Melancholy

On Friday after I made my last update, I met up with one of my advisors, Tam LaValla. She gave me a lot of ideas about my future pieces. Talking to Tam usually helps me keep the goal of my thesis on track. She pushed me to try and code my website (really nervous about that) so we will see what happens there.

This past weekend, I was fairly productive. I started laying out my site interface in Figma. I made my homemade scented paper and continued progress on my sculpture and packaging aspect. Both are pretty much done and I plan on doing the finishing touches this coming weekend. Here are some process pics:

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Today, I met with one of my thesis advisors, Dr. Cothran, to talk about melancholy poetry and point me in the right direction for inspiration and things to pull from. She helped me dissect some poems by Wordsworth and we talked about romantic poets that had the same “mindset” as I do about melancholy. I look forward to digging into the poetry and short books she told me about over break.

This coming week, I’m wrapping up my packaging and sculpture and I will complete my character design and continue working on my website.

As I have moved through the project, I have been keeping track of it on a google spreadsheet. I also have a digital to-do list that I update and that automatically rolls over to the next day if I don’t complete something. It’s set as my home page.

I’ve stayed pretty much on track, but I’ve been lagging a little bit the last two weeks because of senior show stuff. I’m not quite behind yet though. I’ve been updating my progress on my timetable whenever I make a more dramatic change. The most up-to-date timeline is below.

As of right now, on the morning of March 6, 2020, I am almost halfway done with my objects/pieces. Today I am doing my paper and tomorrow I am doing my sculpture (which I have materials for). I’m completing my packaging by Sunday I think.

The four items at the bottom are production based- this deals with the culmination of all of my work into a book, which I’ve decided to hand-make to make sure it feels just as melancholy as the rest of the items. The “printing” on the timeline will actually be the physical creation of the book.

I think I will stay on track with everything as long as I keep up with my to-do list and my bigger spreadsheet. Over spring break I think I’ll get a lot done since I won’t have classes to worry about. I plan on trying to get a little bit ahead during that time so that I can relax. I’ve been good about keeping up and I am in a good spot right now – I’m not too stressed about getting everything done (just a little bit).

Again, I was not as productive this week with my thesis. I’m a little burnt out. I want to be working on my thesis but I have a lot of other things that get pushed on to me and I dont get home until like 8pm every day so I have to do things that are due for a grade. Pretty frustrating.

I worked on my perfume packaging and I know how I am going to execute it. I have all my materials and I need to print my stuff so I can start putting it together. I’m going to try some DIY screenprinting on it and see how that goes.

Today I’m making my paper which is exciting.

I’m meeting up with Tamara for the first time this semester today as well, so I will take notes there and make sure to include them in my expert report.

I am finding that I really, really don’t need a ton of feedback from my committee (which is something I realized by talking to a committee member – ironic). It is kind of difficult to understand how to fulfill the requirements surrounding the committee members. I feel like at this point, this thesis is all about me and what I’m doing and how I feel and how I figure things out for myself. That’s a hill I’m willing to die on. But I also don’t want to fail the class. Hmmmmmm…

My song has been mastered and the volumes are all good. I wanna put it into a video so I can link a QR code in my final book.

I’m doing my sculpture tomorrow I think and working more on my packaging. I’m sort of behind in my timeline but not too bad – I just really need to double up during spring break I think. Luckily I’m not going anywhere and I may shorten my hours at work so I can work on stuff longer.

Happy friday. I’m currently working on my melancholy perfume.

Today I went to Hobby Lobby and got some supplies to make the packaging. Im diffusing the scent I’ve created- it’s a slightly emotional experience

Here are the notes I’ve made when ideating on my perfume:

PACKAGING:

• WHAT
  • Perfume
  • Smells from my past –
    • Auric blends sandalwood
    • Vetiver
    • Oak moss
    • Heliotrope
• WHY
  • Smells evoke intense memories – reflection is part of melancholy
  • Smells that evoke memories always make my heart hurt most
• HOW
  • I’ll be concocting a perfume and packaging it in the likeness of a thermos i bought when i was younger
    • Story of the thermos:
      • The story is that there isn’t much of one. As I was thumbing through my old journals, I found a sketch of a thermos I bought in the summer of 2015 I think. I immediately remembered the thermos quite vividly, but I have no real memories attached to it other than buying it and imagining memories i would make with it. I bought it because i thought I could take it on hiking or camping trips with my best friends. I thought I could make little teas and go on adventures with it. I never ended up using the thermos and now it’s gone and i dont know what happened to it. I had romanticized this thermos’ part in my life when I bought it, and then it was gone just like that – from my memory, from my life, from my cabinets. 
      • On the same page as my thermos are personal thoughts of anxieties, sketches of memories, and written-down texts Travis sent me, and songs that are already on my melancholy playlist. Lovely page.
  • Outer packaging will be different – pulling out the thermos will be like a flashback like when I first saw it again in my journal
    • Maybe look like an old cardboard box? Like pulling something out of storage?
    • Package it like my journal somehow?
      • Book packaging
      • Box is a book, open it and its cut out and the perfume is in there
  • The scent will not be very long-lasting – it will fade quickly in order to imitate the passage of time and the way memories are stored and let go. 
• NAME IDEAS
  • Remember?
  • Rose-Colored Thermos
  • Reminder
  • Flashback
  • Nostalgia
  • Schmaltz
  • Oh, yeah
  • Souvenir
  • Memorial
  • Reflection
  • Echo
  • Hiraeth
• Scent notes:
  • Your best friend’s house
  • The lake in her backyard
  • The summer after 10th grade
  • A hike you never took 7 years ago
  • Your first kiss
  • Depression naps
  • Spells & intentions
  • Oakmoss
  • Heliotrope
  • Sandalwood

The smell made me tear up a bit – that could be due to the combination of nostalgia, wine, and sad piano music filling the room right now (the dazzler by ex:re). I’m on the right track.

This week wasn’t super productive because I just had a lot going on with senior show/extra stuff I had to do. I think I’m still on track but I need to kick it in gear next week if possible.

I met with Jesse and caught her up on my progress and how my thinking is shifting as I move through my thesis. She thinks I’m going down the right road. She mentioned that there isn’t much my committee members can do at this point – the project has become such a personal exploration and it’s not one that I can really receive feedback on. My project structure is difficult to worm into the form of the class again. It is an art project- the real design here is the way I have designed the process.

I bought materials for my sculpture at goodwill and i’ve been sketching and figuring out a concept for it. I’m basing it off of the trapped mindset I was in when I was younger in comparison to what I know now and what I wish I could tell myself if I could go back in time.

This project has me writing poetry again.

I updated this a little while ago but never uploaded it to the site. I’m re-uploading since I come to my blog to reference it a lot.

I did my melancholy tattoo tonight!

Here’s how I decided on it.

I’ve been leafing through my old journals from high school, one of the most melancholic periods in my life. I found so many things that I’d forgotten about – feelings, drawings, thoughts, memories, letters, songs, physical objects I’d stuffed into the pages.

One thing I found was a little flower my now-husband had given me in 2015. I had completely forgotten about it and I can’t remember the story behind it – I think it’s from a hike or something but I don’t remember. It made me think about all of the pressed flowers I have on my old room’s window and all of the other ones I have pressed in my journals.

I can’t remember the stories behind almost any of them, even though I picked them as a way to remember. I know I have some from my first trip out of the country, multiple from some of my early dating days, some from times spent with my first best friend, but I can’t remember the specific moments these flowers are supposed to spark in me. I keep them for a reason, but the reason doesn’t end up… working?

It was an odd realization. There are so many things in those journals that I had pretty much wiped out of my head. There are so many things that have happened to me that I’ll never remember. Maybe those things would be important to me now if I could remember them. It’s sort of a sad thought to think about how much my relationship, one of the most important things in my life right now, is full of little pieces and moments that I’ll never find again.

All I’m left with of these moments are melancholy objects that don’t recall anything – they just hint at a moment that was special enough for me to save a piece of it. But I don’t remember that moment.

The past is just as uncertain as the future.

This is a sketch of the pressed flower (the past) next to a little skeleton of a flower that doesn’t exist (the future). The future is also full of special moments I won’t remember. The future is full of memories that don’t exist.

My next challenge was to decide where on my body the tattoo should go. I thought about just sticking it on my legs because I don’t have as many tattoos there, but that didn’t make sense for the actual concept of my thesis.

I started researching the most melancholy parts of the body just to see what would come up. Apparently, the Greeks thought that bad feelings and “melancholia” were sourced from a black bile that secreted from the spleen. This connection has carried through the centuries, though now a much looser connection. Here’s how the French poet Charles Baudelaire begins his poem called “Spleen:”

When the low, heavy sky weighs like the giant lid
Of a great pot upon the spirit crushed by care,
And from the whole horizon encircling us is shed
A day blacker than night, and thicker with despair.

Spleen – Charles Baudelaire, 1952

I decided to try and do the tattoo over my spleen. My spleen is right under my left rib, so the angle was a little weird and my lines ended up a little wobbly but that’s fine.

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I’m happy with the result – it’s not perfect but I don’t mind.

I think the concept behind the tattoo and the format of the tattoo is interesting. The concept focuses on the way memories fade over time and tattoos are considered permanent.

I like tattoo as an art medium because of how long lasting they are. I think they become parts of the people they are on and that’s fascinating to me.

I did my hand lettering this past weekend. I’m not sure how I feel about it – I didn’t think I should go too decorative because that doesn’t feel “melancholy” to me but I feel like it’s not enough…?

Here’s how it is currently. I may revisit this after I do some of my other objects and get those squared away.

I’ve started collecting materials for my paper and melancholy scent. I have things that smell like wet dirt after it rains and some gentle flowers and things. I’m excited to concoct that.

I got a fourth committee member: Alex Brilliandt. He was my high school digital media and english teacher and a sort of mentor to me growing up in some of my most melancholy years. I felt like his skills in conceptual thinking and his knowledge would help me with the concepts behind my work.

I worked on my song some more this week. I’m almost done – I’m recruiting my husband to help me master it (fix the volumes and things like that) since I’m not really sure how to do all of that. I think my song is really coming together well. I’m happy with it.

I brainstormed some more packaging ideas but that slowly bled into sketches for my tattoo, which I need to do on Saturday I think if I remember my timeline correctly. I combed through my old journals from high school (i used to be an avid journal-er and also constantly melancholy) and found a lot of things I forgot about. I kept letters, accounts of my days, drawings, songs, and lots of pressed flowers. Lots of letters I wrote and never sent. It was actually kind of difficult to look through and gave me a little heartache but I think that means it’s good for this project.

I found a flower that my now-husband gave me in 2015 that I pressed. Nature is really core to my experience with melancholy. I’m thinking of working with some kind of imagery based on that for my tattoo. I don’t have a ton of real ideas for my packaging yet but I have vague ideas floating around that I’m excited to dig into this weekend.

I’m getting frustrated with school. I want to devote all of my time to this project. I haven’t done much that makes me feel the way this project does but I feel like I can’t focus on it. I don’t feel like a good designer and I don’t feel at all creative because I have so much pressure on me from school and work and I can’t let either one go just now. I don’t work creatively under stress and I do not like it.

These are notes from my first informal presentation of Spring, and mainly for myself. They may seem a little incoherent.

• Try a sound chip insert for putting the song into final book
  • Those things in greeting cards?
• Could think about utilizing a small gallery space
• Look up Chantal Martin and how she partnered with Google and hooked herself up for some data
• Make the book in a melancholy way – don’t just print it?
• Include the philosophy and concept in the elevator pitch, not just the outcome

Last weekend I finished my linocuts and printed them. I’m pretty happy with how they turned out, I just wish I could’ve kept my original, more detailed sketches. So is life.

This week hasn’t been quite as productive as last week in regards to my thesis – I’ve been doing other schoolwork.

I started making my melancholy song. I think I’m going to base it off the four seasons and create some ambiance that I feel embodies the melancholy feelings in each season. I want to make a video with it with some landscape type video – I feel like that might be the best way to “display” the song.

I started researching for my melancholy package. I learned about the concept of “melancholy objects.” As I understand it, these are objects that aren’t in themselves sad, but become sad because they remind us of being sad. I think. My reading comprehension has gotten decidedly worse the older I get.

I found a book called “The Tears of Things” which is all about melancholy objects. I read most of the introduction and it was really interesting and got me thinking – I cannot attempt to vaguely package melancholy. It has to be personal. My melancholy objects are not at all the same as someone else’s. I can only package my melancholy.

I don’t have much imagery to show from this week. Here are some incoherent notes on my melancholy packaging research.

I updated my timeline a tiny bit to accommodate some weekend changes. I was supposed to make my scent and paper this weekend but I won’t be home so I switched that and hand lettering. I can hand letter away from home a lot easier.

Since my last post I’ve completed my second “object,” a series of haiku, and started my third (two linocut prints).

I liked having a small item like the haiku that I could blow through and check off my list. I may see if I need to rearrange some things in my timeline in order to keep these smaller things sprinkled throughout the year so I feel more productive.

My linocuts started out a little rough – my linoleum blocks were smaller than I anticipated so I had to adjust my sketches. Very sad because I thought my sketches were cool. I kept carving on the wrong parts as well and having to start over. A little annoying and my hand hurts but I’m almost done with my first and my second one is much simpler.

Yesterday there was a terrible thunderstorm and lots of tornado warnings. It was perfect weather for the images I wanted to take for my pinhole photography but I didn’t have that ready yet. I found some old film I had from high school and made Travis go outside to pose for me. Hopefully those will come out well.