Always Spinning

Creator

Callagh Mays, Ursinus College

Preview

Student Exhibition Year

2024

Description

Eyeball painted on a vintage glass globe with acrylic paint. Presented as part of the 2024 Annual Student Exhibit in the Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College.

Artist Statement

Growing up, my grandmother gave me a nineteenth century dollhouse. The walls were beautifully painted white with green vines going all the way up them, framed by a dark roof and a red porch. We played with plastic dolls from the 90s and dollar-store dollhouse furniture: cheap, flashy, bright pink and purple, that could snap at any second. I loved playing with my dolls and accessories, and my sister and I would create rooms in my bookcases and drawers whenever we could not use the dollhouse. These cluttered spaces and scenes drove my love for trinkets and knick-knacks. I am nostalgic for the perfume of plastic accessories, cat litter, and my grandpa’s cigarettes. I grieve my childhood memories and dreams. I want to play again, but I cannot quite remember how. Instead, I play when I create my work. I scavenge and modify repurposed objects and design individual pieces with props and characters to tell the story of each assemblage. I strive to make my memories physical, so they can be preserved long after I inevitably forget them. All of them are different, but they materialize as the rooms of my subconscious’ dollhouse.

Comments

Winner of the Richard Goldberg Award. Endowed by the late Dr. Richard Goldberg '58, his family, friends and colleagues, and awarded to the student exhibiting a sensitive interpretation of an artistic vision in the Annual Student Exhibition.

Rights Statement

Copyright of the underlying work is held by the artist. The digital image presented here is for educational purposes only and is not for commercial use.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.