of me having experiences of anxiety sometimes. And based on the sense I had while listening to “Frail State of Mind,” by The 1975, I was think of music as a helping tool of inspiration to create my works of art!

WenofZen

Part of my autism expression is a hypersensitivity to sounds. Even the smallest noise can distract me from not only conversation in a restaurant, but reading a menu becomes a challenge. The reason is because sounds often present themselves to my brain in a visual manner. That visual image can superimpose itself mentally on top of what I am physically seeing with my eyes. Although sound images “look” different to me than a physical image, my brain interprets the sound by converting it into patterns that my brain watches.

Most noise looks and feels like constant static. However, I noticed from a very young age that certain musical compositions appeared and moved around my brain in a magnificently splendid way! I also noticed that certain classical composers had their own unique “look” when I heard them.

The music of Mozart is some of my favorite because of the dancing colors his compositions produce. The sounds are clear, bright, and full of representative designs that are simple yet elegant. The notes become figures which dance gleefully from one synapses to the next. This art represents how my ears can see the music of Mozart.