Final Portfolio / Digital Commons Assignment Art 399-01 SP17

Author/Artist Name

Taylor McCord, Murray State UniversityFollow

Files

Academic Level at Time of Creation

Senior

Date of Creation

Spring 5-5-2017

Artist Statement

When I was young I was obsessed with collecting photos my family had because I knew that the moment wouldn’t last forever, if we didn’t have those photos we would be left with nothing to hold onto. After time has passed, I look back at these photographs and notice nothing is always how I remember it, yet I do not wish the images to be anything else. It is this change am confronting. It is the distortion of both the image and memory that I am confronting.

I have always been a bit of a control freak. I want to maintain my family. I want to keep us together. My grandmother once told me she wondered what would happen to the family after she and Joe Joe passed; I wonder/ed that too. They were the glue that held us together. How would we still be connected? I took this on as a personal responsibility, to maintain our connection, which why I have saves materials and images of us, in order to preserve our memories. There is no clear way to preserve the past, and because of this a layer of separation forms when the memories are no longer the same.

Documentation photography tries to control how you view something. It makes an effort to show the truth of a moment/memory, but in its efforts to do so, it too, is confronted with change. Time doesn’t wait for any of us; it always changes the way you look at something, or the way it looks.

Because time distorts both the physical image and the imagery within our mind this layer of separation forms again, between reality and the imagery, and thus creates a feeling of dissociation. This is what I am interested in, the layer of separation one feels from a memory after time takes its course. I show this by rephotographing photographs to amplify the reprocessing that occurs in our minds, and that also occurs in the distortion of an image.

In my sculpture I also show this reproduction of memory by repurposing both personal and universal symbols/materials like: dryer lint, birthday cakes, fabric, headstones, flowers, etc. I have a connection to all of the materials I use, but they are such familiar objects that people can connect with them as well. With these symbols/materials I create artificial monuments that stand in for the image home. By making these artificial stand ins for the home I’m eluding back to the separation that forms around a memory over time. How I create this artificial look is by distorting the functionality of the symbols/materials used in the sculpture. I also use video or sound to help amplify the distortion of the piece.

An artist who I’ve been looking at recently is Jennifer Loeber, specifically her project “Left Behind” which she paired old photographs of her mom, who recently passed, with photographs of items of hers she kept. There is the presence of time as the two photographs differ in look. The way she uses saved materials and photographs to talk about a loss of a loved one is what started me to think about the connection between the two.

Advisor/Mentor

Timothy Martin

Description

Photography, Video Art, Sound, Sculpture, Installation

Recommended Citation

McCord, Taylor, "Final Portfolio / Digital Commons Assignment Art 399-01 SP17" (2017). Professional Practices (ART 399). 8.
https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/art399/8