Juliet Blehm

Knowing I’d soon leave behind all familiarity of my hometown, I always hoped that the unconstrained independence of moving to NYC could make possible a complete renaissance of my mind and life, shaping me into an entirely different person. And while yes, new experiences and people and discussions have woven themselves into my skin, forming a new layer of who I am, what I didn’t expect was the persistency of the old versions of myself. They may have begun to fade to memory, but still, consciously or unconsciously, I began to realize that they have fundamentally shaped the person that I am now – my personality, habits, likes, dislikes, and desires. Thus, when prompted to depict a shift in myself moving from my hometown to NYC, rather than to focus specifically on every individual difference between here and home, I wanted to capture my shift in mentality; namely, the acceptance that old portions of me will always linger in my soul, and the understanding that past experience, no matter how good or bad, will always hold value.

When creating the zine, I followed the look of a scrapbook, utilizing the connotation of holding on to past memories. Because I was writing about the remnants of home that stuck with me, each page was inspired by a particular theme that has remained consistent with me throughout the move, even if it has been built upon in some way (i.e. my love for visual art). Notable visual and conceptual elements that helped advance my purpose include the pop up page which allowed me to show the same image (the tree) in two different locations and the page with the anatomical heart, which incorporated genuine writings from my journal since coming to NYC, not originally intended for the project.