Kickstarter

This is my senior thesis project, otherwise known as a "Div III" at Hampshire College. Up until now this project has been mostly funded out of pocket and from a little bit of money from my school.  I have accumulated all of my images and now it is time to start printing.  You can view some of the images I'm working with on my flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/livlovelee/sets/72157629323056579/ I am mostly trying to raise money for the paper I need to be able to print 28"x35" for my gallery show in late April. Please help me achieve my goal!

The Project is inspired by the loss of my mother; exploring what it feels like to lose a person and how your perception of that person changes from life to death and as time passes.  Our memories become hazy, with grief we seem to think a person or a relationship with a person was a certain way – we tend to block out the unpleasant moments and focus on the good, lifting up our deceased onto a pedestal.  People that have died live in both our conscious and our subconscious, they enter our dream states and we wake up thinking, if just for a moment, that they’re still alive.  Sometimes it is uncertain whether a memory is real or whether it has entered the imagination through a dream.

My mother taught swimming, synchronized swimming, and water aerobics, among other things.  Her favorite place in the world to be was by the ocean.  She started teaching me to swim when I was eight months old, and so many of my happiest memories with her involve the water.  Because of her, throughout my life I have developed a deep connection to the water as she had, and thus most of this project's imagery is derived from the ocean and other bodies of water.

Through photography, writing, and installation, I will attempt to enact these experiences with death.  The project follows very personal accounts of grieving in hopes to communicate universally what it is to lose a person.  I hope that my viewers will feel the intense emotional turmoil of my journey with loss, but also experience the joyfulness of a life being remembered.