Eva Cass
Portrait as Place
Class of: 2022
Major: Fashion Design BFA
Medium: Collage on illustration board
Faculty: Diana Shpungin
Prompt: In this project, we were assigned to merge our current lives in New York City with our past life at home, and how those contrast. The project was an exercise in value, texture, and composition. We were also assigned to use a monochromatic color palette, which forced us to be strategic when choosing a color and what it means to the composition and the overall piece. The material for the collage was photographs, rubbings, and other textures that captured the New York City we now knew and that would then be used as the basis for our representation of self and identity in our new homes.
When creating my piece, I began to think about my home, Hanover Massachusetts, and how different it was to my life now in New York City. At home, driving was a large part of my life, driving with friends, spending time alone in my car, a very intimate and personal place. Now that I am in New York, I have found it difficult to find that personal space again. My dorm room is shared by two other girls, the streets are packed with people, and I no longer have that respite that driving provided me. I decided for my place, to choose the interior of my car, the color to be the color of the exterior of my car, an electric blue, and the textures to be impersonal, cold, and distant. I wanted to use brick, concrete, industrial textures, which contrast from the quiet, small-town life that I am so used to.