With this project, I wanted to capture the way memory fades over time. Throughout my time living in my mom’s house, my bedroom has seen a lot of changes. However, one part that has stayed pretty consistent is my closet. Each shelf has its own category of things that are allowed on it, and I’m quite particular about it because I hate messy closets. When everything has a place and everything is in its place, I’m content with the state of the closet.
The lower shelf is for my small guitar, a portion of my incomplete National Geographic magazine collection, jars of things, candle-making supplies, rocks and crystals, and a 3D touch-painting I did in grade 11.
The next shelf up is for paints, glue, a jar of mirrors, inks, mod podge, and brushes. And maybe a few more rocks.
The shelf above that one houses more Nat Geo magazines, four ceramic cups I’ve made of the years, papercraft creations, an old sketchbook, gold leaf, a basket of candles I don’t use very often, needle felting materials, and a tin pie pan. And a couple of nice rocks.
Another shelf up is where I keep my ukulele, a jar of dried lavender, a mortar and pestle, a bag of thread, another handmade pottery bowl full of knick-knacks, my vintage boombox that plays cassettes at ¼ speed, and a half-finished D&D figure I was making last year.
On the highest shelf is a collection of my old art projects. Clementine the cardboard chicken, the beginnings of my model of the Sainte Chapelle church, a large stack of used canvases from Michael’s, a paper geodesic dome with glitter on the inside, a plastic horn with glitter on the outside, and a paper mâché armoured glove holding a painted plastic Halloween cow skull.
I don’t consider myself to be particularly sentimental about a lot, so everything that Is in my closet is in some way very important to me. Either that, or I’m waiting out my brain until I can get rid of it. Who needs a bin full of empty Dollarstore paint tubes?
In capturing a progressively degrading and more child-like version of what I have in my closet, I hope to make the viewer consider what sort of things they remember from their childhood, and what parts have survived the tests of time and life to remain with them to this day.
I wanted the drawings to get progressively more difficult to understand, or at least more childlike in essence. I’m not sure that I achieved that in the way I had hoped, but I still think the project turned out cool. With this particular project too, I like how it looks, and I feel that it’s special to me. So, I don’t really care if others misinterpret the concept. I’ve gotten what I needed out of it, and I know there’s a lot more self-exploring to be done with this idea in my future.
I started each drawing by sketching out a loose gesture with my charcoal pencil, just to get a feel for where the objects would be positioned in relation to each other. Next, I went in a blocked out all the shadows and highlights with willow charcoal and compressed charcoal, as well as began shading the page. Then, I blended everything out with a #3 blending stump. Next, I added pencil crayon colour in visually particular places, holding the pencil crayon in a fist instead of like a pencil. Then, depending on where in the series the drawing was going to be placed, I blended again with a larger surface like the side of my hand, or a Kleenex or something. The final touches were the black and white paint markers. I used the thinner Posca paint markers and held them in my fist like the coloured pencils. The first drawings were meant to be more realistic and life-like, mirroring reality as it exists to me now. As the series continues, you can walk back in time through my mind as the memories get hazier, but the colour is important to note that it stays relatively bright. That’s just because that’s how I see memories in my mind. If I don’t remember the specifics of what happened, I’ll remember a still like a photograph, but everything is blurry and often under or over exposed, but the colours I can always remember clearly. Whether or not they actually match up with what reality was, the colour of a memory is always the strongest for me.
There were a few different ways I could have arranged the series. I knew I wanted it to be a progression, but some of the middle drawings had to be swapped because I drew them all out of order so sometimes, I’d finish a piece and realize that it should go closer to the end or something.
I struggled with wo things:
1. Finding a sketchbook that was 16×9 (because the paper was $9 per sheet and it was the only thing they had in store at the time), I ended up getting one that is 12×9, so I had to edit the images to include blotchy side bands.
2. I was trying to edit my images and add the sides in, when my program started making a mess of things and not saving when I asked it to, taking a long time to load, etc. But when I finally finished, everything looked a bit pink now. But that’s fine, it kind of plays into my theme a bit anyways; looking at the world or the past through rose-coloured glasses.
Chantal_Morfitt_U2DrawingPresentation-1
