process book 2

Grief.
I wanted to show grief as a sort of product of something else. These shadows build off the
cut letters and create the letter forms on the environment around them. However, I really
am not well versed in shadow art so once it was time to take pictures I had really no idea
what to expect which is both exciting and daunting.
After fiddling with spot lights, natural light, and regular lamps, I settled on a shadow that
was legible but not too aggressive. Grief is blurry and encompasses your entire body, it is
not sharp and hard. With each of the photo shoots, I try to push the environment in which
I place my piece. I decided to put the shadows on the human body because grief is such a
personal, intimate experience.
When exploring the idea of grief, I looked towards loss and emptiness. One of
my biggest associations with funerals is flowers. However, during funerals, the
flowers are used in attempt to bring life to this extremely sad and very unlively
time.
This piece played off that association but used dead carnations and dead roses
to show the loss of life that is worked so hard to ignore. I messily ripped and
broke the stems and petals to spell out grief in 25 degree weather to feel the
coldness that is created by grief.
Before standing out in the cold, my idea was to place it on top of
cracked cement to show the fragility of something so strong and
how overwhelming grief can be. After execution, it is clear that the
green on top of the dark gray is extremely illegibile and not in an
appropriate way.