Bella is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin and graduated from Santa Clara University with a Bachelors of Arts in Studio Art and Spanish Studies in June of 2021.
I am a mixed media artist whose body of work is created with charcoal, acrylic paint and spray paint manipulated with stencils. My portraits of the human figure are modified with symmetry and symbols that help lead the viewers eyes through the work. The work isn’t planned extensively beforehand, but rather is created through a natural flow of ideas that often transforms dramatically throughout time. I incorporate the various layers to explore and "see-through" the process of making a completed piece.
My works are often about starting conversations between abstract and living elements. By focusing on the exaggeration of the physical form, I encourage viewers to explore how color and shape add and subtract from realism. I integrate many aspects of life, such as tiger lilies from my childhood home, to process these ideas for myself. My use of symbols of femininity or the physicality of exploring my place in the world as a young black woman speaks to a self that cannot be expressed with words.
Regarding my senior show works, the titles, “His First,” “Well-Spoken,” and “My Real Hair,” all address the stereotypes I have experienced on a romantic and platonic level. My work asks the question: Who am I before I am seen as a black body? By using my experience with sexuality and identity, my work reconstructs the boundaries I create between myself and others, between my inner and outer self. By demonstrating this inner self that is hidden behind years of social conditioning, I empower myself to exist as this genuine self through reconstructed traditional media. My charcoal portraits allow me to depict race and gender as something more complex than black-and-white.