My Childhood Dress Put Away Indefinitely

For my Practice of Art class, my teacher assigned the seemingly easy task of creating a story using only 6 words, based on Hemingway's own six word story: "For Sale: Baby Shoes. Never Used."

It was a really fun task.

For my story I decided to play with the issues of memory and time. I envisioned a white lace dress being packed away into a box and put into storage, a symbol of childhood, as we also pack away memories as daily challenges occupy the forefront of our minds.

 My next task was to recreate this concept visually. I sketched out several ideas before settling on the creation of a paper Polaroid camera. In my exhibition, I crafted a Polaroid camera with a developing Polaroid picture still resting in its slot, a picture frame showing the developed picture, and a storage box packing away the frame. In this sequence, I hoped to capture the passage of time as is relative to the creation, possession, and storage of memory. Moreover, I made all of these items from paper to show how these items all possess the ability to decompose, to break down into nothing and lose their value over time. With time, the mind and memory share this very outcome. 

As a child, I parted with many items that I found incredibly sentimental. And each time this happened, I was told that the item would live on in my memory. The item is remembered, as it is captured in my exhibition, at its finest, the way we choose to remember it. But despite the fine quality we snapshot in our memory, the item does not live forever. With the element of time, nothing can last forever, not the actual item, not the paper-imitation item, and not even the memory itself. 

The Back is Not Yet Made, But It is Coming Along!

 The Polaroid represents that particular moment when the memory is created, as the photo has not yet developed. My choice to make everything out of cardstock paper allows for the capture of this particular moment (I wish I could, but I do not know how to do this chemically). 

 The framing of the Polaroid indicates the larger increment of time in which the love for the item (in this case the dress), and the possession of its memory still resides in the mind, as the  concept of framing so indicates. 

Finally, the box signifies the moment in which the item is taken from the shelf and put away, separated from the everyday life, separated from the mind's preoccupations and stored away somewhere where it now possesses the ability to be forgotten, as the placement below the top shelf portrays.