Mnemonic Memorials

Date of Award

2005

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Freedland, Barry

Keywords

Memory, Art, Personal Art, Sculpture, Associations, Memorials, Materials

Area of Concentration

Visual Arts

Abstract

Through various mediums and processes the artistic evolution of my memories has culminated within the mnemonic memorials of this thesis. The intimate fossilized impressions of the mind are the threads of my identity and the source of inspiration. Piecing the elusive memories of childhood together has taken numerous symbolic processes and materials, ranging from the weaving of wool to casting in bronze. The corroding context of my past needs to be confronted, memorialized, and contained in the aggregated riddle of the remembered spaces and the collected associative souvenirs. Christian Boltanski, Betye Saar, Leonardo Drew, Louise Bourgeois, H.C. Westermann, and Simon Starling are the major artistic parallels to my work, through the conceptual ideas of memory, scale, containment, records, traces, architectural spaces, and the body. The books The Poetics of Space and On Longing, have provided additional theoretical content to my investigations of the miniature house and intimate inner workings of the mind. With the importance of processes, materials, and the psychological nature of my sculptures, surrealism and process art are a crucial history for my work. Although my work is autobiographically cryptic, it is my hope that the viewer will understand the concepts of memory through the childhood references, the contained preciousness, and the transformed scale and perspective of objects. These memorialized sculptures are mnemonic devices for me, built around personal associations, but they do hold collective and historically nostalgic associations, which conceivably will aid in the viewer's interpretation. I believe that in order to solve the conundrums within my sculptures one must read the symbolic parts as elements of a whole environment or mood.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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