Cyanotype on watercolor paper with fishing line for solo show at West Virginia Wesleyan College. 2018. Dimensions variable.
Artist’s statement:
“After completing my capstone exhibition last semester before actually being done with college & classes, I wanted to put something together to close out my undergrad career. I’m not usually one to let my personal feelings come through my work, but after a particularly turbulent year for myself and the people close to me, some catharsis by way of creativity felt like the right direction to take. This display consists of excerpted words/phrases from a journal I’ve kept for the past 6 months or so. I made a point to write down things that were bothering and sometimes consuming me — after they were on paper, they weighed on me a little less (“I can think a thought a million times but only write it down once”). Scattered throughout are some uplifting reminders that I found balance and comfort in.
I ultimately turned these excerpts into cyanotype prints 1: because I’ve been fascinated by the medium and its parallels to printmaking since I was introduced to it and 2: it allowed me to deal with these pieces of text in a way that gave me a sense of completeness. Creating these prints involved not only writing down my words a second — or 3rd, 4th and so on — time but literally burning them into the blue ground through the photographic cyanotype process. The distortion of the words and letterforms is my attempt at a little bit of privacy, requiring the viewer to engage with the pieces a bit more to gain a full understanding of the text.
Even though this collection of thoughts is for me, my hope is that by sharing them I can connect with others navigating the complexities of young adult life, however monumental or trivial they may be. “
