> Just Like Him

Whenever the option is given to take on a "creative alternative" to an essay or research paper at grad school, I vote pretty consistently. It's a wonderful way to force room in the schedule for some personal artwork, something that I love to think about but rarely make time for. So, below is the most recent project. The class focused mostly on Anthropology and Hamartiology (study of "sin", or "evil", or "wrong"). During the lectures I began to think about a song from Sufjan Stevens that was deeply impacting the first time I heard it. The music is chilling, and the lyrics are disturbing as they tell a true story.

> Continue on to the artwork and a description

This piece uses the entire context of the song, but specifically focuses on the final lines, which I included in the image. The televisions with VCR's represent the documentation of all that we think and experience, logged into our minds as images and memories, forever captured and sealed as a part of our true identity. Below the televisions, a massive system of outlets supplies the power to keep these devices in operation, while also providing an endless supply of empty sockets for the addition of new units.

It is here at the sockets that both despair and hope meet.

The hope is that these units can be unplugged. The despair is that I cannot reach them, as they rest beyond the barricade of what I myself have constructed. Eventually the television units will consume the space that I live in. On the wall surrounding the socket, time is measured through tick marks, suggesting that this existence is not to be eternal, and that it is not inappropriate to long for relief.

My wife is above the floorboards, because it is here in my favorite relationship that I find the most intense struggle for honesty and raw exposure. My desire for my wife to fully know me collides with the desire to bury the imperfect, and to attempt to remove the disgusting things that violate who I want to be to her.

And you as the viewer, have the perspective of one who is able to see it all. Every television is pointed toward you, the plugs and the sockets are within your reach, and you add the tick marks to the wall. You are the one who can end it all.