A Wonderful Time
Artist Statement
After returning to campus for the first time in two years, I truly understood Alice's struggle with the perplexing rules of Wonderland. My sculpture, like Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, reflects the absurd, unfair, and wonderful nature of growing up. While my clock records my emotional ups and downs, it is also a love letter to the communion of creation. I was comforted that I could preserve childhood wonder far into adulthood through researching Carroll's artistic legacy.The book’s plot is depicted in a circular composition, with no clear beginning or end. The hour hand never moves while the seconds pass; a kind of frozen condition of continuing change that many can understand in the aftermath of the pandemic. This work also reflects the magical properties of miniatures. I wanted the audience to be taken into a smaller world by all of the piece's minute details. Several of my character designs are disloyal to the source because my technique was an homage to Carroll's.
Many of his characters were based on close friends and mentors. There’s his muse Alice Liddel (the famous inspiration for his first novel) and his Oxford mentor Edward Pusey (the basis for the Cheshire Cat). Through these deftly integrated characters, Carroll created a secret code that could be deciphered long after his death. I wanted to mimic that sense of mystery by littering my piece with minute details of my life—for example, the fact that the black teapot is my roommate's melted 3D printing final. I provided an illustrated guide with the clock that tells anecdotes about each resident of my Wonderland, but even then that version is merely an adaptation of reality.
While searching for illustrative adaptations at the library, I was particularly struck by the work of Yayoi Kusama and Thomas Heath Robinson. I decided to make visual allusions to my favorite editions, as seen with the rabbit hole to Wonderland and Alice's sailor collar. Despite the fact that they were published decades apart, each artist was inspired by the same source material. With every creative decision I made, I felt a sense of communion towards Carroll and his adapters. Similarly, the more I read about Carroll, the more I resonated with his story. He loved math and photography in addition to writing, but his attachments to other mediums was hampered by professional obligations.He, too, found it difficult to communicate at times, preferring instead to create intricate universes. The idea that his wonder was an act of survival moved me the most.
I learned about the award from a flier, but it was only after seeing the student examples that I was inspired to enter. Alex Currie’s “Down the Rabbit Hole” and Styles Akira’s incredible writing/art combinations were amazing, and act as a testament to the joy of adaptation. I decided that I would like to be in dialogue with pieces that continue this legacy.