"Attachments" by Bella Schlotthauer

“Attachments” is an exploration of how my art has evolved in the past several years. The work takes an introspective look at how I have also changed in that time. “Attachments” achieves all of this through peering through the lens of the attachments I have to the world; examining my relationship with my family and everything we have gone through in particular.

Making my art comes from a place deep within myself and is inherently tangled up with the fabric of my life as well as my identity.  Naturally, in hard times, my art has been a lifeline; creating has been a way to cope with the things I have carried. Time and growth have now led to my art becoming a way to share my story and help others who have faced similar things. My family has not only helped make me who I am, but they are also the other characters in the story of what has happened to us.

My exhibition features photographic portraits of my twin sister and my mother’s hands; some shot on my Holga 120N and the rest edited to mimic the same style. The grain and soft focus of the photos is meant to show the intimacy and connection I have to both of my subjects. The posing of my subjects, what they are photographed with, and the lighting in the portraits were all intentional choices meant to convey my emotion towards my twin and my mom respectively. I wanted to capture the complexities of my feelings of both of these important people in my life, and I found that the fuzzy, soft feel produced by my Holga worked well in doing that. “Attachments” is the story of finding my identity in the aftermath and learning how to be okay again.

In short, my exhibition is about the process of change. The various mediums used are meant to show the unexpected interruptions and new narratives change introduces into our lives. Although each work is united through the undulating use of line and attention to detail, the change in media indicates that change itself is the only constant in life. In addition, the floral theme seen throughout my work is meant to bring to mind the cyclical nature of life, death, growth, and decay. Just as a decomposing animal nourishes the plants and soil around it, so too do the low points in our lives allow a build-up to the high points. The repetition of organic lines and forms through my work serves to reference this overall natural order that enforces change. Finally, this exhibition was designed to be an installation so the viewer would be fully immersed in the space.

“Attachments” is autobiographical. Everything I’ve put into the exhibition is a piece of me or my story in some way; the installation design was meant to be an invitation to my audience to come to take a look. My plan was to have the animation I made projecting onto the back wall of the gallery space. The animation itself is literally and figuratively the center of the exhibition; it visually references each piece in the physical space of the gallery, to provide some subtle context to the variety of my pieces. The walls of the gallery itself were going to be wrapped in the hand-drawn illustrations to transform the space into a sort of “garden”. The space with the tables for catering and the part of the wall the animation was going to project on were the only parts of the gallery walls not covered in illustration. Immediately on the walls to the right and left where the animation was going to be projected, I was going to hang my photos. The gallery space would have been very open. The podium containing my title sign was going to be across from the side entrance to the gallery. My ceramic pieces were going to be positioned as my front-most pieces, to the left of the podium with my title sign and just slightly out from the wall. The podium holding the projector was going to have a metal sculpture placed on the ground next to it in order to help guide the flow of traffic around and away from the projector a bit more. Overall, my intention was to have my animation be the first thing that viewers saw when entering the gallery. From there, I wanted the set-up of my space to guide them in a circular path around the gallery.