Memento

With this project we were required to create a piece that would serve as a memento or keepsake representing a particular memory, person, or event. For my piece I chose to make my memento based on a couple of memories that, although seemingly insignificant, often come to my memory when I pass certain landmarks, hear a certain song, or even smell a familiar scent. I find it so interesting that memories often come back to us at random moments, without warning. With my piece I wanted to capture some of these moments so that I could continue remembering them, and hopefully hold onto some of the insignificant times that I would usually forget.

The memories that I chose all stem from driving in the car with my older sister. My sister is one of my favorite people and someone that I have always admired and looked up to, so naturally I cherish many of the experiences that I have shared with her. One thing that we have shared a lot of memories doing is driving. Ever since my sister got her license she has been picking me up from school, driving me to soccer practice, friends' houses, church, the mall, the beach, and running errands with me. My sister also loves music, so most of the time she was driving me places, we would be listening to music. These two ordinary things (driving and listening to music with my sister) have created some of my most beloved memories, and have even come to define a lot of my sister and my relationship. My memento works to embody and represent this relationship and some of the memories I have with my sister. 

Process Pictures:

To begin, I chose to create a glass box to represent the windows and being inside of my sister's car. This structure creates the framework of the rest of the memories. Rather than making a structure that actually resembled a car, or windows or even my sister, I wanted my piece to consist of basic shapes to represent the mundane and ordinary nature of these memories.

After I created the box I placed three basic glass shapes in the box, filled it with sparkling water and sealed the structure closed. The three shapes are two long rectangular prisms and one flat larger rectangle. The larger shape represents a billboard that I remember seeing while my sister and I were stopped at a traffic light while we shared a discussion about a boy that I had a crush on at the time. One of the prisms represents a wooden pillar that I tried to climb once when we drove to the beach randomly one night. The other prism represents one of the pillars holding a bridge that I remember we were stopped under while we tried to find our way home after we had gotten lost trying to get to an art store. I chose to make these shapes out of the same clear material that the box was made out of because of the way that the memories are not solid memories in my mind that I can always recall and bring to my memory, but rather they are transparent in that I remember them at random times, and I usually do not recall all of the details of the memories, as if they were a dream. To make them even harder to see and to give them more natural movement, I filled the box with sparkling water. The water is significant because it represents a number of things. It represents the memories I have with my sister at the beach, the movement of the music, and as I explained, it gives all the pieces the kind of movement that I feel the memories themselves actually have. Another funny thing about the water is that when I went to buy the bottle for this project they were selling the waters with labels designed by Andy Warhol, who happens to be one of my sister's favorite artists- so even the water provides a memento of my sister!

Final Pictures:

Drawings: