Borrowed Time
10'x3' Graphite Pencil on Paper
My piece Borrowed Time was created for a gallery show featuring students from my portfolio class. The show was entitled 'Passage' and we were open to interpret our own meaning from there. With my personal history being so diverse I had plenty of experiences to draw from. The main focus of a lot of my artwork has been my past, and with this piece I wanted to take it a step further and use an image from my time spent in Iraq.
I had been working in graphite pencil for much of the semester to this point and wanted to continue that trend but in a different scale. I knew the method wouldn't be easy on me, but the work was part of the show, as we had free reign of the gallery space as an open studio. I spent nearly 40 hours in front of a wall, much of it spent sitting on a ladder of some sort. The pains in my neck, back, and hand made it hard to do much of anything after long sessions.
In the end, it was an eye opening experience. My hands created something I had never thought they could or would in a a scale that I had never imagined I would be working in. This piece made me feel proud of myself as an artist. It helped me work through a lot of things I had been wrestling with as a veteran. It created conversations as I worked on it that opened new understanding for those who hadn't really talked with someone who had been to war.
