Michelle Graves is currently an MFA student at Columbia College, Chicago in the Interdisciplinary Arts and Media program. Her work is based on ideas of self-identity combining scientific research and personal experiences into a "poetic ideal." She is secretary of her departments student organization, IMAGe Unit.
   She resides in Chicago as freelance graphic/web designer and Photoshop retoucher. Click HERE for client list. She is also assistant to Jason Salavon, new media artist.
   She is also a skater and former Marketing Manager for the not-for-profit, Chicago Outfit Roller Derby League.

resume / c.v.

Artist Statement, Spring 2010:
It is my goal in art making to organize my personal experiences with a balanced, poetic and scientific approach. I am extremely interested in the functionality of the brain as a networking process that connects memories and emotions by association. (The centrally located Hippocampus portion of the brain is where memories and emotions are processed. This portion of the brain deteriorates with Alzheimer’s disease, which is in my genetic code. I am scared of losing my memory.) It is the associations that are like the line on a map that connects one experience to another. The line is what I emphasize in my work whether it be matching of similar vocabulary, drawing a tree graph, or simply making a connection between one idea and another. I collect my material from everyday experiences, insignificant or dramatically intense, to make hypotheses, associate with past experiences, and form epiphanal conclusions. I am interested in the between portion of two points of similarity and what is lost in that space. The space can be a black hole that distorts information like a conversation between one person and another. The distance a thought travels is long, if you think about the actual path. From the spark of imagination in one brain, interpreted by the individual’s mouth, through the atmosphere, into the ear and mind of another, leaves a trail of information distorted or lost along the way. This is the information I attempt to collect. It is my goal to communicate to an audience an honest sense of the experiences I go through as well as my thought process within those experiences. Interpreting the essence of my experiences (or artwork) can allow the viewer to place their own associations on what they see/hear/feel. And their association can create a thread of network in their own brain that links to mine.