Small Town Anxieties is a collection of work that explores the spaces within my hometown and the interlaced essence of occupying those spaces, which enticed intense feelings of fear and anxiety in me as a child.
These feelings were brought about through my fear that I would essentially live my entire life and die in the same town I was brought-up in, never having any chance to leave or escape routine. I began to experience anxiety in living in a mundane routine, occupying the same spaces every day while always experiencing feelings of isolation and observed scrutiny.
These feelings were also enhanced by how dry, hot and dusty the terrain of my hometown is. It becomes suffocating. It fills your lungs, dries your skin and makes your eyes water, becoming all-encompassing.
The points of interest for my exploration, were spaces in which I formed these anxieties and fears in, so I explored these spaces as a way of re-consolidating rather than as reconstructions of memories. My experiences with my religious upbringing, being in the same school from pre-k all the way to graduation, never being able to occupy many different spaces within the town, all caused a fear of routine. I was either at school, church or at home, which placed me in situations of almost complete isolation, while still being under scrutinise observation from others as a result of living in a small town.
The apotheosis of this project was to capture the essence of the “paper like feeling”. My home town is near a paper mill, so there is always a white fog that hangs in the air, and when I stood on the school fields as a kid and looked out into the distance, I felt like I was a character drawn onto a piece of paper. Looking out, it felt like there was nothing beyond that boundary of white fog, and I could not help but feel two-dimensional. This feeling epitomises, Small Town Anxieties.
Exhibition View
