Navajo Crit of Vanessa Cross by Howard Crockett

Vanessa's contribution to the hybrid identity collaboration for our Navajo guests was an anime inspired painting. Vanessa worked, to the best of my knowldege, in acrylic. Her painting depicted what seemed to be a Navajo girl on top of a navajo stylized rug.

My comments for Vanessa were to create a shadow behind the girl to create space between her and the rug and to extend her body and limbs off the canvas to create the feel of the girl standing in front of the rug rather than inside it. For the final presentation to the Navajo students, she did add the shadow and ran off the edges, but the shadow remained one tone, therefore did not really enhance the piece, in my opinion atleast.

Also, due to the size requirement, Vanessa needed to increase the size of her piece, which she did by placing the canvas in the center of a larger piece of wood, paitned black. I do not feel that the adjustment made was successful. It would have been interesting if she would have continued the Navajo girl and rug onto the larger piece and make the whole thing a layered project.