I got inspired by Rauschenberg’s work and incorporated three of his techniques into my work. 1: Contrast in colors giving attention. 2: Distress the photos, raw edges. 3: Photo transfer. Those photos are back from 2008 where I was 10 years old, back then my memories were mostly consisted with happiness. Those are the two happiest events that happened during the year, field trip-strawberry picking and mooncake sharing in class. (Mooncakes are to celebrate a traditional Chinese festival called mid-autumn festival, it is one of the biggest festivals besides the Chinese New Year.) I then did phototransfer of a mooncake, the first pair of basketball shoes (Lebron 4) my mom bought me where I wore to the field for the first time and completely ruined it, and a picture of the helper who took care of me since I was born. The bright and clear strawberries are there to remind me not to repeat the same mistake again-eating unwashed strawberries and resulted in the worst diarrhea. The distress stairs in the middle remind me to let the mishap go and keep moving forward, the door in the middle is there for the important memory to stay inside me. The blue arrow highlighted by the red crayon notes that our family is impacted by the financial crisis in 2008. I changed the canvas in the middle from black to cream color and it creates a level in the piece while it’s a perfect line to divide and highlight those memories.
