73 Project Prep 3 (Collage)

Explanation:

Before making this collage, I had only even made one once before, back in elementary school. We had to use images that showed things about who we were. For this collage, I wanted to show memory loss as a effect of dementia, giving it a visual representation. I tried to show how it is not immediate. Rather, details will fade away over time, slowly chipping away at someone’s identity. I showed this through the pieces of red paper covering parts of the photos. There is still an idea of what is supposed to be there, but it is no longer clear enough to know. That is also why I incorporated blank spaces. The purple paper, to me, shows how things are already gone. As the disease progresses, everything dwindles more and more. The person’s mind, as shown with the blue sky above their eyes, can be looked at as clear or empty.

Reflection:

It had been a really long time since I had last made art with my hands, and it felt really gratifying. I felt excited seeing it come together, and it was fun deciding how it was going to look. The most challenging things was finding the right pictures to convey what I wanted to make, and for a while, nothing felt right as I looked through. Seeing the finished piece felt rewarding, since I could look at it and know that I made it. Even if it is not a masterpiece, it still felt amazing to see, and to create. Doing this made me reflect more on dementia as a process on a personal level, rather than just reading through steps on a research assessment. I was able to think more about how it relates to identity, for both the affected person and the people around them.