Having reviewed my terms work with my mentor Christopher and focusing on wrapping things up for the January residency I decided my objective will be to focus on creating images that let the viewer feel what I felt as a child growing up in a dysfunctional family. We had a great discussion of what he saw in my work that had impact, potential for further development, as well as keeping my work personal. At the same time we talked about preserving the balance in my life as I continued to examine the secrets and silent issues of my past.
After much consideration of what specific direction I should take to move forward in my work, I have decided to focus on a few relating concepts. This exploration will allow me to continue working with the psychology of mental illness and the effects it had on me as a child.
I will continue to explore my empty spaces and memories of being alone both physically and emotionally. I will continue to find ways to illustrate this feeling of isolation that many children and teens experience. I will also look for subtle ways to reveal how I felt as a child without being stereotypic, as in the finger on a string image, leaving more for the viewer to interpret, rather than my more cliché images like the noose over the jungle gym. I want to continue to explore boundaries in my family: what is it that I cannot see or touch, where am I not able to go? I will investigate through the use of props and traditional boundary markers and electrical dog flags, childproof gates, and other barriers.
I will explore the childhood experiences that leave scars, finding methods to visualize the traces left behind. I will persist working with rope and various forms of string, but in a way that also reflects how I felt as a child to be emotionally confined, to be pulled so tight in multiple directions until there is nothing left inside. What scars do I have and how can I use string to leave temporary scars on my body?
Lastly I want to continue my work on the missing me and loss pieces in which I used leftover 8.5” x 11” paper that my family used as target practice. These pieces begin to represent and get at some my anger, grief, and loss of my childhood. I will continue to use myself, as well as other collected images and either mask them with my own targets or make the images into targets, communicating where my holes are, and what it is that I have missed.