From Super Heroes - A Book about Bedrooms

f rom s e o r e h su pe r .. s n e d m u i p e b e d ro o m s to o k insid a l oo

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Inspired by how a bedroom is able to illustrate a story about the individual that lives inside of it, I decided to create a project that revolves around exploring the bedrooms of nine individuals between the ages of 19 and 24 that live in Portland, Maine.

I sent out a call through various online media sites for volunteers.

Receiving responses from both people I know and people I did not know, I started my project. With each individual the process was the same: visit the bedroom, start off with asking them a set of questions [What is your favorite part of your room? Least favorite? Favorite memories in this room? What do you associate with your room? Is it home? What would you want to change? along with other on-the-spot questions], and then taking photographs of the room empty and with the individual interacting with the room.

I’m glad that this project allowed me to meet people I didn’t know along with allowing me to learn more about people already present in my life. I hope you are able to enjoy the stories that were able to come together.

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SHIRAH

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CHELSEA

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KEANNU

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HANNAH

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NICOLE

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MATT

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KAITLIN

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BOBBY

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SHIRAH

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CHELSEA

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KEANNU

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NICOLE

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MATT

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KAITLIN

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, T H G I L N SU , S W O D N I W 008

P L A N TS, E R U T A N & 009

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Sunlight, plants and windows... I’m really into nature. I love the hardwood floors, they’re one of my favorite features of this apartment. I just wish that the windows were South facing so we had better light. I love the feeling of natural and I don’t like clutter.

We fell into this apartment because of a professor at MECA; they were here temporarliy and we were apartment hunting at the time. It was convenient.

A list of things for a dream next-apartment: south-facing windows, a balcony, a backyard, a working fireplace, and a kitchen that has space for a table in it...

I really like sitting in the kitchen.

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I love house plants; I have a serious house plant problem.

I don’t really shop to decorate. I just collect things throughout my life; they’re all important and they become design elements. I guess you can say found objects, because for the most part I don’t search.

We were fortunate to have the furniture left behind from the last tenant. We found some chairs from the side of the road, and some were from my mom when she was a little kid. Our bed was a free-on-Craigslist futon. The really nice piece of furniture in corner of the bedroom, our nightstand, was also a free-on-the-road find. Oh, our mirror was already spray painted gold and found on the road, too.

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l a c i p y t o e r e st t i h s l l u b e i p hi p se u a c e b y l l a e r e xc e pt n o t y e l r a m b o b o th e re is n l i n h e re at al

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I choose how to decorate my room based on what looks really neat, like “OH THIS LOOKS REALLY COOL, I SHOULD PUT THIS IN MY ROOM.” Neat things are things that look worldly, I guess... stereotypical hippie bullshit, except not really stereotypical because there is no Bob Marley in here AT ALL. But, yeah, neat things would be like my tapestry, pipes on pipes, fancy cool bell things that I ring, mad incense, like seven buddhas, that cool mask from China, I DON’T EVEN KNOW. Nifty shit that looks like it formed eclecticism. I usually buy

things from thrift stores or Mexicali or if I remember something from my parent’s house, I usually call them up like “HEY I REMEMBER THIS THING IT’S COOL BRING IT TO ME.” Uses for my room include sleeping, smoking, and shenanigans.

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My favorite part about my room would be the lace canopy or how cozy it is. The colors are great, warm... I don’t know, it’s home-y. I would definitely consider my bedroom here as my home now.

I don’t really pick things in my room based on the colors, but blue and orange are my favorite colors anyways, so it tends to turn out to be mostly that.

I like my room neat, but it gets messy, like a lot, because I’m a messy person by nature.

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I love my sweet ass mask thing that I got from my Grandpa, It’s from fucking China!

So. W-W- TWO, my Grandpa was like ”I’M FLYING OVER CHINA”, but his plane was like “lolnope” and it fell. These Chinese Monks rescued him and took him into their sanctuary. They fed him and gave him a bunch of cool shit, along with some camouflage and junk to be safe when he got out into the American Embassy in hopes of travelling home. And then he lived to be like a billion!

Except, it was really 93.

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t s u j i am d e r i p s n i t o n 024

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I’m not in my bedroom much, if I’m here I’m usually at my desk, it’s where I work, very useful. I didn’t really decorate because I figured that I’ll just be at the school all the time doing work.

My room back home isn’t really decorated either.

I live an hour away from here. The walls in my room back home are bare, though there is wall paper. It was the wallpaper the house came with when we bought it two years ago. There’s just more junk filling up the room back there.

