Why paper?

Paper is a familiar material used every day by almost everyone: regrettable receipts, class notes, wedding invitations, concert posters, movie tickets, coming-of-age novels, sketchbooks etc. We have a connection with paper and we know how to use it. I want to take away that familiar connection. I tell a story with this paper but I don’t type it out in Times New Roman or draw it with Ticonderoga pencils. Instead I create forms with the paper and place them in to a world where the truths are not penned on the page. I don’t tell a story with paper in the way that I am supposed to because I am not supposed to tell the story. Trauma, specifically sexual assault, is a taboo topic that is not supposed to be talked about. I didn’t talk about my assault until six years afterwards when I couldn’t keep it in me anymore. It only made sense that I would create art on my assault because my recovery has been my primary focus during my undergraduate years. I’ve written about it, painted it, printed it and now, I have photographed it.

24 Jan This entry was published on January 24, 2014 at 6:57 pm. It’s filed under Uncategorized and tagged journal, material, paper, photography, sexual assault, trauma, writing. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.