I’ve always been very conscious of time: not having enough, running out, not using it well. More than anything, I fear forgetting, and I impossibly struggle to record and remember everything, from my childhood memories (1) to the way the lights enliven my kitchen (5). When I began my investigation of time, I intended to focus mainly on the physical effects, and the ways we evolve as we age. This is best seen in projects 2 and 3, which portray the changing ways we define ourselves throughout life. However, I soon realized that focusing on time physically wouldn’t let me personally connect. Instead, my focus transformed into a study of my own relationship with time: the feeling of life passing by too quickly, and fighting to remember everything before it’s gone. To counteract this urgency, many of my pieces are still, with bright, welcoming colors that remind me of the home I want to keep close. I’ve also used vellum as a theme in my pieces, a way to blur details or push them into the background, just like time does with our memories.
Just a Moment - 4.5 x 6 - gouache, vellum, ink, colored pencil
It’s really rather funny. I wanted to experiment with ink on top of clear plastic for one of my portraits but I couldn’t find a sheet big enough. My mom went to the store and brought back some vellum and asked if that’s what I was looking for. “Not at all”, I said. But then I had a pack of vellum, and I worked with it, and somehow it became the central connection between all of my pieces.
College Collage - 24 x 17 - vellum, ink, letters and booklets sent to me from colleges over the past year