Advisor: Martin Levine

I never had a good memory or concept of time. Growing up I could never picture my future, as if it were an empty space with a constant feeling of confusion. This empty space continues to grow to this day, even as I constantly try to remain grounded to my past. However, I struggle to remember memories from my childhood. While it is natural for one to grow older and enter new unknowns, the realization that memories from the past will only continue to become hazier can be daunting. What was and what will be are somehow nonexistent yet contemporaneous . I often & dissociate from the memories themselves as if I were a mere bystander. The memories begin to materialize as an unfinished story, with my imagination filling in any blanks. As a child, I was taught that imagination is one of the most powerful human abilities that we cannot afford to lose.

In Memory of a Goldfish, I use a mix of various printmaking techniques, drawings and installation pieces in an attempt to create a physical “house” of memories. While there are a few images in color, most are in greyscale. When we look back on our recollections, we will not remember the minuscule details like the color of a person’s shirt, but the overall memory and how it made us feel instead. The recurring image of the scuba diver in various pieces represents myself as an outside entity passively watching the scene. In this exhibition I create my own plot. Each image illustrates an event that is based in truth, but it is up to the viewer to determine what is true and what is fiction. The images are not placed in chronological order as the timing of the memory is not important; instead what occurred during that time is the critical focus.

I use photography as the link between my active conscience and my memories. By capturing a moment in time, I am able to produce a physical snapshot of the past. However as I grow older I begin to lose track of time and the photos begin to merge together. It is a constant, uphill battle to grasp onto every memory and time itself. Each individual has their own path that molded who they have become. The person today is not created from one defining moment, but rather a slow progression that many do not notice right away. Similar to a novel, each character has their own narrative arc to which only they have privy; their full story remains hidden from the others.

I use techniques including stippling and mezzotint in many of my works to maintain as much detail as possible. I easily become engrossed throughout the process, spending hours stippling a single shell. Stippling allows me to depict intricate details that would otherwise be difficult with a single line. This is done by using dots as a method for shading in an image. I also use mezzotint and aquatint to achieve smoother gradients and darker blacks than what I could achieve with a graphite pencil. Mezzotint is the process of scraping away at the ink on either a limestone or copper plate. From there you are able to pull a range of tones in the image. Through each work I was able to experiment with different mediums.

In Bigger Fish to Fry, I attempted reverse stippling with gum arabic to create the values of the whale shark. Gum Arabic is used to stop out any areas on the limestone in lithography that you do not want the drawing materials to touch. In Out of The Blue I used the cyanotype technique to transfer pictures I had taken of my friends. Cyanotypes are a light sensitive printmaking process where you can lay negatives over the treated paper, and the sun will print the image. Initially when working from photographs I had captured, I struggled to find a balance between stylistic expression and honest realism. I would constantly attempt to reach this unattainable level of perfection. However, I was able to remedy this frustration by utilizing printmaking and drawing in conjunction with photography. Even though a photograph is worth a thousand words, I found more clarity and satisfaction by adding in my own style.

The majority of the artworks included in the exhibition were purposefully created with a medium, specifically ink and pen, that cannot easily be erased. I display both perfectionist and indecisive behaviors. I paradoxically find it liberating to put ink onto paper to remain there permanently, flaws and all. There is no going back, and you have to live with what has been created. However, these crude marks are able to be transformed into a complete image.

The indelible marks symbolize an irreversible past. One cannot change history retroactively, but one can decide how to enhance what already exists to make a difference in the future. The size of the paper used for each piece represents the importance of a specific fraction in time. The larger the image, the more significant the impact that memory had in shaping who I am today. The substantiality of the bigger pictures allows the fragments of the past to become their own intrinsic entities, with the interpretations left up to the viewers.