Roses, Rhododendron
Alice Adams, 1975
As an adult, Jane recalls her childhood friend Harriet. The girls lost touch when Jane’s family moved away, but over the years Jane developed a habit of reenacting scenes from her own life with Harriet in her place. Jane wanted to be Harriet so badly that she invented a version of Harriet in her mind. Decades later, Harriet sends a letter to Jane which causes her entire perspective on their relationship to change. It turns out that Jane and Harriet are more alike than they thought, their identities are intertwined. This is a story about seeing one’s self from multiple perspectives – from the past and the present, through yourself and through someone else. I created a series of typographic objects that must be viewed from multiple perspectives to read the title. (a) Pigment was applied to glass on both sides of the surface. (b) Mirrors were manipulated with a combination of etching and transferred type, causing the individual words to appear and disappear depending on how the piece is moved in the light. (c) Individual paper letters intertwine to form a surface. The word roses appears on one side and rhododendron becomes visible on the reverse. These objects embody the relationship between the characters – separate, yet dependent on each other.