My favorite thing about my room here is my closet, I don’t have one at home so it’s nice to have a place where everything is organized. I have no favorite memories here yet, I hope to before the school year ends.

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I want to decorate my room. I just haven’t been

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inspired yet. I definitely want to liven it up eventually, but it needs to happen when the time is right. Even though it’s not decorated, my room here feels like my second home now. It’s kind of weird.

My mom picked out my bedding for me. I don’t really like the polka dots, but other than that it’s fine.

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n a e r yo u ' , t n e d u t s art H IS T E K I L L L ' YO U

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I grew up in Chicago. Back home, there’s this old lady who is a friend of my mom’s.

I helped her pack up things to move and she had this box full of stuff that she was kind of just like “oh you’re an art student, you’ll like this!” It was a box full of colorful vials, partial deer carcusses (most still had meat bits and fur, I only kept what I could clean), giant feathers, and that giant LSD painting in the living room.

I like to buy pretty things that aren’t expensive or things I think I could make something cool out of. My definition of “pretty” is extremely different.. it’ll include things like deer bones and teeth, dead minx (which I transformed into “taxidermied minx jewelry box”), small colorful potion bottles with weird things written on them like “Ben Franklin’s face”, and weird lights, candles, and paintings.

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They’re my favorite thing about my room. The colors that all the lights make: the reds, yellows, and blacks, they’re so pretty.

Yeah, I think my love of color goes into my love of painting.

My room is too tiny.

There’s not enough room for all the random things I collect and want to collect. I would love a medium-sized room. With really tall ceilings. Then I can hang things and not hit my head on them. I also wish I could live somewhere where I can paint the walls and ceilings outerspace or glow in the dark.

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E K A M O T S A IT H d N I M Y M N I IT S E NS E E K I L T ' N O W I E S L E OR

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My room back home is in a basement and while this room is a bit smaller, it’s cozier. This rooms feels more like home. I’d definitely rather be living here, but I miss my dog. I prefer my room to be clean. It has to be clean, or organized, or at least make sense in my head or else I don’t like it.

My dream room? Niall Horan! Hahaha. I don’t know, I never had a dreaming or earning for a dream room or home. I don’t really decorate myself. Actually, Nate [roommate] is the one who chose to decorate my room, he thought it was too boring so he threw Lady Gaga up and everything else. My room is a gallery for Nate Terrin. Which I’m okay with, because I fucking love this art work so much.

The Stitch drawing was for me, all of the others were his concepts and ideas of what he wanted to do and then there’s one that I claimed because I love it.

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I love my desk. It has everything right there. My markers, everything I need to draw, books, the Internet, you know, the usual stuff.

I have a lot of books on my desk. I have David Beckham’s autobiography because I love him, the Hunger Game, we have Russell Brand’s autobiographies and Chelsea Handler and David Sedaris, American Psycho, chose them because I like the people themselves or I’m just intrigued. My art books? They’re all based off artists I love like Eiichiro Oda, Tote Kubo, and Christy LiJewski. Manga. I think Saturday Morning cartoons, like Digimon and stuff on Fox Kids, got me into it.

I have my friends write my post-it notes when they’re drunk and I post it there above my desk; it’s a lovely little reminder (for both my friends and I). Many people haven’t really noticed, so they don’t get embarrassed or anything.

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my p u g n o i s s e s ob s u o i v b i s N 't o g n i h t y or an

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I just rearranged my bedroom. It use to be more neatly spaced out, but it was also really empty. I had my Ikea furniture then a few things on the wall next to my bed, but nothing anywhere else. When I moved everything around, my diagonal wall was hard to work around and created more awkward spaces in my room, but I think everything flows so much nicer/feels so much nicer now. I love being in my room now that I redecorated/rearranged. It feels more cozier, more like me. I also think it’s the right amount of “girly” combined with some of my favorite things.

I love the look of canopies over beds, so I made some super cheap ones out of sheer sheets I found at the thrift store. I hung them over my bed, along with the end of my bed and another one diagonal from that to form a triangle. The triangle hides the awkward spot in my room and gives me another space to store random stuff in. I like my room to be clean, but I also toss tons of things in hidden spaces and don’t deal with it.

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I may have a little bit of obsession with pugs. I have 20 pictures of pugs on my wall forming one of my picture grids; they’re all pictures of pugs in silly costumes or just pugs being adorable. I have one pug illustration. One banner that says “hufflepug”. Another drawing of a pug that someone gave me, another picture of a pug, a magnet of a pug, and a pug stuffed animal.

