Senior Lela DiCrescenzo has been creating art since she was very young, mainly focusing on drawing. Starting with suns and flowers stuck to the refrigerator, Lela has evolved on to intricate and detailed pieces of art. She has expanded her passions into painting, collaging and even deejaying.
Through her interest in house music and electronic dance music (EDM), Lela became inspired to try her hand at ing. After buying the equipment and practicing, Lela’s skill and interest increased. Under the name Up Dog, Lela has an active social media presence, posting videos of her blending songs, whether from her own creativity or from requests she gets from comments. When blending songs, Lela doesn’t adhere to a specific form, but rather does what she thinks sounds best.
“I like to put together a sad song and a hype song. I also like to blend and explore a lot of different genres,” explains DiCrescenzo.
She’s incredibly creative when it comes to mixing and playing songs. While her posts mainly show her playing at home, her talent has also led her to perform at friends’ birthday parties.
For Lela, her art and her music are deeply connected. Both are ways she expresses herself; additionally, much of her art is inspired by music. Lela mainly does mixed media, combining elements to create beautiful works of art. Most of her work isn’t just one material. Drawn to the tension between logic and emotion, she uses her art to explore how contrasting concepts relate to one another.
“A lot of my art has to do with rational structures or abstract structures, whether it’s math or science…I make a lot of art about something so technical. Sound is very scientific and very mathematical, but also, music brings us so much emotion. So I like emotion versus rationality, because I feel like everything around us can be seen as something alive, like math can be seen as something emotional,” DiCrescenzo describes.
This overarching theme behind Lela’s work makes for truly captivating pieces. The combination of media, colors and shapes draws the eyes in, and every time you look, you notice a new detail.
For Lela, art isn’t just a hobby. It has been a part of her life since she was little, and she hopes for it to continue to be a part of her life. She wants to keep creating and deejaying in college so that she can pursue these passions further. Wherever Lela ends up, she’ll always be Up Dog.
