THE ART OF EXPERIMENTATION:
AN INTERVIEW WITH JOCELIN FLORA
It is a cool spring day, and Jocelin Flora and I are seated on a picnic blanket on the front lawn. The sky is clear and there is a slight breeze, making it the perfect day to have a conversation outside. Ever busy with a variety of art projects, Jocelin has just returned from transporting wood that will eventually become a sculpture. Experimentation plays an important role in her work, specifically in how she designs her projects and chooses materials.
Majoring in Graphic Design with a minor in 3D Studies, Jocelin’s work is driven by a love for a variety of colors and textures. “I like to have physicality, to touch stuff. I have to play around with it to see what speaks to me, since sometimes I’ll put it on and then obviously it doesn’t work, so I’ll have to put it somewhere else. But if I use resin and I pour it and don’t like it, it’s stuck there. I can’t really move it. You have to go with the obstacles … just make it work.”
For Jocelin, sculpture is something that can be experienced physically, as well as mentally or emotionally. She loves the genre of mixed media, “playing against hard or soft,” and seeing what thoughts or feelings she can display through her work. Jocelin recently finished a project that involved mortar, plaster, felt, and resin, allowing her to explore new ways to combine textures and substances.
Jocelin looks back on the wearable art project from her Foundations class as a turning point in her artistic journey. For this project, she used cardboard and plastic spoons, and she recalls the time spent melting the spoons so she could mold them into shape. “That’s when it really sparked: to get into sculpture.”
Outside of art and classes, Jocelin enjoys reading, watching movies, and listening to music. She has fond memories of watching classic action movies with her father and brother. She loves Star Wars, Transformers, and Disney movies, the latter of which drew her in with their use of colors. Jocelin is also an avid reader who works at a used bookstore when she is not at college, and she enjoys listening to music while she creates. She names Ava Max, Tate McRae, Halsey, Tove Lo, and Coldplay as some of her favorites.
When I asked her what she wanted audiences to take away from her art, Jocelin replied with two words: “an experience.” She hopes that viewers will be able to experience a variety of emotions from each piece of art and form their own interpretations of what her work means to them. She expanded on this by saying, “[With] one piece I made, you can either feel comforted or swallowed.” Jocelin wants the audience to choose for themselves what they should take away from her art, rather than her telling them what to feel. For this reason, many of her works remain untitled. Jocelin wants people to mentally define her work with their own titles.
Jocelin thrives when she can create art with no physical limitations. She loves to experiment with different materials and textures, which allow her to step out of the metaphorical box and create truly unique pieces. After graduation, Jocelin hopes to pursue graphic design. She does not plan to have a professional career in sculpture, though she hopes that this art form will be part of her life moving forward. She would prefer to create for the joy of it, working on a project every month or so. Experimentation will likely remain a part of Jocelin’s artistic journey as she finds new ways to combine a variety of colors, materials, and textures in her creations.