Honors Thesis and Senior Thesis Projects
Honors Thesis Project:
(in)Visible
Mental health can be a difficult subject to approach, especially in visual media where it is easy to further harmful stereotypes and to do nothing productive. However, I believe that utilizing the gothic with its rich
literary and visual history allows for a different perspective on how we can explore a person’s mental health. Specifically, looking at gothic horror in its written and visual entertainment formats provides us with a means of exploring the internal and external factors of a person’s mental wellbeing. The demonstration of both mental and physical manifestations of normal and paranormal episodes suggests that the presence of one does not negate the existence of the other. To explore this concept, I am using a mixture of analog and digital photographic processes, as well as an array of technical skills including motion blur, view camera movements, and a variety of facial and body work.
Senior Thesis Project:
I am creating a painting series highlighting a perceived dichotomy of what is “right” in the environment versus what is “wrong.” I use quotations because, in reality, it isn’t a dichotomy, it’s more of an
incongruity existing somewhere along the lines of a dichotomy. We see examples of a healthy ecosystem where predator, prey, and producer exist harmoniously and within a carefully constructed balance. However, as we, the humans, continue to act without regard to that balance, the environment begins to fall out of alignment. I want to represent this by displaying examples of a healthy ecosystem being dead and cold on plain backgrounds, indicative of specimens in a lab… things of the past to be studied and examined. In contradiction to that imagery, there would be lively, vivid surrealist paintings of creatures and environments that are going wrong due to climate change, etc.,.
"plankton study"
"surrealist manatee"
"bonnethead shark study"
"blue crab study"
"surrealist saltmarsh sparrow study"