For my project, I was working from the emotion of confusion. My original object was my necklace, which was my grandmother’s. It was passed onto me just after my grandfather’s death, and he had kept it in her absence. My grandmother passed away when I was two years old, so I have never had a conscious relationship with her, but I am often compared to her. These comparisons, along with what I already know about my grandmother, have always made me feel as if I have a special connection to her. Usually after reflecting on this perceived connection, I feel a little strange, as if I’ve made it all up in my mind because it is not based within my conscious experiences.
When I brainstormed these emotions that I get from my necklace, I kept visualizing flowers, beautiful, bright, billowing flowers, but with gaping holes in them. I felt as if the flowers were so naturally beautiful and real and ordinary and the holes threw them just a little bit off. It really reflects how I feel when I imagine being so comfortable with my grandmother and then realizing that I have never really known comfort with her, in her presence, or at least not when I’ve known what comfort meant. So it is like all of the visualizations of the feelings andexperiences hit with the reality that nothing I can visualize actually happened.
I tried to create this depiction in my soap carving.
I then sought to create the same confusion and care within my final piece. I decided that I wanted to make a video, because I feel comfortable doing that, but make the video out of prints, which I often feel seems confined to 2-D (even though it isn’t, and video in some ways is 2-D).
I carved two linoleum blocks and printed them both a number of times, playing with color and texture to create varying visuals.
I then scanned in the prints and used them to create a video, which is ideally played on loop. In the video, the images are rotated, combined, layered, and moved to create a distinct place for the viewer to reflect within while watching. The colors change to prompt attention and the darkness around the image serves to define their space and existence within consciousness. I strove for this to feel the way I do when thinking of my grandmother.
