College Collage
This is a collaborative piece I made with my past self. Right after graduating high school, I made a collage of all the memories I’d made, people I’d met, and stories I’d told in the past four years. Upon graduating college, I added my new life experiences, effectively transforming it into a time capsule of the last decade of my life.
Since graduating from both institutions, I’m in the same existential place I was when I first drew an iteration of this collage. Originally, I was between my high school and college careers. I was mourning the lost pieces of my identity from a time that had passed, entirely unaware of the glory and fulfillment that was yet to come. I’d like to believe the same is true for myself now, and that the next experiences of my life will be even better than I can imagine. Whenever I’m wondering who I am, or who I was, I can look to this piece and see myself reflected back in the experiences that shaped me.
One of the challenges I faced when adding my college experiences to the collage was that I experienced new memories and significant events in my life faster than I was able to update the collage. I found myself frequently redesigning the original layout to make space for new memories, which further halted my progress in completing the piece. It wasn’t until I drew events from the future that I knew would happen - but hadn’t yet - that I was able to complete the collage and have it be up to date.
