Wk 7 – Artist Conversation – Tidawhitney Lek

Exhibition Information

Artist: Tidawhitney Lek
Exhibition: Doodles in Space
Media: Paper, Wire
Gallery: CSULB School of Art, Werby Gallery
Website: N/A
Instagram: tidawhitney

About the Artist

Tidawhitney Lek is in her last semester at CSULB and will be getting her BFA in Drawing and Painting. She has plans to go to grad school on the east coast. She was born and raised in Long Beach and started drawing when she was little. As a child she couldn’t afford paints and only had a pencil and paper, but that didn’t stop her from drawing.

Formal Analysis

The installation had a soft quality to it that came from the lighting and from the use of a lot of paper. There was paper crumpled up, there was paper cut in different shapes, there was even tissue paper in the form of toilet seat covers. The walls were covered with paper and the floors were covered with paper.

Content Analysis

When Lek was a kid she had paper and pencils to satisfy her artsy side and this installation kind of reflects that in the use of a lot of paper. She did this with another artist and when they were first designing it they had a lot of color, but they decided to eliminate all the color and have just black and white. This installation was kind of like one gigantic doodle done by two artists. When you doodle you don’t really think about what you’re drawing, you just draw what comes to mind; it doesn’t even have to actually look like anything. These two artists were having fun doing a giant doodle that encompassed the whole room.

Synthesis / My Experience

When I first walked in it was a bit much to take in because there was just paper everywhere: on the walls, the ceiling, the floor, hanging from the ceiling, and piled on the floor. Then once I was able to actually see what I was looking at it was interesting to see how they did different things with the paper such as cutting shapes into some of it, putting some of it on the walls, and crumpling some of it into balls. It was like they took their notebooks that they’ve doodled in and just decided to spread all the paper in them around the room to create one megadoodle.