Artist Statement

I like to draw and make things that have to do with the human body. When drawing, I find myself watching my hand as if it is separate from me as it twists, curves, and soars across a page. Most of what I find my hand doing is stylizing and distorting human anatomy; mainly focusing on faces. Ever since I began education, I doodled in my notebooks with BIC pens, inspiring my more realized drawings with quill pens and felt tips.

In the human body, everything has a purpose, and every curve or indent leads to something else. This aspect leads me to draw faces and bodies as if they were flowing streams where each line interacts and plays off other lines. I focus on this because I feel very aware of my body. I see bodies as clothes or "Meat Suits" that encase our being and give outward clues to our personalities. This belief isn’t one of religion but of a separation of the conscious and subconscious. Your awake self that is aware and making decisions thoughtfully is entirely separate from the part of you that controls breathing, blinking, and your biases. When making art, it feels almost as natural as breathing does and this interests me.

I intend for my pieces to confront your view of yourself and invite the viewer to pay more attention to the meat that is a part of us and that sometimes seems to envelop our inner selves. Exploring this solely in 2D, I felt that the forms would be more confronting if they were in the physical world. Moving into the 3D realm felt very organic and easy for me, though I never experimented with clay before, I found myself to be very comfortable using it as if I were drawing. This is how I think, and how I see myself; you and everyone else see through different eyes.

Evan Casas

About the Artist

Evan Casas is an artist based in Baltimore in his senior year of college, working in clay and drawing. His pieces are of human bodies, stylized and distorted. Through high school, he engaged with high-level art classes and—continuing into college—never went a year without at least one creative class. Along with drawing and painting, he writes short stories and poems. Sculpture is the newest medium added to his repertoire. His art was hanging in his high school library for 2 years and in college, he had two pieces in a student show in the gallery on campus, and installed a senior thesis project at the climax of his collegiate career.