Forgetting to Say Goodbye, Mixed Media, Video, Puppeteering, Computer Animation, Watercolor, Traditional Animation, Photography, Performance, etc., 2019/2020
Video Credits: Kenny Shallenberger (Fabrication), Emory Brown (Filming), and Abby Birkel (Illustration).
As we go about our day, the places and people we meet will leave lasting impacts on us,even if we don’t realise it. And we, in turn, impact them as well. In this , I explore the ideas ofhope, discovery, memory and survival by telling a story about a real place that has impacted mein more ways than I’ll ever know. As our characters, named Ghost and Robot, explore thesetting, I would like you to imagine how it would feel to be in their place, exploring the silentstudios of an abandoned Richards Hall.
The variation of art styles present in this piece parallels the many different art stylespracticed by students there, and is relative to the development of my own unique style.Thispiece is presented as one half of what was intended to be a site specific installation piece,specific to the Eisentrager-Howard Gallery as a sort of farewell to the place I’ve just spent fouryears of my life. That being said, I wish to present this piece as it is, because anything less feelslike pretending our world wasn’t forever changed halfway through.
The Coronavirus Pandemic denied me a proper goodbye, and despite my owncomplicated feelings about Richards Hall, I already miss it. I spent countless hours there, andmade countless memories in its studios. Richards Hall served as a second home of sorts, aplace where I learned as much about myself as I did about art. The question I want to ask theviewer, because I cannot ask the building itself, is a small and selfish question, only reallyimportant to me, really. I guess what I mean to ask is this: do you think the building willremember me as fondly as I will remember it?