Plum Nelly, Fall 2016

Plum Nelly, December 2016

Glascock, Fall 2016

Glascock, December 2016

Black and white film photography

This piece was purely meant for myself. After thinking about the idea of process and remembering where I come from, I knew I needed to draw back to my family and focus solely on them for a moment in order to finally be able to branch away and make something new for the world. The piece consists of images I took on my own of my parents and brothers, as well as reprints I made from my mom's old negatives from the year 2000. She always wanted a photography wall to summarize our family and I wanted to make it for her, in a way. These images to me feel extremely similar to the whole experience of growing up as a Glascock and hopefully I will be able to pursue greater things outside of my family after completing this.

patience, Fall 2016

patience, November 2016

Mixed media

When I made this piece, I was thinking of a person viewing an artwork for mere seconds before concluding what it is in its entirety, so I made something that could only be fully understood with patience and endurance. The piece started as a messy blob of wax and sand, and over time, it melted to reveal venus figurines, some of the oldest recognizable artwork in history. I wanted to question how long we give something before moving on, and how sure of ourselves we can be without noting what time can do to change our perception.

self portrait, sans flesh, Fall 2016

 

self portrait, sans flesh, September 2016

Steel, copper wire, latex paint, wood

This piece is meant to be a figurative self portrait of my past. I was born with spina bifida, and in 1996, the odds of me being able to walk were almost one in a million. Later on in life, my twin brother Riggs would go on to build wheelchairs for children born with the same disability I was supposed to have. I chose to weld the entire thing based on the idea that metal is essentially the backbone of the earth, making this piece both extremely personal to me and ambiguous in the way people could receive it.

Failed, Spring 2016

Failed, Spring 2016

24” x 48” mixed media

This piece was made in slight reference to Mark Rothko and the Modernist movement. I enjoyed the idea of using color and size to convey a specific emotion, and, going through a particularly rough phase in my personal art, I wanted to replicate the feeling of failure. What ended up being more fascinating to me than anything else was that during the critique, a classmate’s friend visiting from Belgium thought of the Belgian bombings that had taken place only a week earlier, and I loved that my artwork, through its ambiguity, could relate to several ideas at once.

Unraveling, Spring 2016

Unraveling, Spring 2016

Bricks, canvas, watercolor

This work is a portrayal of my feelings toward my home to people in Richmond who have never heard of Chattanooga. I painted a landscape of the view from Signal Mountain looking onto the downtown city, unraveled the canvas, and wrapped it around loose bricks from the sidewalks of Richmond. The main idea was that the viewer could not see the painting although it was still there, surrounded by culture that contrasts against it. In my original presentation, I showed a video of blank canvas being unraveled inside of the canvas frame on the wall (see the above link).

A Southern Family Tree, Spring 2016

A Southern Family Tree, Spring 2016

Acrylic paint, paper mache, multicolor thread, and dirt

I made this piece to speak about what it feels like to grow up in the south. Many dismiss it as a hateful, conservative, racist place, and while these negative aspects do make up a majority of the ideology, there is far more to what it means to be Southern. I was questioning why it is a seen as a problem to want to identify with where I am from, when it is possible to acknowledge the past, actively fight against the ideology of it, and still love the place and what it means to me all the same.