Cayla R. – Interpreting Dreams and Portraying Them Through Art
How can I identify thematic similarities in the content of peoples’ dreams? What are these similarities and what do they coincide with the current state of the world?
How can I represent these understandings through art, specifically collage and writing?
Artist Statement:
Humans often go to great lengths to push strong emotions down into their subconscious, and these are often resurfaced through dreams. Feelings one may not even know they have may be revealed through dreams, so interpreting them is an important tool in the process of uncovering your shadow and bettering yourself. For my project, I wanted to combine elements of research and art to display the wonderful complexity of the brain, as well as the similarity we all share in terms of the human experience. I interpreted my classmate’s (and my own) dreams through reported symbols and feelings that came up. Beginning with the initial sketch I loosely drew what first came to mind when I read the dream and what symbols jumped out at me. I then selected six dreams that I could effectively represent through larger mixed media pieces. In each piece, I looked at the dream through a different lens. In some of them, I represented the collage how I imagined the dreamer would visualize it in their head. For others, I decided to focus the piece around the feeling the individual said they experienced when dreaming.
At the beginning of my project, I thought I was going to be producing pure collage pieces for the art portion. When I began attending cohort meetings, James suggested that I do mixed media collage, and introduced me to an artist named Anselm Kiefer. The dark dreamlike quality of his work inspired me to represent the dreams symbolically and through emotions. After reading his book I started to experiment with block printing, and in my opinion, this brought the collages together while letting more of my hand show in the work.
As a senior at LREI, I wanted to curate a project that represented something different than the content I have learned in my four years of classes. I took my interests in psychology, dream interpretation, and art, and combined them into one cohesive project. Although I didn’t complete as much work as I initially thought I would, I appreciate how this time gave me a space to ignite something out of a previously small spark. Throughout this project, I have learned about my creative process by challenging myself to use collage, and pushing myself to learn about a topic that I didn’t have prior knowledge of.
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