Abbey Bear

For this project, I wanted to explore the importance of home in relation to COVID. People had very different experiences being at home during quarantine– while some were thankful for the opportunity to be away from regular life, others felt confined and restricted when given no other place to go. I personally had a combination of both experiences and I wanted to show this through my sculpture. I also wanted to emphasize an important part of my lockdown journey: my reflection of my childhood interests and experience. Because of this, I wanted to include childlike, dollhouse elements in my piece. Ultimately, I incorporated my various experiences during the pandemic as well as general cultural moments during the pandemic into a dollhouse structure. For example, in the kitchen, I included multiple cakes and pies to represent the baking my mom and I did while we spent time together at home, the stacks of toilet paper in the bathroom symbolize the toilet paper shortage at the beginning of the pandemic, etc. In addition to having fun while illustrating each component of the piece, it was refreshing to be able to reflect on the various aspects of my experiences in the past year or two. Finally, I wanted this structure to also be able to fold up in order to express the idea that our homes are transportable because they are inside us, inspiring the title, “Home is Where You Make It and Take It.”