Artist Statement

My art journey began with simple drawings and sketches when I was young. I remember dreaming about going to an art school to pursue a career in animation. However, as social media started to rise in popularity, I fell into a bad headspace and quit altogether for many years due to the inability to accept that my abilities were not on par with others. After a couple of years and a few degree changes, I finally found myself enjoying art once more and started falling in love with all the areas of art again. Today, I am a digital artist with a lot of my work coming to life during my time at Penn State with a wide range of areas in design such as graphic design, collages, web design, app design, animation, photography, and videography. Most projects completed were either class projects or for my place of work – the Uniontown Public Library. Here I've helped create static one-page sites for our children's summer program, designed posters for physical/digital use, and shot/edited videos for our YouTube channel.

Many of my projects use soft and colorful elements as I'm more drawn to positive aspects rather than darker tones. I've been leaning towards testing out visiting vintage elements that can be incorporated into modern spaces. Since I fell out of art due to my own negative headspace, I now try to avoid any dark tones to overtake my art and focus on the positive areas I can highlight for viewers to see. Rather than making sad, scary, or aggressive imagery, I aim to encompass lighthearted, bright, and overall joyful elements. I'd rather use imagery that can uplift myself and the viewer rather than have a negative impact. Though sometimes tackling negative situations in art can be beneficial for many, as I've come to learn in some of my more recent work.

This can especially be seen in my latest collage work, where I used many old vintage advertisements and addressed the topic of climate change. I chose this as a thematic signification for my collages since the subject doesn't seem to be visually discussed often within the art industry. It's essential to show viewers how the climate is changing and that our planet is being impacted daily by our decisions. The collages are made with Photoshop and tend to use a happy/bright image with negative elements from climate change overlayed across it or worked into the original design. These collages have helped further my use of thinking creatively in depicting something that isn't always visible to people in their day-to-day lives. Knowing that human interaction has caused many planetary issues, it's often a hard pill to swallow. To bring further awareness to the topic and show it in contrasting fashion, i.e., happy vintage advertisements with the darker signification of climate change. Even though the matter tends to be depressing, it should be shown off more in the art world to bring further discussion to the almost inevitable reality today.

My projects tend to vary in design, concept, material, and techniques. I'm still exploring a style that I like the best as so many areas interest me. However, throughout my time at Penn State, I've been able to improve on these skills and hope to develop them even further as I explore many more experiences and possibilities in life. Throughout my time in this program, I've been able to learn photo/video editing skills, animation, and basic graphic design. I'd highly recommend anyone interested in art to look into the DMD program since it is so broad and teaches various skills needed in many different art fields.

Destini Klippi