Memento

The body is the primary mode of perceiving scale.

• Does our memory of a certain event or moment leave us feeling small or superior?  Did we stand tall in that moment? or was it the result of that moment that left us feeling that way?  We perceive things based on our size and scale.  If you are at eye-level with someone, you feel equal to them in some way.  Being tall, I tend to tower over most people and with height there is an intimidation factor involved most of the time. 

Capacity of objects to serve as traces of authentic experience.

• The collection of objects that correlate to a certain memory, when reminiscing, help trace you back to an authentic experience and relive it.

The souvenir reduces the public, the monumental and the three-dimensional into the miniature, which can be enveloped by the body.

• A souvenir takes whatever thought or memory it's connected to and brings it all into one object that defines that memory or moment.

Nostalgia cannot be sustained without lost.

• The loss of something or someone is a hard process in and of itself, but sometimes in order to really appreciate something or someone, loss is a concrete factor.  Nostalgia can only happen when there is a continuation of loss in that person or object or memory. 

To have a souvenir of the exotic is to possess both a specimen and a trophy.

• A souvenir is one an object that takes the role of being continually studied and thought of, but also something to show an accomplishment or that is a symbol of an event or memory.

The place of origin must remain unavailable in order for desire to be generated.

• A desire for something or someone grows with the continual unavailability it may hold or possess.  When something or someone is out of reach and unavailable to where you don't know if it is ever going to be attainable again, there is a desperate desire there that is unexplainable.  That longing deepens over time. 

Inventory/The Tokens by Christopher Turner

• The tokens left with orphaned children act as a memento so that if a mother wanted to reclaim her child, there was something to identify with.  More than that though, those tokens symbolized and represented the struggles and attitude/character of their mothers that had to give them up.  Some tokens were those such as a brass cross, a coin with five holes, etc.  It is a part of them that they are wanting their child to have to hold on to, to remember them by.  It gives that child a sense of peace in knowing that their mother didn't want to let go of them, but had to; it was in their best interest. 

In-process Memento

Finished Memento

The inspiration behind this project is based on a memory from two years ago when I was serving on a missions project in Wildwood, NJ for two months in the summer.  In Wildwood there is an enormous boardwalk with three piers, each having a different aspect of an amusement park.  It was called Morey's Piers.  I worked in a food stand on the pier that had the huge ferris wheel.  The food stand was right underneath the big, white roller coaster.  There were always bright colors around me and a water park was a part of the pier as well.  I wanted to encompass different elements of the pier in this piece.
I used German style wire and twisted and manipulated it into coil-like shapes to represent the continuous rotation and spinning of the ferris wheel.  The heightened wall of the piece represents the roller coaster as well as the twists and turns of the wire above it.  The colors I chose, using cotton braiding string, represent the fun and vibrant colors I would always see every day at work.  The blue represents the ocean as well as the water park because I would always see children and families passing by my stand on their way to and from the water park.  The orange is a common color that was consistently seen around the amusement park.  I wanted to keep a color scheme that represented not only the beach, but the colors often seen on the pier as well.