Senior Thesis: Process

It all started with an idea.

I wanted to create a thesis around something that had been very personal and close to me throughout college. I though long and hard about what that could be - Culture? Family? Going to college far away? An interest? A club? I thought constantly, day and night, trying to come up with something that would not only be meaningful to me but meaningful to others who saw it. I wanted it to be close to home while being broad enough that others could understand it and be affected by it. 

I settled on social anxiety. 

In my art history classes, I love learning about conceptual pieces - pieces that are based around an idea. I love learning about pieces that explain an idea to people visually. I am a visual learner, so I love art that can teach me about something I don't understand through something that I do understand.

So I chose balloons.

Balloons, commonly seen at parties or social gatherings of a lot of people, are something that everyone understands. When filled with helium, they float; however, after they have been floating for a couple days, they begin to deflate and fall. Eventually, they fall to the floor, empty.

This was my metaphor.

People who suffer from social anxiety are the balloons at social gatherings. The level of deflation symbolizes how draining these events can be for people that suffer from this crippling anxiety. As someone who struggles with the irrational fear of social events, I know how draining it is to be in large groups of people, even long before I arrive. People who don't understand think I'm being stupid and dramatic and, while I know that most of the time I am, I cannot stop it. There is something different in my brain that makes me anxious in the face of social situations and there is nothing that I can do about it. The balloons are covered in phrases that are commonly said to people with anxiety by others who do not feel the same way. So I made this piece to translate this anxiety to people who don't understand using common items that they could understand. 

To those who suffer, it is comforting. For those who do not, it is educational.  

The original idea was to create each balloon out of clay so, when fired, they would demonstrate the fragility of anxiety disorders. I figured out a system of how to make plaster casts of a balloon and was later going to fill them each with clay and fire them. WRONG. Wanna know something funny? Balloons float. Plaster is thick. Plaster leaks. Plaster SUCKS. 

So after several long hours in the studio and an entirely ruined floor (thanks, plaster) I gave up. I decided to seek the guidance of a ceramics professor.

Well, too many weeks deep into the semester, the ceramics professor told me that I couldn't do that, essentially, because there was not enough room in the kiln for the volume of my project. COOL. 

It was on a bad day as well. One of those days when absolutely nothing was going my way. At the time I was 6 days off my anti-depressants which was making me real unpleasant and incredible amount of uneasy. I was off them because I had found out that they were newly $800 so that was not making things easier. It was the day before my painting was due for painting class. It was the day I was supposed to drive all the way to my dream grad school to sit in on a class and try to be pleasant enough to make them want to accept me. It was a day when A LOT was going on. Too many assignments and too many life things to find out the news - "you need to start your thesis from scratch." As if I hadn't already spent hours of my life and weeks of my semester and plenty of my dollars on this project - it was all in the trash. 

So I drank.

And then I came up with a much cheaper and easier solution - papier-mâché.

For a solid three months, I entirely took over the living room of my house to make a gross mess of glue and stolen newspapers. 

 After the paper was all properly mâchéd, I would gesso the balloon. After that, each would get sprayed in silver (until I ran out... then they'd get sprayed in another color. Silver was the goal though.) 

 After they were sprayed with silver, I would cut out tape and mark off shapes or letters on each balloon and spray them again with a fun, vibrant color. 

I probably (definitely) lost a ton of years off my life spray painting in my backyard. 

 I was constantly covered in spray paint and freaking out over my deadline. 

Times were tough and time was tight.

But I finished on time! I even had a few days to spare! So as soon as we got access to the gallery, I put my piece in immediately. I got the perfect spot - exactly where I wanted. 

As originally planned, I spread the balloons all over the floor so that people would be able to walk through the project. However, I felt pretty 'meh' about the arrangement and really bummed about the giant white wall behind my piece. I wished that I had created a painting or something to go on it. But I was done... or so I thought... 

Of course I wasn't done! But of course my teacher did not tell me until the day before my thesis gallery opening at 2 pm. Yes, 2pm doesn't seem so bad, but its pretty bad when you have to babysit at 5pm and wont get back until 11pm and have to go to Home Depot to get materials and learn how to install a ton of shit and basically live a friggin nightmare. 

So my teacher agreed that the wall was too empty - we decided that it would be best to hang cascading balloons down the wall. This is an idea that I had had many times but couldn't figure out how to get it to work while I was too stressed about creating the pieces to begin with. I couldn't hang anything if there was nothing to hang, you feel me? 

But I went to Home Depot and got some dowels and clear fishing wire and hung each balloon by creating a small hole in the back. 

I created a wall of cascading balloons based on how much air had "deflated" out of them. I  kept a few on the ground to make the piece feel as if it was coming out into space. It was a piece that you could walk through and be apart of. 

In the end, after a very long, stressful night, my piece was ready to be shown. The gallery opened and there was an incredibly positive response. I felt beyond proud of how my piece came out. Similarly, I was proud of all of my classmates. Everyone created such outstanding, unique projects that were individually and collectively astounding. I, to this day, feel honored to have been able to work with this group of people and get their feedback and support throughout this stressful process. We were all on the same level, freaking out, so it felt incredible to be able to share this journey with funny, intelligent, and crazy people. "Reflect," our Senior Thesis show in the Thomas P Kelly Student Art Gallery, was a perfect reflection of my final semester as a senior at Loyola Marymount University and I doubt I will ever stop being proud of the piece and friends that I made along the way.