Gabrielle Smith

This school year has been transformative. I dove more deeply into my art than I have done in previous years.

The abandoned dollhouse shows a child growing up and leaving childhood behind. I am leaving the last of my schooling behind as I head into what will be the last term of my college education at EC, next year.

The flower cup and vase symbolize the beginning of something new for me. I started working with clay last term and began to really like it. The flower petals that are underneath the cup and vase are pages from The Hunger Games, a book that I reread last term and realized I understood more upon reading it as an adult. I realized that, scarily, we are starting to become more like the society that is featured in the book, if things continue the way that they are. I first read this book when I was ten. I am now twenty-one.

The transformational aspect of the piece titled Broken But Whole was created using a broken vase that I pieced back together and was able to almost fully repair. This piece represents how I see humanity. Everything can be broken, but there is still hope that it can be fixed.

The Flower Tapestry most definitely took me the longest to make. It is made out of pages from Junie B Jones and the Stupid, Smelly Bus, The Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and The Hunger Games. Each book represents a different period in my life. Junie B Jones represents my early childhood, as that had been one of my favorite series growing up. The Wizard of Oz represents my newfound love for musical theatre in my later elementary school years and in middle school. One of my favorite musicals was inspired by it, thus I needed to include it as it led me to love the musical Wicked. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was included because I loved the books in high school and found my few friends through that love. It was the first fandom that I was in, and it helped me make some great friends who helped me to become who I am now. The Hunger Games represents my young adulthood. There are too many parallels between that book and the real world to be able to list. The Flower Tapestry traces my childhood through to my young adulthood in college, and the flowers help to signify that change.