Conversations With the Self: An Artist's Visual & Written Wanderings

• Main Author: Perkins, Elizabeth W.
• Format: Others
• Published: VCU Scholars Compass 2004
• Subjects: postmodern melodrama; projection; exhibition; fabric; Virginia; Louisa County; photographs; glass; Arts and Humanities; Fine Arts
• Online Access: http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/872; http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1871&context=etd

The thesis is made up of episodes in which I am in dialogue with myself, sometimes in dialogue with the work, and yet other times I am speaking directly to the reader/viewer. The tense also sways from past to present as frequently as the visual language does. The following episodes are a selection of writings from my final year at graduate school. The episodes express my influences, inspirations, theories, and philosophies as a person and a maker. I think of these things as what allows me to wander and then wander somewhere else completely different within the same landscape. I feel it is important for an audience to experience these wanderings. I feel it is more valid for you to read exactly what I am thinking rather than to tell you about what I am thinking and making, because it is an expression of my relationship with my work. The images are supplemental to the writing. The images and writings fit together in that they inform one another. That is not to say that the ideas do not always transfer literally from image to writing but that they are what is thought about simultaneously through out my creative process. Most importantly I have developed through my graduate experience an intense relationship with the work. This is the most important relationship an artist has, the one with his or her work. It is deep and enriching, at times painful and frustrating, and at its best surprising, amazing, and even glorious. This is what I have to share through my thesis.