“Several Other Cousins, Aunts, and Uncles”
My thesis project has undergone many transformations during this entire working process. I began working with the idea of the Wunderkammen, or Cabinet of Wonder in September, though I have always had a special affinity for museum curios and display, particularly the nature scenes in natural history museums. My interest in these displays is the marrying of expressive narrative, which often contains great dramas and tragedies, with teaching and learning. It’s a form of special visual narrative, which is miniaturized in a way within my shelves, though the content itself differs greatly. This idea was something I originally planned to express within a group of bookshelves on a wall in the gallery. The finding of the current structure was a very lucky one in my opinion, because it allowed for a much better delivery of that overall idea. The contents were limited to a freestanding structure, and so the piece became a sculpture rather than an installation, which makes for a much different viewer relation. A few weeks prior to the discovery of that structure, I made a major installation for my advanced video class to experiment with some elements there that I had hoped to incorporate into the thesis. That space was a success in my personal opinion, but it was critiqued that the nature of the objects/sculptures there were overwhelmingly chaotic. For the thesis I altered the organization of objects to stress he narrative aspects of the figurines while not including chaos for chaos’ sake ( the visiting critic suggested that I amp up the chaos to be completely overwhelming). I did go back in after talking with Justine Reyes, but following a second critique with my video teacher Damian Catera and my class, I decided that the best place for the piece to be was at some place of balance between the simplified nature suggested by my video class, and the chaotic and busy nature suggested by Ms. Reyes. I feel very satisfied with the final assortment of object and idea within the sculpture, and I feel it achieves that balance. The ambient fireplace and use of found objects from my own childhood achieved a sense of home and comfort amidst the emotionally heavy undertone of loss in the obituaries. I intended for suggestions of those emotions to commingle within one structure because I feel that reflects the nature of life as I understand it at the moment, life and death, loss and growth, exaltation and mourning exist intertwined together. I tried to represent this with narrative of conflicting perspectives with the figures—the mourners gathered around the dying mouse in the trap, the teenage mother being confronted and the father pointing to “Sex and the American Teenager”, the Ewok family celebrating as father returns home with a buck’s trophy head while up on a “ledge” of books the priests and priestesses help the deer’s grieving family (note the book there by “Greive” called “Friends to the End”, a play on words in honor of that narrative). The accumulation of pieces from the newspaper, and the remaining papers from my year’s subscription to the Beaver County Times for me are a physical manifestation of time in relation to all the events that happen therein. I had a daily subscription to The Times, and so what you see is the remaining days of papers untouched and tampered with, the remainder having been cut up and collaged on the sculpture (obituaries, headlines, and images). The stack of papers also does well to set my cousin’s obituary aside from the others lining the interior shelves. In terms of the larger show as I whole, I'm very satisfied with our show. I think there are some wonderful interactions in content between a few pieces by different artists that bring the show together . My critiques and conversations with people who’ve examined my sculpture definitely make note of all of these aspects, after taking those things into consideration, I would say that my project remained largely true to the core concepts I began with, and all together resulted in a well put together piece.
