Goodbye Sorrow

Installation shot of my thesis project. I decided to put the video online because I really want it to have a life after the exhibition is taken down. To watch it in its entirety, click here or just read through to the bottom of this entry.


I couldn't have dreamed of a better opening. The night was a blur -- smiling faces, hugs from all sides, my innards vibrating with the wings of a thousand butterflies... Thank you to everyone who came. I can't even begin to tell you how unbelievably magical I felt in that gallery surrounded by people who really think I'm worth a damn. The truth is, most of the time I doubt my worth-a-damness, but I'm working on letting the love inside!

The piece I made for the show is an animation which came to be known as Goodbye Sorrow. I began making it one morning after a peculiar incident involving the making of tea. I stood at the counter in my kitchen, a cup of hot water before me, dunking my tea bag in and out while absentmindedly worrying about life the way we do sometimes, and I realized something: All I wanted to do was stand there and continue to steep my tea forever. I couldn't bear to stop, not if it meant I had to eventually put on shoes, walk outside and face the day. I suppose this is called unhappiness, but it felt more cavernous, and much more abstract at the time.

But I digress, the animation itself does not have anything to do with tea. The fact is, existence is very difficult. As simple and possibly naive as that sounds, it was really all I was conscious of thinking while I made the work. I think Goodbye Sorrow does more than drag its feet around in sadness though, somehow. There is a kind of searching or longing that is not extinguished by the end of it, I hope.

The soundtrack is a cover I made of the Europop song, Blue (Da Ba Dee) by one-hit-wonders Eiffel 65. I have a habit of making strange, sad covers of pop songs. It can really only be described as an attempt to find and reveal some kind of humanness in even the most seemingly soulless, irritatingly formulaic cultural garbage. It's funny, the Wikipedia entry for the song claims that the subject, "blue" was picked at random, and that the lyrics were written to be more or less nonsensical or irrelevant. It's strange how much the song changes and how meaningful the words become, just by singing it a little slower and juxtaposing it with different imagery.

The animation was created using hundreds of tiny ink drawings and watercolor paintings which I scanned, one by one into the computer and animated with Flash. For the installation, the video was projected into a corner of the gallery. Beside it, I attached every drawing used to create the animation in hopes that showing the process would add a richness of understanding to the piece.

Here are a few more installation shots for you to peruse:



















And now, internet, I give you Goodbye Sorrow. Share it with those that you hold most dear!