RILEY SO
Biography
Riley So lives in Ottawa, Canada and discovered a passion for Minecraft and Architecture in 2011. Riley re-ignited with his passion during his 4th year at Ashbury College Junior School. Riley is now working on an architecture-based art project alongside three colleagues in an art project which involves creating an urban city in Minecraft.
Artist Statement
I have been a Minecraft player since 2011 and have spent hundreds, if not thousands, of hours dedicating my life to Minecraft. My passion is being able to design and create beautiful mansions and buildings. This year I was granted the opportunity to be able to create an art project with no limits. I wanted to be able to take my hundreds of hours of experience and put it all into one final project, one final thing to show off all the knowledge and experience that I had gotten from this form of digital art. Yet I knew I could not do it by myself, so I found three exceptional practitioners who all closely shared the same passion and convinced them to embark upon this crazy journey with me. Our art project was to focus on 5 different mediums. The first being digital art, cartoons, coding, drawing, film, photography, modeling, architecture, and city planning. We chose these eight subjects to be our mediums because we believed that any city in the world must incorporate all these aspects. My 9th medium also is representational acrylic painting based on the work of Feliks Kaparchuk. My sisters and I have been working on a study of one of his works, Waterfall Island together.
I started art at Ashbury when I was 8 years old, and let me be truthful, I wasn't the biggest fan of art. In the first four years, we just did art assignments involving clay, paint and interior designing. I now realize that these small projects were really just laying out the foundation of my art understanding. In Grade 8, I was taught about more advanced ideas of art, such as the history and the ideas behind some of the greatest paintings in the world. This really changed my perspective on art as I realized that this was not just some boring subject, but it was a subject of history, creativity and talent. In Grade 8, I also was able to reconnect with my passion as a younger child. I want to thank my teacher Ms. Cragg for really allowing me to have a chance to express myself and give myself my all in art.
I have really been inspired by three people in my journey of architecture, the first two being when I was younger well the last one being more recent. The first person that I ever was inspired by was StampyLongHead. Stampy was my childhood hero and was probably one of the memorable parts of my childhood. Stampy inspired me by creating what he called his “lovely world”. Stampy's lovely world was more like a small universe than his own world. In his world he created massive buildings such as amusement parks, mansions, and hotels. He even created a Rocket, even though many of these buildings were more surreal then what normal city buildings would look like, it still inspired me. There was something about the buildings that just gave it a flare of creativity and personality. What I think I took away from watching Stampy was the idea to build what you want, to do what you want and that in my opinion is one of the most important things in art. Grian was my second art inspiration, Grian uploads Minecraft building tutorials on Youtube. Grian is known for being one of the most detailed Minecraft builders of all time. Grian has inspired millions of people during his short 30-minute building tutorials. What I have taken away from Grian was the idea of detail in any building. Grian is truly one of the most talented people I've seen. My final inspiration has to be Nile Niami, a man of many talents. He is a film director and an architect, specifically a real estate developer. Nile is know for creating some of the most expensive and modern houses in the world. He specifically designs them for elite clientele in Bel Air and Beverly Hills. Mr. Niami inspires me because he creates these ultra-modern mansions with his unique signature style. My dream home has always been a modern house. That is why I look up to him because he creates the type of home that I aspire to live in one day. That is why many of the houses in our city resemble his mansions.
Throughout this year, I have faced many challenges whether it being a small thing like overcoming an argument with one of my teammates or having to deal with a world crash that nearly wiped our full world. Our team has been through a lot, but in my opinion the most challenging part of our project is the amount of work we put into it. Over the course of two months, me and my partners have logged nearly 300 hours combined. Yet all my group members know that it's not enough, with 300 hours dedicated we are barely halfway done meaning we will most likely end up dedicating over 600 hours into this project. Even though there are many challenges involved in our project, I believe that the challenges are outweighed by our success. Our group has been through multiple successes, some of the big and some of them small. Some of the highlighted successes of our group was the creation and finishing of the area inspired by Beverly Hills, and the creation of the tower that was inspired by the Bank of China tower. Although these were great successes during the lifetime of our project. I believe the greatest successes was the friendship formed between all of us during this project. In the words of Ed Cunningham, “Friends are those rare people that ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer”. (Ed Cunningham)
In conclusion I hope that anybody that looks at our city, will not see just a city, but will see a thriving utopia. A place that everyone will wish that they could live in, a place that automatically feels like home. This world that me and my friends created is a world where dreams can become reality, where anything is possible. This world no matter what happens to it will live on in all of us, as it's not just a memory anymore it's now part of us. “It's my home. It’s my city. I love it there.” (Eric Block)