What was your process on this piece? It was based off of a love letter given to me around christmas time. It was with this potential love interest, like things were going well, until one day, all of a sudden things changed. We’d been talking for a while, until they turned a total 180 all of a sudden. So, I was left kind of empty and puzzled, like, “hey what’s going on?” So, me being an overthinker, I kept asking myself, “did I do anything wrong?” That’s what the backstory was.
I’m primarily a sculptor; I usually use everyday objects and give life to them by assigning meaning based on the memories I attach to them. The question for this piece was, how do I use a letter? A letter that was confined to paper. So I tore it up, scrambled it around—It’s pretty much my metaphor of me continuously investigating: what did I do wrong, what happened? And no matter how much you scramble it, it’s pretty much never going to make sense.
What materials did you use? For this one I used acrylic paint and mixed it with some modelling paste so it gives it that really thick texture. While it was still setting, I projected every part of the letter on the canvas and etched it from there. So basically, the handwriting on there was the handwriting of the person who wrote the letter.
How does this compare to your past works? It was a bit of a challenge for this work because it was for a painting class—so I had to use paint. For my past works I used different materials, but it would be whatever served best for the intention of the artwork. For instance, I created a piece with a walker [“I may not see you, but I know you’re walking with me”]—because I work at a senior community, so I see walkers every day—I made a piece that serves as a tribute to those who passed away, having gotten close with some of the residents there. I put a mold over the walker to emphasise my relationship with those who passed away how my experience with them helped shape my character and how I look at life.
Why the pink bar? That pink was the color of the pen that that person used to write their signature at the end of their letters, and of course I didn’t want to put their name on it. So I kind of made it look like it was erased. The sense of redaction makes it seem like “okay, we don’t want this person anymore.”
Did you have any specific intentions with the title? To begin with, they were a Disney fanatic, so it was like a total tragedy. Looking at the original letter, it looked like everything was going well, but at the end it was a bit of a tragedy. And thinking of how I sort of built my own fantasy out of the letter, I don't know what the writer’s intention was; maybe it was them, or maybe it was also me. Maybe I over romanticized the letter. Maybe I gave it so much meaning that I made a fantasy out of it—that expectation was something I created on my own and it could never be achieved.
What do you think of the narrative of love in modern storytelling? A lot of it seems to come from this Disney defined “Happily ever after.” There’s definitely been a culture shift and in this age it’s rapidly changing. I guess those images of the happy ending don't happen much more and people are starting to become very realistic.There are a lot more people getting together without necessarily the ties of marriage; there’s open relationships; there’s people who raise families completely on their own as single parents. I, myself, have a bit of a difficulty catching up with what it's all really supposed to mean.
Have you ever experienced heartbreak? Yes. Many times. (The one relating to this piece being one of the more recent.) Sometimes I turn to painting to just cope with those.
How do you look at that relationship, now having spent time away from it and processed it through your art? Honestly, I realized it could have been both of our faults; they did things, I did things. I was basically thinking about it the whole time when making the painting.
You hinted at how you will translate these heartbreaks and emotions into your paintings. Is your art an outlet that you use to process those feelings as well? My professors have described my artistic process as a cathartic visual representation. I’m an overthinker, naturally, so I think a lot about “what I could have done,” “what I should have done,” but eventually I get to throw them all into the artwork that I make.
Does making the art help you put a button on it in a kind of way? Yeah, having an outlet like this really helps; it’s a good release. It helps you look at silver linings out of every terrible situation.
Maintaining and forging relationships has become an interesting challenge in the pandemic with so much time apart. How has that made you look at relationships; either current or past, platonic or romantic; in the past 16 months? It just made me realize how much we need someone. We usually need someone we love, especially in rough times. I basically spent the last 16 months staying in my on-campus apartment literally by myself. I don’t get to see my family, I don’t get to see my classmates, go out, go to a club, go to wherever, ya know? I realized I was changing personality wise; I found myself getting distant from people. Having someone, like an emotional support, it’s really really important.
Moving forward, what does it look like both for your art and your relationships? In terms of art, I think the pandemic gave me a chance to reflect on myself. I took the time just to reevaluate myself, look at how I approach things, reassess my life from top to bottom. Not just have to worry about other people. I took some time off from social media, realized what the things I like to make art about are and kind of identified key parts of my artistic identity. We’re not really out of the containment lifestyle, and I know we’re trying to regain a sense of normalcy, but it’s still not the same, so I’m just taking the time to work on myself again.