SOVA Senior Show 2 - Spring 2019

My work expresses my feelings about self-identity and allows to be more comfortable in my own skin. From adolescence into young adulthood, I struggled with balancing obsession and mental stability, so I created a timeline of my experiences combined with material objects I kept close to me during that period of my life. This series is a shrine and dedication to both the celebrities I loved and the different people I have been in the past. Despite my difficulties being forward and outgoing, these photographs are large and unavoidable. Every detail, every insecurity about who I am and who I used to be, and every imperfection is blown up in scale in a way that is both confident and vulnerable.
I work with self-portrait photography because it helps me form a better relationship with myself. For the process of this work, I chose a photoshoot of a celebrity that I had an obsession with for a prolonged period during my teen-hood to early adulthood. I then recreated the photograph with my own personal narrative attached to it. In each piece, I left a small blank space to edit the original image of the celebrity back into my composition to show where my pose and expression came from.

“Jessie Lee” Almquist, 2019

I often find myself returning to the visual language of human anatomy. The internal structure of our bodies is something that is undeniably universal; we all share the same basic systems with the same risks of failure to varying degrees. I have found that there is something visceral and demanding in these images, especially when we walk the edge of gore and beauty, for the systems are beautiful in their way. These works draw on anatomy as a starting point for a very personal need to understand how our bodies fail us, how we live through grief when they fail in the absolute worst ways, and how we live in spite of chronic diseases that sometimes even medicine struggles to fully understand.

This process of reinterpreting scientific, longstanding medical diagrams allows me an entry point into exploring and understanding my personal feelings regarding such illnesses. The journalistic quality of the text in B. November 4, 1938: D. December 30, 2017 is a means of dealing with my grief following the sudden loss of my Grandfather due to Pancreatic Cancer. The diagrammatic labels and carefully rendered organs represent an attempt to understand the internal degradation that relates to my memories of those months. The structure of the cancerous cells drawn in pen further delve into the unseen mutation while also bridging together the paintings of the lumbar lymph nodes and the pancreas with its surrounding organs. This cell motif appears in 4th Generation in combination with dripped paint. These act as a corruption of a familiar space (our family farm) as a result of grieving. Throughout the works, this method of dripping paint also servers to limit my control, just as one might feel they can no longer control their body.

Together this series speaks to the fragility of the human body and the emotions that arise when faced with difficult illnesses.

Emma Crim, 2019

INFECTION is a mixed media project that speaks about mental health and its prevalence among the everyday person. I combine embroidery and non-silver photographic processes to create my pieces. Snapshot photos and the physicality of making my embroidery into specific drawing-like marks are what define my work. I use embroidery in the way I make drawings; making different marks and forms are primarily the same for me within both medias. INFECTION takes these formal techniques and uses them within photographic portraiture on found, vintage fabrics.

For this series, I create ambiguous portraits of young people suffering from mental health issues. The portraits are snapshots that I have collected over the years or have taken myself, transferred onto found fabric, and then embroidered with organic forms and colors. The physical appearance of these forms are reminiscent of bacteria and infectious disease. My mark making is small and detailed. I use minimal and gentle tonal ranges and colors. Getting up close and looking at the detail is an important aspect within my work.

Unfortunately, the percentage of depression and anxiety is climbing rapidly among young adults every year. A sense of biography and narrative is something that I strive for in my pieces. Being that I have been diagnosed with these mental health problems, I feel as though it’s important to speak up about this. My work questions current issues that I believe are not being discussed enough. Being able to empathize and inject myself into the project is also a large part of how I formed INFECTION.

Celeste Finelli, 2019