Project 1
Lucy's Story
"...to sleep perchance to dream...aye, there's the rub"
Hamlet--William Shakespeare
My inspiration for this project came from a dream that I had where everyone, even the people closest to me in life, kept treating me like a was crazy. However, the most isolating part of the dream was the fact that no matter how hard I tried, I wasn't able to communicate or connect with anyone in my dream causing them to fear and shun me. This dream led to my connection between dream and delirium through dream and mental illness.
The connection between dreams and mental illness is not a new one. One of the greatest examples of this shown through the work of Louis Wain. Wain was a moderately famous artist well known for his fanciful comics and drawings or animals, cats especially, who was diagnosed with late-onset schizophrenia. It is amazing to track the changes in his cat drawings during the progression of the disorder from relatively normal to nearly indistinguishable in the later stages of his life. Thus, you can see where something relatively "normal," a cat, once depicted in a fanciful and innocent manner, became a nightmare through the delirium of mental illness.
For my project, I created Lucy as a physical metaphor for the connection between delirium and dream. Lucy has Schizophrenia. Her everyday waking life is a struggle trying to distinguish what is real and what is in her head. Her other option is to take strong medications that subdue her hallucinations, but also numb her to the world around her. I created two versions of Lucy. One with shining eyes and colorful hair to represent Schizophrenic Lucy (Delirium) and one with a sleep mask to represent the medicated Lucy (Dream).
To tie in the art from Wain, I attempted to create four photos that depict the two poles of dream and delirium that Lucy may see. One showing the "normal" (medicated viewing ) and another showing what Lucy would see without her medication. Each of the photos that I created were inspired by pieces of various dreams that I've had
Now without further adieu I would like to introduce you to Lucy through my class presentation of her illness...
Lucy's Story: Blinded to Reality
Project Documentation (Power Point Presentation)