New Begginnings

Hello! I'm Aiury Cavallo, and I am going into my final year at Oberlin College. This means confronting the scary world of Senior studio and seminars.

Because of this Senior Studio course necessary to completing my Visual Arts major, I have to start a blog! So here's to new beginnings and documenting my work from here on out. To launch this blog I will be writing about where I've been as an artist, where I am now, and where I'll be going over the course of this year.

Where I've been

I never considered myself an artist, but I've always loved to create and experiment with different materials. In high school there were artists all around me and incredible resources for ceramics, studio arts, photography, video production, woodworking, and metal working. This inspired me to explore and learn different ways of creating. I fell in love with manipulating these different mediums, and worked to learn practical skills and artistic skills at my school. This culminated in a project where I decided to teach myself how to use spray paint to make murals rather than just tagging. The picture on the left is one of the walls I painted the summer before going to Oberlin college in 2014

At Oberlin, I spent two years studying without pursuing any artistic projects. At the end of my fourth semester, I realized I needed to consistently create art to function in the academic setting, and jumped at the opportunity to create a sculpture for a final project in the Blues Aesthetic course. This, and a mural project I was commissioned for after my submission to the contest, led me to the art department.

Where I am now

Working on the mural project for the Spanish room in Oberlin's Stevenson Dining hall reminded me how much making art for and with my community is important to me. I wanted to build art and a consistent creative process back into my life. Connecting with the Art department at Oberlin has allowed me to understand my passions and the work that motivates me. I spent the two semesters while I worked on the mural pictured above learning many new skills in a Sculpture class and Woodworking class which redefined my love for art and made me feel confident enough in calling myself an artist.

​Where I am going

Over the course of this year, I plan to hone my skills and build a sustainable artistic practice. I want to find a rhythm for my life that balances academic research, work, and art while blending those three areas as much as possible. A key problem I need to overcome is planning, executing, installing, and most importantly, de-installing my work in a healthy way. This primarily means giving myself the time and space to execute a project, not be afraid to ask for help, and be honest with myself in how much work and time I will need to complete a project. This also means finding ways that I can use my ideas and creations to build community in my jobs and my studies moving past Oberlin. This piece feels easy to me right now, because creating things is an integral part to learning, and education is the field I plan to work in. Regardless, I feel that there will be challenges on this path I cannot see yet, so my goal is to integrate my artistic practice into all aspects of my life and working with others as realistically as I can during my final two semesters. The last piece to my broad plan for the year is to hone my skills in wood working and creating structural environments for people to become immersed in. In the past I have started with simple ideas that I blew out of proportion the more I got excited about working on them. I want to keep my work focused, small, and very intentional every step of the way. My first ideas in executing this plan is building a personal work desk, a jewelry box, and creating a form out of scrap wood to paint on.