This is a student blog post submitted by Frank Roberts, C’18. Frank is an English major with a concentration in creative writing.
I am one of those transfer/commuter students you only ever see bolting in and out of classrooms. Being new to the scene at North Park, I am thrilled by the ever-evolving senior art exhibitions. I often catch a streaking color of newly-installed artwork as I hustle toward the Carlson lobby elevators and vow to take a more deliberate look after class. It is not as if I need the reminder. On my way back down, I am always hooked by the fullness of these works.
Every inch of space in the room seems to be used to make a statement. Some student’s work take a minimalistic approach, letting blank space speak for itself while others choose to immerse it fully in fanciful color and complex arrangements.
A few of the pieces have had interactive elements to them. One in particular had an array of sharpies and a large banner poster asking you to draw your favorite childhood memory. I drew myself perched in a large mango tree with friends in Ghana where I was born. Right before that, I stood in front of it looking over the mosaic of memories left by others. I pondered the meaning of this exercise. Zoe Larson, the artist, later on shared with me that the intent was to focus on memory and memory loss inspired by her grandmother who has Alzheimer’s. “I started looking back on my own memories in an attempt to document and catalogue,” she said. Zoe had spent hours on end painting, drawing, carving, and crafting items that made the room look like a child’s bedroom or rather an elderly person reliving their childhood.
I can’t help but wonder which part of my past my mind will be drawn to as I reach my end. Will it be my childhood in a now foreign land? My years in college? Or some time in-between? It is an arresting thought that the interactions, decisions, and everyday moments of my life I often let pass without regard might be all I have to cling to when life is almost said and done.
(Several years after leaving my childhood home, I visited and saw that mango tree we had spent lots of time in. It is very tiny. Only a few feet tall. But I wanted to draw it how I always remembered it.)
Coming down the elevator one afternoon, I caught a piece by senior art major Tatum Hendrickson. Tatum chose to use pieces of material sewn together to depict the meditative hours she had spent focusing on the deep friendships and community she had created here at North Park. She described these as relationships that helped her overcome hardships in her college career. The yarn and other sewn material seemed to be color coordinated according to the person represented. Some were a more cohesive color scheme while others seemed to be a varied scheme that probably characterized a more eccentric person. In response, I reflected on the connections I have made throughout my life. Some do not make sense at first. There might not be obvious similarities in personality and life experience and so I don’t always recall how they begun. Yet, I am grateful for the myriad of colorful individuals that makeup the tapestry that is my life.
There was another I stumbled upon late on a Monday after an evening class. On the furthest wall was a monochromatic scene of contorted hands rising towards the heavens. It was harrowing in the dim light in a way that made me think about it throughout the week. It was as if a skeleton were reaching out of the grave, into sunlight.
I think it a fabulous idea that childhood wonder and understated macabre can occupy the same space. It feels a little bit like stepping into a labyrinth; a bewildering maze of a right-brained person’s head. I have found it a transcendent experience walking through these living, breathing galleries. They are always fresh and insightful.
There is, however, an impression of “work in progress” I’ve gathered about every one of these projects. They seem to be at an end and a beginning at the same time. I think that is because good art tells a story of personal journey. In the same way that these artists are ending their time at North Park but going into new frontiers, a journey is never done. Real stories do not move in a linear fashion but have a starting point that continues along an unpredictable direction within the storyteller as they grow, and also branches off to the listener as they carry it into their own story.
Personally, my life in and outside of school this semester has included lessons on the importance of memory and meditation in spirituality. Anxiety and constant change has plagued my spirituality. I’ve craved harmony in the twisting emotion of blank space and overstimulating color. The present has unfolded parts of my life journey I do not feel prepared to manage. I feel like a mess in progress. I’ve been learning in those moments, though, to take time to slow down and meditate on the various experiences and people that have given to me and taught me to be steadfast when the world around me is in flux. I access memory that otherwise lay forgotten in my subconscious. And then breathe it to life. I find I know things I was certain I did not know – the misplaced words of others, the minuscule moments that did prepare me for the here and now.
(Photos by Timothy Lowly, Artwork by Zoe Larson)