MONTERO / FOXY / LUXURY

Artist's Statement and Commentary:

My goal was to create hyper-realistic portraits with the addition of jewelry, bright backgrounds, light glare, and my artistic signature - sparkle. I truly enjoy using surrealism to enhance the creativity and excellence these celebrities uniquely embody. The three celebrities conveyed in my pieces are Lil Nas X in the piece “Montero”, Foxy Brown in the piece “Foxy” and Alexa Demie in the piece “Luxury”. I wanted to do my best to find celebrities that fit into the general theme I wanted to portray - which is glamour.

"Montero":

Lil Nas X has a majestic sort of glamour to him - he screams new-age, over the top, and he is unafraid to delve into fantasy. For him, I was liberal with my use of surrealism and added many fun aspects to this piece such as bubbles, rainbows, and armor.

"Foxy":

For Foxy Brown, I gave her an extremely simplistic background and was limited with my surrealism. Foxy gives me classical beauty, like a 21st-century rap Aubrey Hepburn. I did not want to obscure any of this simple elegance by adding characters.

"Luxury":

Alexa Demie has more of a regal glamour, refined and completely intentional. I can see her being the “it-girl” for centuries. because of this, I was happy to put her in a string of pearls, a mid-century-inspired dress, and adorned her background and leaves like a French renaissance painting.

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Sasha Roberts is a 19-year-old visual artist living independently in New York, NY. She identifies as an LGBTQ+ black woman and has attended NYU Tisch School of the Arts with a 3.7 GPA. She also studied technological interactivity in the arts at Hunter, combining her knowledge of code with design principles, and graduated with her bachelors in the Summer of 2022. She is now enrolled at Columbia. She currently works as a Creative Computing Teacher for a College Preparatory Charter School. Sasha focuses her artwork on the topic of identity and how it projects itself into the world. She enjoys working with digital art and using surrealism to enhance her artwork

In 2016, (age 13), her work was featured in the MET for the PSART competition. The work selected was a charcoal and pencil drawing of a baby peacock. In 2019, Sasha flexed her writing skills - winning a Gold and Silver Key from the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards for two pieces of memoir. She additionally was featured in the MET for the second time in 2019 for a conté crayon self-portrait. In 2021, she was featured in the public exhibit Whistling In the Dark by Save Art Space, curated by artists Swoon and Gianni Lee. Her artwork was on display on Flushing Ave and Waverly Ave in Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been consistently displayed in salty magazine- a magazine dedicated to breaking down racial and sexual assumptions and prejudices. It has also been published in Reclamation Magazine - a publication focused on identity-based stories. In 2020 she was happily displayed in NYUnited - a cross-university variety show. In 2021, her work was displayed and sold in the SixSummit Gallery located in the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Time Square.

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Edited by: Ava Emilione