Here lies my thoughts, complaints, anxieties, and revolutions surrounding my thesis-thoughts.
Consume at your own risk.
Consume at your own risk.
prompt for entry;write your future.
What are ways you might cast your imagination into the future to consider what is possible and to help you realize your most aspirational goals?
Write a journal entry as if you’re writing it at the start of this summer, reflecting on your recently completed thesis: what are you most proud of accomplishing? How do you feel and why? Where did you exceed expectations — yours and others? Etc.
I am so very worried for the months to come! BUT;
I am happy that in my final year of school, EVER, I chose to do a project that made me uncomfortable, emotional, stressed, and angry.
I am happy that I spent my final year exploring untraditional avenues of design, avenues I never saw myself exploring or even wanting to try.
I am happy that I did a project for myself, before I spend the rest of my career designing for other people.
Here’s what I wish was different;
- I wish I was like,, SOOOOOOOOOO employable. Like I wish I had ten jobs lined up and I could say no to nine of them.
- I wish I could have seen a clearer path to my thesis, sooner - I feel like I floated and felt lost for a long time. Wasted time?
- I wish the future didn’t feel so scary. I wish the now didn’t feel scary either. And the horrible flutter feeling in my stomach would go the hell away.
- I wish I took more time for design play, or more design time in general. Even if it was just a week long personal project.
Overall, I feel scared AF.
I feel like every moment of my senior year should have been full of really hard work that is ultimately impressive. I don’t think I feel like it went that way, but in all honesty it’s because I didn’t want it to. I recently came to the realization that school kinda sucks. Don’t get me wrong, I loved every second of it and I’ll look back on these years as some of the best. I’m at a point where school feels soul-sucking and all consuming. There is an expectation to give everything in your entire being to your school work, 24/7. And I just don’t like living like that. Part of me feels like that makes me less of a designer, but I want to live and enjoy my life more than I want to make life-altering bodies of work. I want to drink with my friends and smoke on my fire escape. I want to go out and explore the city I live in, I want to pursue my hobbies, I want to make time for family, and I want to be able to do these things without the constant weight of guilt. Corporate work, or at least JOANN (where I interned this summer+fall), didn’t make me feel that way. At 5:00pm, the guilt lifted. Actually, there was no guilt to begin with. At school I feel like I’m being examined in a petri dish, everyone’s watching to see how I grow or what I turn into. At JOANN it was the opposite problem, where I felt invisible.
This is one of the biggest things I hate about my industry. I wouldn’t want to do any other career, but I also don’t want my career to be my axis mundi. I want my career to support my axis mundi, which is the rest of the things in my life that make me happy.
1.27.2025
prompt for entry; envision your exhibition.
o Write, list, sketch, and/or collage your dream thesis exhibition
o What elements are must-haves for you? What elements are nice-to-haves?
o What do people see first? What do you want them to do first? Then what?
o What is the primary experience? How passive or interactive do you want that experience to be? What about the other experiences?
o What do you want someone to think about or do after they experience your thesis exhibition? Are there things for people to take? What are they and what is in them?
I am envisioning a free-standing structure - nothing crazy though because I am horrible at building things, but I know a lot of people who could help with this sort of thing. I want to mainly utilize drapery of fabric to create my “walls”. I want the viewer to have to enter the confined space that I create, and put themselves into a new atmosphere that seperates them from their regular world. I want the drapery to be translucent, but not a material you can see through. I want it to feel feminine. I want some light to be able to travel through the material. I want the structure to guide the viewer in with a winding path, with my works at the end.
MUST HAVES:
drapery, paintings, vinyl applications, a moving/built wall for structure, take-aways/artists books,
NICE-TO- HAVES:
video/audio experience, scent experience (sweet/perfume?),
The first thing I want the viewer to experience is that they have to uncover the narrative of my thesis by entering a feminine space. The space itself will feel “traditionally” feminine, and the work will be depicting feminine rage. I want them to enter the drapery, look at the work, maybe have an opportunity to interact in some way, and take some kind of take-away/artist book before they go.
I want them to recognize that feminine rage is shrouded in cheap perfume and fake frills.. I found a quote recently that really struck me and I feel it sums up my work in an interesting way - “To be a woman is to perform” .. Pop-culture can serve as a form of escapism. It’s nice to see women be mad in a country where women’s rights are in danger with each passing day, but at the same time it is still just a performance. Kind of like the “this is not a pipe” theory, but it’s more like “This is not a real woman, this is a real woman pretending to be angry (which is much easier than actually being angry)” but that’s not quite as catchy, is it?
I want to create a space for real rage. A “scream here” or “write down the name of the person who’s hurt you the most and shred it up”. Some kind of release, like Conor reccomended.
2.3.2025
prompt for entry;What do you want to make public?
Part of your exhibition could (should?) be the re-presentation of a designed experience that you facilitate for a public audience
- What might this experience entail?
- Where might it take place?
- How could it be interactive, participatory, or performative?
- Consider: Envisioning someone experiencing it and describe that experience from their perspective
I know that I want to present the audience an oppportunity to “release”. Release anger, frustration, any intense emotion at all. I want this performance of emotion to be public, seen.
A chance to break something? Shred paper? Shatter glass? Destroy my paintings?
A chance to create and connect? Write and journal? Share an opinion? A space to scream?
I know that I want this experience to happen after experiencing my work. A cause and effect. A reaction.
I feel that having the audience’s input be anonymous will be important.
I want the viewer to feel that they have the agency to participate. That yes, in fact, I am talking to YOU. I want them to be able to see themselves in my exhibition. To be able to relate, reflect, and feel rage. I want this to be an opportunity to feel powerful in a time where most women feel powerless. In a time where our rights are actively being taken away, and our voices are actively being silenced. I want to emphasize that women in minority groups - LGBTQ+, POC, women with disabilities, etc,, have even less agency in society to express emotion, especially compared to white cis women. I want them to feel empowered to act in the way they want and choose to.
I might be interested in pointing viewers to the future,, for how much longer will things get worse before they get better? At what point will society decide that enough is enough, and forcibly take down oppressive powers?
GOALS MOVING FORWARD:
- create a refined supercut - something with graphic elements, photography, think Baldassari
- Look into the history of drapery
- Art boooookk,, what is the history of art books, especially within an exhibition?
- Make paintings, posters, zines,,,, just make stuff
- Try to think about the MOST IMPORTANT elements of your thesis,, if you only had 4ft, how would you use it?
MAIN THEME/MESSAGING:
- Society places more importance on parasocial relationships with celebrities than actual women
- Women often use pop-culture as a form of emotional escapism
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