Andy (2019)

Installation

Voile, wall paint, plywood, string

Class: Systems and Processes, Fall 2019

The first project of this concept studio was about following instructions. We all brainstormed project ideas in class one day, thinking our professor was going to choose one of our own ideas for us, but then we actually got assigned ideas that other kids had brainstormed. I was tasked to create a series of five large paintings on plastic tarps about the stages of a mental illness or disorder. Because it was specifically five, I decided to make a series representing each of the five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. While grief isn’t necessarily an illness, it is a complicated mental process which everyone experiences differently. I decided to use my hands as my painting tools in order to better express body language and bring more life, or humanity, into the paintings. And instead of plastic tarps, I opted for translucent fabric in order to be able to walk between the paintings and see through them into the past and future ones, representing how grief is not necessarily such an ordered and definite process for everyone; and the fabric is light enough that as people walk between the paintings, they sway, almost as if there are spirits following us.

Andy was my mother’s brother, who died a few years ago, and is one of the only experiences with death I’ve had. My mom is a painter with an abstract style similar to the one I experimented with here, and she was was really close with her brother, so I was definitely channeling her in this project.