Felipe Armenta

ARTIST BIO

Felipe is a visual and performing artist that joined the EC in 2017. Felipe is naturally a theatrical performer, often filling the studio with his voice acting or sharing his current video interests. Felipe loves to surprise a room when it is full of silence, valuing the shock rock styles of Alice Cooper, King Diamond and Gene Simmons. Felipe is an avid video gamer, on his breaks you can often find him playing Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog games. Felipe is a colored pencil and ceramic artist currently exploring acrylic painting.

ARTIST STATEMENT

When creating visual art, I’d say my work is super influenced by dinosaurs. I love dinosaurs, I love the history and I love that through paleontology we’ve been able to learn more about what these prehistoric creatures were doing and what they possibly looked like. I love the Jurassic Park franchise, I’d like to think that someday we’ll know what dinosaurs actually sounded like from looking at fossils. We’re really lucky fossils were left behind and haven’t turned into dust, we may have never known there was creatures before us if there wasn’t something left behind after their inevitable doom. Artistically, I’d say my experience visiting natural history museums during my trips are essential to my work and I’d love to visit all the museums holding dinosaur fossils in the US.

In my artistic process, the planning stages of my projects are essential to me creating a final piece I am happy with. I have to get my research done, look at books, read, watch YouTube videos and to be happy with my sketch before moving on to my final work.

My current work is a focus on dinosaur fossils recreating fossils using real fossils as reference. I’d like to create a series of ceramic fossils to exhibit in Merced County since we don’t have our own natural history museum and I think we’re really missing out by not having one.