One theme that stuck throughout the entire semester was a bedroom theme. On the first week of class, I wrote four “I Remember” stories related to my bedroom:

“I remember the bedroom I had when I was four years old. The floor was carpeted, Barbie dolls were scattered everywhere, and the walls were splattered with bright pink.

I remember the bedroom I had when I was eight years old. The floor was naked, paint brushes and paper were scattered everywhere, and the walls were painted an ugly yellow.

I remember the bedroom I had when I was twelve years old. The floor was partially covered with a rug, notebooks and textbooks were scattered everywhere, and the walls were painted with a plain white.

I remember the bedroom I had when I was sixteen years old. The floor was still partially covered with a rug, makeup and clothes were scattered everywhere, and the walls were covered with photographs and posters of celebrities.”

Coincidentally, my final studio project was a memorial to my messy bedroom. Both projects referred to the mess in my room, and even a change in maturity. The bedroom memorial was almost the ending to the story I started in my own “I Remember”. When I was four, it was a mess of Barbie dolls; at eight years old, it was a mess of paint brushes and paper; at twelve years old, it was a mess of schoolwork; at sixteen years old, it was a mess of makeup and clothes; and finally, at nineteen years old, it was a mess of powder paint. The mess itself identified the change in who I was growing into; it showed the different phases of my life and ultimately molded me into who I became. Not only did the mess change, but the appearance of  my bedroom changed as well. When I was four years old, the walls were pink; at eight, the walls were yellow; at twelve, the walls were white; at sixteen, the walls were covered in posters; and finally, at nineteen, the walls were back to plain white.

I hadn’t realized that I even kept with the theme until a classmate had asked me if my memorial was inspired by my “I Remember” stories. In a way, my writing in the first week of seminar foreshadowed the last project of studio. It’s interesting how four small excerpts of writing from the beginning blossomed into an actual piece of art in the end. It’s as if my brain stored the written portions of the bedroom after the first week and pulled it back out in the last few weeks.

Image source: Vincent Van Gogh, Bedroom, 1889. Musée d’Orsay, Paris, sold to national museums under the Treaty of Peace with Japan, 1959. http://www.artic.edu/exhibition/van-goghs-bedrooms.