Casey Jewett
College of Fine Arts and College of Arts and Sciences, Studio Art and Chemistry (BFA/BS)
Inheritance
I am Casey Jewett, a sophomore who is double majoring in Studio Art and Chemistry. I am a visual artist focused on oil painting and ceramics. In my work, I explore what I call "haunting": the intersection of absence and presence through psychological space and inherited objects. For the last year I have been working on a series of paintings and sculptures as a reaction to feeling haunted by the deaths of my grandparents. I feel my memory of them inhabiting the spaces and objects they left behind. Many of those objects and spaces, including my grandmother's house, were inherited by my family. I can picture the spaces as they were before, and yet I am not able to access them physically. Therefore, for the past 5 years I have lived with those memories while surrounded by inherited objects from those spaces, which have reinforced the potency of the memories.
The result is a series of mental collages illustrating houses filled with furniture from deceased family members. With that foundation, I have made paintings about the despair of grief, as well as the importance of holding onto memories of loved ones. While I work, I make dramatic edits with thick opaque paint. As a result, the final surface has a unique texture from the visible paint quality of previous layers. My surfaces become palimpsests where ideas and forms from earlier in the process are covered but do not fully disappear, instead contributing to the materiality of the final work. I combine this working method with the concept of history and memory as they relate to haunting to heighten the conceptual meanings of pieces.
Artwork Description:
Inheritance was the first painting I worked on for the haunting series. I started this work over a year ago but only recently completed it. This painting is now the third I have finished for the series, but I still consider it the conceptual origin. I was inspired by my connection to my late grandmother, Therasa's, house. Since her death, I have felt her memory seep from the old walls. I incorporate the dark spaces I experience at my grandparents' house into this work. When visiting the house, at night while walking down the stairs I wonder what the house's tall ceilings might be hiding and I remember my grandmother. In Inheritance I use the light from a fire to illuminate the darkness and reveal the source of the haunting. I hope the unsettling feeling I put into the piece can resonate with others who have felt similar grief.