Kayla Allen

Kayla is a Master’s student in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering with an emphasis in structural engineering. I have always had an interest in the arts, from drawing to painting to music to poetry and so on. I find engineering fascinating because of the way that art can be found in many aspects of design and the way that engineering principles can also be found in art.

"THE LIFE BRINGER" GRAPHITE ON PAPER, 15"×15” This is a surrealist piece done with graphite. I really enjoy surrealist art because I feel it is a way to express emotions that aren’t easily put into words or represented by everyday objects. In this piece we were required to start with a still life of flowers in a vase and then add surrealist elements that had meaning to us and represented more than what meets the eye. I chose to play around with the contrast of life and death in my piece with the live flowers morphing into bones, and the tank, an object which is often a symbol of destruction, on a record player, representative of creation of music. I also enjoy the possibility that the flowers are coming to life out of the bones because I feel like that is what music does for me. I chose to call the record player the life bringer because music truly does bring me back to life and I felt like that could also be happening to the flowers. The tank was initially thought of because I felt the arm of the record player resembled a tank and the surrealist element allowed to run with and explore that idea in a way that a traditional still life would not have. With this piece I enjoyed being able to take something I saw physically and morph it into something with a bit more meaning.

"SILENCED" GRAPHITE ON PAPER, 9"×12” This piece is a self-portrait with a spin. We were given creative freedom with our self-portraits to include a surrealist element to our portraits and I happily took that opportunity. As the title of this piece suggests, the idea behind this piece is one of being silenced. There are many ways that I as a person feel as if I have no voice. Though we have come very far as a society I still feel there are so many ways that we are silenced by the standards of the world. As a woman I feel silenced by gender roles, which often still play a role in everyday life. I also feel silenced by what I feel is expected of me to fall into the category of “successful” in todays world. It is also a very personal battle within myself to speak and have a voice for the things that I feel and wish to express. All these emotions came pouring out into this piece as I began to work and allow myself some freedom to explore thought and ideas. There are so many ways in which we as humans are silenced in this world, so I took this opportunity to hopefully bring a light to that. Who knows, maybe one day this woman will be given a voice and a mouth will once again grace this face.