At this point I'm still very unsure as to what I want to do for my project. I've realized throughout this week that I am not place based in my memories or thoughts. When I first heard the assignment about place, automatically I started thinking about places where I felt most at home and most comfortable. But for me, what is home at this point. I live at school in my dorm for a majority of the year but that is not home. I spent my past summer at a sleep away camp in upstate New York and although some of the campers believed it was, this was not my home either. Over winter break I spent half my time in London, but that obviously isn't home. So you would assume that my parent's house is my home and it is. When people ask me where I live I say Long Island, entirely referring to my parent's house. But in the past year, I've spent a total of 7 weeks at that place. Frankly, that doesn't seem like a good enough description of a home.
I've been thinking about using either the area of the camp I was at for the summer which was in the Adirondacks near Plattsburgh and 15 minutes away from the Canadian border. It was an extraordinarily beautiful area. A group of us spent a day off besides a river in Saranac Lake at a friends house and it was the calmest and most peaceful day. I was thinking about somehow representing that day and overall that summer of getaways and peacefulness that was truly a great experience both personally and professionally.
Another idea of mine is to create a houseboat. Whenever people, especially my mother, asks me what I am going to do after college with a degree in art and jobs in the art education field slowly dwindling down, I always think about how I have no concrete or even vague plan. I've therefore decided that I am going to simply get a houseboat and sail around and make pots. To me, that seems to be a relaxing and pleasing future that could take me literally anywhere.
Both of these places of ideals share similar feelings and ambitions for life. As I'm writing this I'm trying to come up with a solid answer for the sake of this post but I'm still in a planning stage of this idea. However, I can tell you that whatever I do will be refreshing and calm in order to reflect my summer and ambitions for what lies ahead.
After further thought, I'm thinking about working around the idea of a place of home verse a place of escape and how those two things can be the same at times and polar opposites at others. For me personally, my summer could be seen as an escape and it was there that I found peace and a sense of home. Which is quite ironic since I had never been to that area and did not know a single person there. Yet somehow, it was familiar, comfortable, and safe which is what a home should be in my mind.
As far as a physical project, I am still at a loss. But I know I want to work with this dichotomy of home and escape. This might turn into a very representational project of the site and a display of the area that made me feel this sense of warmth. But it might also turn into a more of a conceptual piece revolving around the feelings, memories, and bond to that specific place and time.
I really love your ideas for your studio exploration project. I understand your confusion about where to call home. I have the same problem as a college student who spends time in both their parents house, away at college, traveling and working. People always say home is where your heart is but I agree that, that is not always true. I like both of your ideas but think it will be beneficial to your project to explore the idea of home versus the place of escape because from your description of your project I feel as if you are struggling with that as much as if not more then your location of home. As to if your piece should be conceptual or representational, I think both ideas will work very well
ReplyDeleteAmanda,
ReplyDeleteSomething I noticed here, the more you wrote, the clearer your ideas became. I don't know if you realize this, but I think you're a lot closer to a concrete idea than you think. You have a specific inquiry about place, something that is, as Beth said, "unsettled". That is the basis for you research. This dichotomy of home vs. escape. You could take those two words and break them down. Try looking up different definitions of home and escape. Then, perhaps compare them to your own feelings about what makes a home, vs. a place of escape. You mentioned the fact that there are many times when these two ideas become intermingled, and that could be explored as well. You could do a piece that is separate but connected. Any medium could work with this idea. It could be representational in some aspects, with some abstract flavor thrown in. Think of siamese twins, separate but connected. Seasons, separate but connected. This may help bring images to mind, which you can then translate in your own way.