Coming Clean

This project began with the memory of a neglected bathtub that sat at the top of the stairs in my childhood home for about eight years. It was waiting there to be placed in the remodeled bathroom that never came to be. I began to put the pieces together of how the brand new bathtub, still in its box, represented the theme of unfinished business in my family history.
The tub represents me overcoming experiences. The tiles reflect my family history and the meaningful people in my life: both sides of my grandparents, my divorced parents, and my sister. Not only do the tiles reflect these unresolved relationships, but they also symbolize the incomplete rooms and spaces that were constants in my life.
In many ways this image has become that of an intangible object, which represents how we can re-create memories by learning and changing from them. This is not just about the theme of unfinished family business, it’s about me finishing something and giving the viewer the opportunity to view my past, which is beginning to feel finally resolved.

Whitehead Road

Each person has a unique attachment to the house they grew up in. Personally, I am extremely attached to the house that I spent the first ten years of my life in prior to my parent’s divorce. However, I was intimidated to revisit the house because of how it had inevitably changed since my family moved out eleven years ago. With this project, I went back to the property for the first time and explored the yard, the woods behind the house and the field across the street. The absence of the physical house in these three pictures represents my hesitations in calling it my own anymore and illustrates how the process of moving on from this site of my childhood is still in progress.

A Wedding Photograph

Untitled

I photographed the bodies of women I knew in natural, comfortable poses and juxtaposed them with a plastic bust in order to comment on today’s idealized female figure. The contrast between the two female forms manipulates the viewer’s gaze and forces them to question which figure they are aesthetically drawn to.