A Part of a Whole
Date
2019-09-10
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Abstract
A Part of a Whole is a distillation of insights gained through creative research that examines my relationship to abandoned locations in Western Canada. I have discovered an empathy for the past inhabitants, a curiosity for the sites themselves, and a desire to imagine these locations as they once were. This artwork is produced to instill that empathy and curiosity within others. I have been interested the leftover built environment from the homestead era in Western Canada since childhood, watching farm buildings and industrial sites slowly disappear over the years while on family trips and school outings. A Part of a Whole examines my relationship with the exploration of a landscape that was once inhabited, a busy place of industry, small homestead or bustling town. For this thesis project I have considered Bankhead, Alberta, a mining site within Banff National Park as a case study. My creative research has involved allowing myself to follow a path of curiosity while recording the progress for later introspection and analysis, the synthesis of an insight into elements of artworks and the reflection upon the results. Each work completed in the context of my MFA has brought me a step closer to understanding my relationship to the past inhabitants of these abandoned locations, and what compels me to imagine the way their environments once looked and felt. Each individual living in these absent buildings were a once part of the whole community. A Part of a Whole shares my empathy for these people through the use of suitcases which contain briefly imagined buildings I can only see while exploring the landscape that contained an industry, town or homestead. The connected line of progressing light is my progress through the site, while displaying my imagined recreation of the buildings that were once part of the whole foundations that are all that remain of this community.
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Straathof, G. (2019). A part of a whole (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.