Erika Stromberg
Manifestations of a Creative Mind
Videos
Inner Music
In this piece, I explored the connection between painting and music. I spontaneously painted in watercolors without a preconceived notion of what it would look like, and responded to the painting with improvised cello playing.
I allowed my own ‘internal music’ to flow onto the paper with broad, gestural strokes and splashes, while photographing the process in stages. As I progressed, I followed my instincts to emphasize the brushstrokes in pen and radiate outwards from the central point at which I began my painting.
I connected this creative action, or visual emphasis, to a variation on a central melody in music. I edited these series of images into a video with After Effects and added a audio track I created with electric cello and loop pedal.
Sonata of Nostalgia- Music Box
In this work, I continued my exploration of the connection between music and painting. This painting incorporates a music box within my own anatomy. This 'sonata of nostalgia' explored my memories connected to musical objects that I interacted with as a child. The creation of this piece also involved a cross-country collaboration with my family, in order to obtain reference photos and audio samples of the music box.
The delicate, innocent, and quaint sound of the music box elicited a sense of longing that I can’t articulate verbally, so here I’ve attempted to through a combination of self-portraiture and gestural painting.
I photographed this work in stages and compiled them into a video in After Effects. The audio incorporates sound extracted (and altered) from a video of the specific music box depicted, in addition to my experimental electric cello playing with loop pedal.
Integrated Arts Project
I photographed stages of my abstract watercolor painting and placed the photos in succession within a video. I then did a response with kalimba (thumb piano), piano, and cello.
Echo
This excerpt from The Metamorphoses by Ovid beautifully sums up the myth of Echo:
“So she was turned away to hide her face, her lips,
her guilt among the trees,
even their leaves, to haunt caves of the forest, to feed her love on melancholy sorrow which, sleepless, turned her body to a shade, first pale and wrinkled, then a sheet of air,
then bones, which some say turned to thin-worn rocks;
and last her voice remained.
Vanished in forest, far from her usual walks on hills and valleys, she’s heard by all who call; her voice has life.”
-Metamorphoses
I first encountered this excerpt in a book called House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. I immediately loved this work and related to the loneliness and isolation that ensues upon Echo. The words create this beautifully melancholy image in my mind, which I hope to convey in my artwork. Its so fascinating how these complex myths, which people in ancient times held so close arouse from something like an echo in the distance. It reminds us that inspiration can come from anything and can be spontaneous.