Abstract

For my Diamond Scholars Project, I've been working on an abstract.  This is the state my abstract is in now.  As I'm working on the project, it may change and evolve.

     "Paintings and Memories are similar.  Both are based on subjective experiences and each one is different.  My project will use paintings and memories to attain a more holistic and specific understanding of a place and the relationships people have with that place.  I will be looking at the borough of Swissvale Pennsylvania, where people have lived for generations and have seen many changes and events in the area.  By researching oral history and creating plein air paintings, I will explore the relationships between Swissvale and the people who live there over a wide segment of time.  My paintings of what I’m observing in the present will be informed by people’s memories of the past.  Time passes inevitably, and this project will approach the present, recent past, and distant past equally without a bias of one being inherently better than another.  As time passes, what become valuable are not the objects or locations themselves but rather the relationships people have with those places.  My project will use the fact that memories and experiences are what give a place value to someone.  Different people will have different memories of a place.  My challenge will be to create paintings that many people can relate to their own experiences, so that my project will truly portray Swissvale in an honest, specific, and in depth way.  I will exhibit the paintings and the oral history together so that they will complement each other and work together to give the viewer an understanding of the borough that they would not have otherwise."