Memory Series
Collaged Memories
I have a lot of trouble picturing just one memory. My memories seem to be more of a conflux of visual images and emotions from childhood to now. Images of my brother and me playing in the mud at age six, high school graduation and talking to a lady on the bus last week almost collage themselves into one memory in my head. This collaging of memories almost confuses my timelines, making me believe what happened eight years ago, actually happened yesterday.
As these memories collage themselves in my head, relationships between two people that may never have happened now do. It is now possible for my mom to have a conversation with an Italian shopkeeper I met in Venice or my sister to talk to the guy who robbed me out of doing it. These impossible relationships begin to show proofs of their personalities. They allow one person to cheer the other up, for two people who have and may never meet to become best friends. It is these proofs that allow me to understand my friends and family true nature, allowing me to evaluate their personalities beyond what I may have initially remembered.
In my panel series I have been exploring ways to portray these collaged memories. By drawing from photos of my childhood, I combine them with images of older and more recent memories. These memories are layered onto a piece of glass through different processes that range from engraved, sgraffito, silk-screening and painted or ceramic decals, to create representations of my collaged memories.
Through a process of multiple firings, I fuse these images onto both surfaces of the glass. I slowly build up layers of reusche paints that when finished leave a very painterly feel on the outside surface, like oil painters might leave on the canvas. By layering them on the front and back of a single sheet of float glass i create a relief that allows for the images of my friends and family within the panel to interact with each other and the environment around them.
In the final step of my process I slump the sheet of glass layered with images of friends and family onto a thin sheet of copper coated with a layer of vitreous enamel. The incompatibilities of the glass, the enamel and the copper leave a series of cracks within the glass surface. These cracks in the glass leave a sense mortality or the inevitability that all memories can and soon will change or disappear.
I have a lot of trouble picturing just one memory. My memories seem to be more of a conflux of visual images and emotions from childhood to now. Images of my brother and me playing in the mud at age six, high school graduation and talking to a lady on the bus last week almost collage themselves into one memory in my head. This collaging of memories almost confuses my timelines, making me believe what happened eight years ago, actually happened yesterday.
As these memories collage themselves in my head, relationships between two people that may never have happened now do. It is now possible for my mom to have a conversation with an Italian shopkeeper I met in Venice or my sister to talk to the guy who robbed me out of doing it. These impossible relationships begin to show proofs of their personalities. They allow one person to cheer the other up, for two people who have and may never meet to become best friends. It is these proofs that allow me to understand my friends and family true nature, allowing me to evaluate their personalities beyond what I may have initially remembered.
In my panel series I have been exploring ways to portray these collaged memories. By drawing from photos of my childhood, I combine them with images of older and more recent memories. These memories are layered onto a piece of glass through different processes that range from engraved, sgraffito, silk-screening and painted or ceramic decals, to create representations of my collaged memories.
Through a process of multiple firings, I fuse these images onto both surfaces of the glass. I slowly build up layers of reusche paints that when finished leave a very painterly feel on the outside surface, like oil painters might leave on the canvas. By layering them on the front and back of a single sheet of float glass i create a relief that allows for the images of my friends and family within the panel to interact with each other and the environment around them.
In the final step of my process I slump the sheet of glass layered with images of friends and family onto a thin sheet of copper coated with a layer of vitreous enamel. The incompatibilities of the glass, the enamel and the copper leave a series of cracks within the glass surface. These cracks in the glass leave a sense mortality or the inevitability that all memories can and soon will change or disappear.
