No Place Like It
My BFA show, No Place Like It, was a show about the idealized notion of home (literally there is no place like home). This leads to ideas about the idealized family and how when we reach adulthood, the mythological status we assign family members, disappears. We put people on pedestals and it is hard when someone you look up to does not meet the idealized version you have of them. I use Jackalopes as a personal metaphor for this exploration of these family myths.
The idea of a child’s innocence and misunderstanding of the world is something that I want to communicate in my work, and at the same time, show the darker side of the world that people understand as they grow up. The ideas of isolation and separation are present in the pieces, which can be seen in the work of artists such as Sophie Jodoin, Joseph Beuys, and Louise Bourgeois, all influential artists to me.
To emphasize the idea of isolation I place the figures centrally so that they are completely surrounded by negative space. To show the darker side of life I represent the Jackalopes as diseased or dead, which can be seen in the smaller works in the installation piece, I Searched for a Place Like It, but I Couldn’t Find It. I use mostly black and white media with my work so that it has the feeling of black and white photography especially with the work about my family, which communicates a sense of nostalgia. The old frames that are used in the installation also help give the artwork the feeling of nostalgic family photos.
The idea of a child’s innocence and misunderstanding of the world is something that I want to communicate in my work, and at the same time, show the darker side of the world that people understand as they grow up. The ideas of isolation and separation are present in the pieces, which can be seen in the work of artists such as Sophie Jodoin, Joseph Beuys, and Louise Bourgeois, all influential artists to me.
To emphasize the idea of isolation I place the figures centrally so that they are completely surrounded by negative space. To show the darker side of life I represent the Jackalopes as diseased or dead, which can be seen in the smaller works in the installation piece, I Searched for a Place Like It, but I Couldn’t Find It. I use mostly black and white media with my work so that it has the feeling of black and white photography especially with the work about my family, which communicates a sense of nostalgia. The old frames that are used in the installation also help give the artwork the feeling of nostalgic family photos.