Transitional Periods- Quick Notes on my proposed BFA project

Loss and mortality are inevitable aspects of life beyond human escape. Life has a certain brevity to it, and some aspects of life have an even shorter brevity to them. For example, we spend a scant few years as a toddler and only slightly more in teenage rebellion and bliss. However, what I am concerned with is the brevity of formal education.

This summer I began to realize that I will no longer have the structure formal education has provided for me consistently for the past seventeen years of my life. This loss of structure and agenda that formal education provides requires me to learn a completely new structure to manage life.

To come to terms with the death of formal education in my life, I have been planning an installation for my BFA taking inspiration from the seventeenth century Dutch vanitas still-life painting tradition. In a vanitas, objects such as the skull, flower, fruit, and blown out candle come to symbolize the transience of life and its fleeting moments while pointing out the problems of earthly pleasures and other such vanities.

In addition to changes and losses to the structure of my personal life, the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA) is also undergoing changes to its structure and losses as well. Recently, after a period of twelve years, David Deming resigned as president of the CIA. This loss has brought about a change in our president, who is now Grafton Nunes.

Another recent change is the switch from a five year program to a four year program at the CIA. This transition has required major and sometimes drastic changes to the structure of the curriculum. Examples of such problem areas include the notion of major day in the Visual Arts and Technologies Environment (VAT) and a re-organizing of classes that then must be taken by all VAT students of certain years.

Physical structures are also facing change and loss at the CIA. The Joseph McCullough Building (aka the Factory) has been renovated over the past year and a half. The plan for campus unification means a new building will be built right next to the Factory on Euclid Avenue. However, this new building means a loss of the George Gund Building on East Boulevard. The Gund Building is perfectly situated in University Circle, walking distance from the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), the Botanical Gardens, and the Natural History Museum. To lose this location is truly sad and beyond unfortunate for future and current students at the CIA.

I find many of these changes to be negative and feel as though they are terrible losses for future students. With this installation project I aim to offer a sort of memorial for said losses to students like myself, saying a good-bye to the CIA that we grew to come and love.