Collectors
A Family History
Collectors book on music stand, enlarged prints
I weave together personal narratives in Collectors, an illustrated anthology that encompasses my family's history. Mixed media, drawings, scanned documents, interviews, and prose are collaged in an examination of individual stories and how they connect in overarching themes across generations.
To bring Collectors to life, I wanted to create a living collage, translating the two-dimensional drawings into three-dimensional space. I painted designs and patterns on furniture, simulating the textures that often occur in my drawings, and choosing objects that evoked memories of my grandparents’ house.
“Living Room” Installation
Accompanying this sense of my grandparents’ house is a nod to the library of books that I grew up around – I printed many copies of Collectors as well as my Illustrated Journal (split up into three volumes), and left them strewn on the table and on the nightstand.
(Detail of printed books, click to see slideshow)
(Selected excerpts from Collectors)
My illustrated journal shows my personal exploration, introspection, and growth over the past two years. I started working in this sketchbook in January 2019, with the intention of combining written journaling with observational drawings. This method allowed me to focus more clearly on the small aspects of life that I would experience and often overlook, and instead magnify them.
(Selected pages from Illustrated Journal)