Letting Go/ Holding On Project

Project Goals

To express something personal through your art

To learn directly from a working artist, Adriane Herman

To become acquainted with creating a zine

Artist Studied

Adriane Herman

Reflection

-We hold onto things because they are physical representations of memories in our life. These can be happy memories, stressful memories, sad memories, memories of people, memories of places. Holding onto physical objects can remind us of those memories and reintroduce the feelings associated with them. For me, I hold onto specific objects for fear that I will one day forget the memory, and that the object will help jog my memory. Keeping certain items gives me a sense of security. But there are plenty of items that are not held onto, these are the items that end up at the Transfer Station and in trash dumps. Trash and recycling do not carry the same significance to many as other objects that are kept, and therefore are often discarded without any care.

-I chose to illustrate a timeline of my college process. It was based off of the fact that I recently recycled my college timeline, which had been hanging on my wall right next to my bed for more than 10 months. I chose this as my subject because the college process has consumed me for almost a year of my life, and it has in many ways taught me about myself. I felt it was important to be honest about my experience, because I hope that others can learn from it. You go into the process with a lot of hope and an idea of how things should turn out, but for most people things don’t turn out how they wanted...like me. You can do everything right and things still don’t work out in your favor. It was a very difficult process that impacted me a lot and I hoped to share my experience with others.

-I know that my subject would be different because the whole college process would be far behind me. In 20 years I assume it would be about holding onto objects from my childhood, objects of my parents, my kids objects, etc. As you grow older you often accumulate stuff from your past. I love looking back at pictures, clothes, and objects from my childhood now. So I can imagine in 20 years I would only accumulate more of it. At that point in my life I would assume I hold onto things for the same reason I hold onto things now: they jog my memory. They remind me of happy times in my life, people in my life, etc. They give me a sense of security within my own memory.

-The most interesting part to me was making the zine. I have seen documentaries similar to Wasteland and have a fairly good understanding of how our water impacts others lives. I had also visited the Transfer Station before with my APES class and had a good understanding of what they do there and why. Creating the zine gave me closure on the whole process and helped me to ultimately “let go” of the whole process and accept where my journey has taken me.

-It was cool to hear about Adriane’s artistic past and to hear how she came to working on this specific project. Having her come in made me think about the idea of getting rid of my college timeline in the first place. Getting rid of my timeline helped give me closure on the whole process. I will remember her amazing collection of Zines the most, there were so many stories of people’s life within those small books.