This was the piece for my Portfolio for Ryerson's Image Arts: New Media Studies program....
1600 applied and only 40 got in.
I GOT ACCEPTED!!!!!!!!!

Description for this piece:
The artist I found most inspirational was Bill Viola, choosing to reflect on his concepts for birth, death, and the usage of elements. I created my piece by photographing the main subject then applying an artistic effect while additionally painting the subject of the infant and fountains in Adobe Photoshop. I conceived Viola's artwork, such as his piece An Ocean Without a Shore, as having a spectral feeling therefore portrayed in my own piece with hiding the face of the subject who is representing death, focusing on the human experience of death itself. I've combined his concepts of birth and death to create a personal morality of one life ended, another one begun. Like a phoenix rising from its ashes, when one life is lost a new one is born. My piece relates to the balance and humanity within, nature which is another concept Viola touches on in his piece The Reflecting Pool. The phoenix's wings extract from the fountains of water which in turn embody the physical action of birth itself happening. This element is very familiar in Viola's work for the majority of his pieces deal with different principles defined by the element of water. The aspect of balance arrives from the lifting of the infant by the deceased subject which liberates the meaning of death for without it there would be no birth therefore the hands of the deceased subject would have been empty. Although Viola tends to use dark backgrounds to present his works I chose to contrast by using a glowing white background to extend my personal views on the lighting viewed in death and giving the deceased an appearance of a savior angel rather then a lost soul, also recounting to Viola's usage of spiritual traditions such as Christian mysticism. The significance of my piece's positioning relates to our mind's capacity to conceive the fact of life being the point of rising and death being the point of falling and having the deceased subject beneath the water and the new life suggests the great circle of life that whether you're buried, cremated or any other sort of resting ritual, your body is submerged beneath the surface of life and becomes an element of the earth, in this case, water.