Making and re-making.

Above my grandmother’s desk hung a picture of a bunch of flowers in a vase. At the age of twelve, I became aware that sunflowers were in the vase. At some point, I was told that a well-known artist named Van Gogh made the picture. When I was in high school, I noticed the Ben-Day dots of color that comprised the picture; this evidence suggested, to me, that this was a picture of a picture. It was a copy; and, given that my grandparents were smart, they knew it was a copy. At first, I admit, I felt snobbish and dismayed over the cheap imitation that hung before me; after all, I had made some of my own paintings by then and knew its “value.” When I asked my grandmother why she had the picture above her desk, she explained that they framed it and hung it on their wall because it pleased them to look at it, not because it was a valued object. What changed was not the picture of sunflowers; my understanding of the picture changed. The act of situating ourselves in space, whether with pictures, furniture, people, etc., is how I understand that we make ourselves at home. Through the alteration of actual, and visual, spaces and with materials found in, or used for, the purposes of Home, my thesis explores the geographies and constructions of the internal psyche as predicated on perception