BA Portfolio 2020

COVID threw a loop in everyones plans, often for the worst, but working around COVID guidelines for this exhibition actually provided an incredible opportunity for me. Normally with a BA portfolio I'd have access to a small corner of space to display my work along side my fellow classmates, but since we were not going to have a group exhibition as normal, I had the opportunity to take up as much space as I wanted.

And boy did I take advantage of that.

Primarily making these pieces during the second half of the Fall 2020 semester I was able to produce enough work at a large enough scale that my portfolio filled up the largest room in the CEAM. It's something I'm incredibly proud of and I truly enjoyed every moment of making and displaying this work.

This post includes my artist statement along with photos of each piece as well as a link to a video displaying details of some pieces with my commentary about the process and content of the exhibition.

Video Link

Artist Statement:

Comparing memories to books, traumatic memories would be the ones falling apart with dusty covers, written in an unfamiliar language, and tossed in a pile to rot. These broken books happen to be the ones I read most often in my mental library, resulting in numerous ventures to decipher the language of my trauma. Attempts to translate this language are manifested in the production of my work. Through painted words and fabric materials of comfort, I share my meditations on mourning, mortality, and questions of consciousness.

Comments

Chapter 9 - BLUE

The British tend to think of woad as a war paint—a symbol of the fierceness of Ancient Britons before the Romans conquered the country nearly two thousand years ago. Finlay, Victoria. Color (p. 340). some historians have suggested that Caractacus may not have needed to paint himself from a fermenting woad vat because he was already permanently painted. (p. 343). (black on pale skin tends to go blue), (p. 344)

My Favorite Chapters

Untitled Digital Painting But one of Turner’s favorite reds may well have been cinnabar— which he used in its manufactured form, vermilion, and which Pliny described as the result of an epic struggle by an elephant and a dragon. These two troublemakers were always fighting, Pliny recounted, and the battle eventually ended with the dragon—evidently a rather snaky one—wrapping its coils around its heavy enemy. But as the elephant fell it crushed the dragon with its weight and they both died. The merging of their blood made cinnabar. Finlay, Victoria. Color (p. 178). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. This short tale was entirely new to me when I read it. It created a vivid image in my mind, and as someone who loves folklore and fairytales, I was drawn to creating an illustration for this story. Untitled Acrylic paint on body, photographed T he British tend to think of woad as a war paint—a symbol of the fierceness of Ancient Britons before the Romans conquered the...

All Six

This piece, entitled All Six, consists of six pairs of fabric slippers. Each one represents a member of my immediate family. My youngest sibling is in high school and he has the shoe size of an adult man. I chose to depict our shoes as child sized, since I still cling to the image of my siblings as small kids, no matter how old we get. Downtown Saint Augustine is the landscape for this piece as it's a place full of fond memories of my family coming to visit me during my time at Flagler. While we never came to Saint Augustine as children, that childlike image of us, as we explored the city with our parents for the first time is one I hold dear. While this is my personal connection to the work, I also wanted to create a certain level of anonymity with the empty shoes, that could represent anyone from tourists roaming through the city, to a loved one you once walked with, but now only have memories of. The bottom of each shoe and closeup of stitching. My Mom walking on the fort. My ...

Allison Davis

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