Life Love And Death; what started out as an excuse to not write a paper for a class on death, turned into an incredibly complex and stressful process of designing and fabricating an automaton. This automaton is a magician, but not your typical rabbit out of the hat magician, this one can teleport it’s heart to and from its chest. I call it life love and death because the heart revolves around these three important parts of being human. We are born, we learn to love, and then we die, and while everyone has a different experience with these three principles, we all discover each one, at one point or another. This project was intended to follow the theme of death, but I quickly realized that death incorporates all these things, so it was only natural to focus on all three rather than just the one.

As I was working on this project during school for the past four to five months, my life was hit with a bit of a curveball, it was a time where I had to put a lot of thought about how I live my life, and most importantly how I navigate the love that is so present in my life. This project was something that I always had to work on no matter what for better or for worse, it was always there. Through the work, being so involved I realized I unconsciously projected and created an accurate recreation of what that was going on in my life at the time. What I find most interesting, is that I only see it so clearly now when I sat down trying to decide the name of the piece.

This project is something that I am very proud of and happy to be done with. I think it best describes who I am as a person and what I love to do, almost in a way that it could serve as a self portrait. I knew that I had to paint it with color because it is something I have always been in love with. I took inspiration from past automatons of the 1700 and 1800’s, and strived to evoke the work of Piet Mondrian of the De Stijl and Kazimir Malevich of Russian Constructivism.

I want to thank all my friends for sticking with me through this project even though I was a little carried away with it. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it!