Introduction  

How much of life do you really remember? How often do you think back to all the people you used to know, the places you used to visit, the things you used to do? Life is constantly changing and you are constantly experiencing new things, which can cause you to forget about what you’ve already experienced. This project is a blanket representation of the artist's life, with each square representing something or someone she has experienced in her twenty years of life.

Literature Review

Artist Karen Ballard created a collaborative freeform crochet artwork that involved over 200 people sending in their creations, which were then combined all together to make the artwork (Flower Power). This idea of parts making up the whole influenced the artist to do a quilt like blanket with each square representing something different.

Nostalgia is important. An article by the University of Southampton outlines how engaging in nostalgic reflection people feel a stronger sense of belongingness and describe their lives as more meaningful. They also have higher levels of self-esteem and a more positive mood (What Nostalgia is). WebMD further supports this, stating that nostalgia's focus on the past actually “fuels the future” (Bishop). 

Methods

Vanessa conducted interviews for research. She interviewed her family members to figure out not only how best to represent them in a crochet square but also to help sort through all her memories and even recover some old ones. When making the squares she uniquely designed them drawing on her years of crochet experience. Most of the squares follow a genre of crochet called granny squares, which is a method of starting in the center and working out in a square like shape.

Audience & Impact

In today’s fast paced world it is easy to get too caught up in what you have to do in the future that you forget what you have already lived. The audience for this project is any and everyone who is open to getting a new perspective on life. Vanessa hopes that when people see her blanket and get a look into the key parts of her life they will reflect about what their blanket would look like. Which old friends would they include? What key memories are important enough to be memorialized? Some people argue that to focus on the past is to never move forward, but without our past we would not be where we are today. It is important to remember where we came from to know who we are. Making this blanket has challenged Vanessa’s creativity and forced her to analyze who she is.

References

Bishop, Chelsea. “What Is Nostalgia? Examples, Health Benefits, and History.” WebMD, 25 November 2022, https://www.webmd.com/balance/what-to-know-about-nostalgia. Accessed 2 April 2024.

“'Flower Power' coming to the ARTfactory | Headlines | insidenova.com.” InsideNoVa.com, 4 October 2021, https://www.insidenova.com/headlines/flower-power-coming-to-the-artfactory/article_6f2d75dc-24d6-11ec-96c9-8b83adefd4bb.html. Accessed 27 November 2023

“What Nostalgia Is and What It Does | Nostalgia.” University of Southampton, https://www.southampton.ac.uk/nostalgia/what-nostalgia-is.page. Accessed 2 April 2024.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to all Arts Scholars faculty members and peers who helped refine this project, and thank you to my family members for their part in creating this project.