Boz is currently a drawing, painting and computer illustration and animation teacher at Kamehameha Schools Kapālama. She is also a freelance graphic designer, muralist and artist/illustrator. She enjoys traveling the world (when she can), painting murals around the island, running, drinking coffee and chilling with her cat. Boz’s artwork explores the broad scope of mental health experiences using the visible color spectrum as a visual allegory.
Artist Statement: There is a strange disconnect between mental illness and normalcy – as if there is a stark dividing line between the two: Black and white, us and them, completely separate. I believe this arbitrary classification, ill, healthy, recovering... is very similar to how we catalog our colors: blue, red, green... The visible color spectrum reflects the human experience. An experience where colors cannot be contained as single, definable points. The spectrum is one band of ever shifting, transitioning hues, as are we – our lives and our experiences are continuous and overlapping, yet discreet.
Current Body of Work: During this pandemic I have experienced dark feelings and thoughts as a direct result of the current politic climate and the rising death toll of the virus. My current body of work addresses these darker sections of my personal color/mental health spectrum, specifically the shadows that accompanies the colors. In order to maintain a balance, there must be counter weights, parts that connect and pieces that divide. The work in this series explores colors, abstraction and portraits as metaphors for my internal dialogues - ones real and ones imagined - including conversations, sounds and other auditory hallucinations as I personally experience them. These pieces illustrate the sometimes cyclical experience of personal mental health; from good times to bad times, from sunrise to sunset.