"Friday I'm in Love"
Ariel Wills 24 IL
Acrylic paint, acrylic gouache, oil pastel, colored pencils, on wooden gessobord
5 x 5 x 7/8 inches
The title of this piece, Friday I’m in Love, is a nod to my love of dance and to camaraderie and enduring social bonds. There's a shared feeling of “coming home” that I find in gathering for a meal with friends, and in this image a Friday night Shabbos meal is represented. Dancing at an '80s night with strangers who somehow feel familiar also conjures friendly connection. Whether through spiritual ritual or communal joy, these moments nourish me in similar ways. My work celebrates the overlap between the sacred and the social, the everyday and the extraordinary.
Ariel Wills teaches Illustration and Foundation at the Cleveland Institute of Art as a second-year recipient of the AICAD Teaching Fellowship. This November, she will co-host the panel "Ecology as a Verb" at the AICAD Post-Graduate Teaching Fellowship.
