hey everyone! i know this is kind of going up late but im hoping that i can get some feedback on my artist statement before tomorrow, its still not feeling all there for me and anything would be really helpful.
Thanks! and i would really awesome if everyone could post theirs too so i can finish up those questions for tomorrow :-)
It’s a fact of life that people grow old, yet it is so hard to watch the ones we love slowly loose their strength and begin to lean on us for help, as we once did to them. After two hip replacements, everyday is a challenge for my father just to get out of bed. However, the pain has not stopped him from doing all the things he has always loved doing. He refuses to give in to the aging process that is taking over his entire body. He has always been a strong figure in my life and watching him suffer is very hard for me to come to grip with. He has always taught me to do what I love doing no matter what stands in my way and to see him still living the life he wants to lead every day is so inspiring to me. For this, I find him such a strong symbol for the fight against growing old and giving in.
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Hey Siobhan,
ReplyDeleteMy first impression reading your statement is like you mentioned to me the other day, its too literally about your dad. I like the way you set it up with the beginning, and then talk about your dad. I think you maybe need to condense and weed out what you really need to say about your dad that will help us look at the pictures because it gets a little too sentimental towards the end. From there I want to you relate it more to the larger scheme, to big audience. For instance we don't know your dad and will never experience him the way you do. We can all relate in having a dad of course but for me looking at your photographs its not so much about him as a person but what he represents - which i think you are starting to get at. I am really interested in the idea of your dad growing older not so much in a literal sense but that the idea of your dad is changing, as has happened for me. Going from there i think about our fear of the impermance of life. Not to get morbid, but I am thinking about Damien Hurst's piece The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, is a dead shark suspended in tank of formaldehyde. Not saying your dad is like a dead shark but the idea behind could be of use, that death is so untangible to us, and aging as a signifier of change and progression through life.
back to the what you have written. the last sentence really doesn't work for me. growing old is a fact of life. giving giving sounds really weird in this conversation. again, i want you to bring it back to why you want us to be interested in someone we will never know. i want you to think about this work in more of a cultural context. how do we react to growing older differently than we used to? how does technology play into it, medical innovations, we're living longer, ect.
Sentences i like:
It’s a fact of life that people grow old, yet it is so hard to watch the ones we love slowly loose their strength and begin to lean on us for help, as we once did to them. - this is good ideas here
He has always been a strong figure in my life and watching him suffer is very hard for me to come to grip with. - perhaps say He is a strong figure in my life, instead of always has been.
After two hip replacements, everyday is a challenge for my father just to get out of bed.
After two hip replacements, everyday is a challenge for my father just to get out of bed
i know i am rambling but my last point is i think you need to assert something different at the end. your message right now is for me is too much about a suffering person and a happy ending.
hope that helps
Jena