Highlights from the Senior Seminar
Nicole Perkins
We seek to create our life in the little moments of every day — whether consciously or not. If a home can be made of pieces and crumbs picked up along the way, are we limitless in our ability to construct it in the places around us?
In my series Domestic, I use the interior as a tool to interrogate such everyday comforts. Dramatic lighting, familiar settings, and precariously-arranged scenes work to convey the passing permanence of home-making in today’s world. A hand resting on another in a patch of bright sun (I Am Reaching Out To You) emphasizes the human connection that threads these scenes together. A woman, clutching her phone and gazing at the screen in bold purple light (Caitlin on the Phone) makes the viewer question her anguish in contrast to the serene setting of her home. The varying size of these pieces further serves to prove the significance of insignificance of certain people, places, or objects in our lives.
In Fruit, I turn to the convention of still life to draw upon memories of my composite: the lemons and tomatoes harvested every summer in my childhood backyard, the red delicious apple my mother eats for breakfast each morning like clockwork, the pear I first tasted in all its tartness one winter weekend. They are home without a home.