I have three photo grids. One is full of adorable pugs in costumes, the other is of my friends and I and random pictures I took. I like to remember certain memories and friends, even if some of my friends are from high school and I don’t talk to them anymore-- they were once really important to me and it’s nice for me to have. The other photo grid is on the wall behind my bed and has a few floral pictures, just because I love flowers/floral patterns and I find them really pretty.

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i j us t r e a l ly g n i e b e k i l d e d n u o r r su by bo o ks 056

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I say it’s pretty close to a perfect room right now, it suits everything I need it to do. It just gets cluttered every once and a while. It happens-clutter... I’m used to things getting cluttered a little bit, then me cleaning up every week, it’s that constant battle going on.

I’ve changed the layout probably 3 or 4 times since we have lived here. I love this secretary desk I have-- my dad built it for me. My favorite spot would be right here at the desk, or if I’m hanging out with more people, over there in the circle area.

Yeah, I made it to hang out with people. I wanted this room to feel like a command center over by my desk, then an “opium den” over there where people hang out.

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I like my books the best. I don’t know, I’ve just had them for a really long time and I just really like being surrounded by books. I have not nearly read all of them, I don’t really expect to one day. I feel like that’s a goal I could never nearly accomplish.

I worked at Bull Moose for a while so I always was stumbling around sorts of stuff. All my leather bound books came from my Grandmother for Christmas or birthdays, and those are my favorite books. I also have a problem buying too many books.

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I like living with a roommate. It’s nice to have someone always there, you can just be like “hey! let’s watch movies!” and it’s really easy. It’s not weird sharing a room, I’m use to sharing my space because I use to live with my brother back home.

The majority of stuff in my room is stuff I have hanging up or on display in my room back home, I just packed it all up and moved it similarly here, so this room can feel more like home.

All my memories here boil down to when my friends are here and we’re just hanging out and being silly. Bubble fights, random dance parties, watching movies, eatling a lot of junk food and a lot of just talking in general.

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I like my posters best about my room. I’ve always liked taking pictures and I’ve always liked watching movies and television. Having access to all those things and being able to put them on display is something I really enjoy.

My favorite poster is in my room back home, it’s of Jensen Ackles. My mom gave it to me out of one of her magazines and it’s the poster I’ve had the longest. We use to watch the show he was in together all the time: Supernatural, that poster survived a lot. It’s really old. Probably like... 5 years.

My favorite poster here is probably the T-65 X-Wing. Star Wars. My little cousin gave it to me for Christmas. I really like Star Wars, it’s not a favorite. It’s a space ship/jet thing. Both of liking it/meaning because cousin gave it to me.

Yeah, I am attracted to the men all the walls, UH well maybe not the aliens, because they’re aliens, and I’m not really attracted to Einstein either... Some of the men on my wall?

Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Jason Segel, Nathan Fillion, Zachary Levi, Neil Patrick Harris, Jason Bateman... You know, older guys with dark hair that are funny. They’re all part of the nerd culture that sprung up.

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s i h t w o n i k . . . y r a r p o " ro o m i s tem o t " my i t 's J UST n

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My favorite part of my room? I think my window, even though it’s closed a lot. I like looking out of it while laying in bed, even though I’m not really looking at anything in particular. It’s a view of another building.

But just in the morning or at night, I can look up at see this one tree glowing.

I’m embarrassed that it’s messy, I wish it was cleaner. It’s almost easier when it’s messy to get to things, though. I clean it up when people come over. I’m also barely here, so I just throw things on the floor, go to bed, wake up and take what I need.

I don’t see this as my room. I saw my room last year as my home, but I don’t know.

I feel like i don’t have a room right now. I hope that when I have an apartment, it’ll be like “my room”. I know this is temporary and I won’t be staying here.

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My favorite items are all of my moleskins that are not used. I don’t know, I feel like they need the perfect thing to be in them, and if it’s not perfect, then they’re ruined. I wait for... the right thing. I don’t even know what that is, but it’s funny nonetheless.

An empty book has so much potential to be amazing, but I don’t want to ruin it with stupid junk. I buy moleskins, just like, nice ones.. I haven’t bought one since last semester, it’s been awhile. I just like having a variety. They have to be plain, if they have shit on them, like a stupid design, I think they’re dumb.

My perfect room? It would be just be a home, a nice home, with someone that I care about or a close friend, a place where memories are made.

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The body text was set in the typeface THONBURI and the headers were set in the typeface CLUTCHEE. The photographs were taken by a CANON REBEL XS. thanks to everyone who volunteered to be a part of this book; it wouldn’t have been the same without all the unique voices I was able to capture.

Photography and book design by Nicole Holmes. http;//www.cargocollective.com/nicoleholmes Š Nicole Holmes, Portland

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