A Confessor Named Grace

 Confession

Release and Restoration

    The project was simple. Participants would interact with the "confessor" by admitting anything secretive to them, one at a time. The confessor, who will remain anonymous, was covered head to toe in two blankets and was completely blind and deaf to the room around them. I was hoping this would seem a little comfier and easier to approach, but I understand now with feedback, it made our subject ominous. Thankfully, people still seemed happy to engage. 

    After releasing whatever the people were holding onto, I handed each of them a portrait purely from memory. No reference of any kind. While this reflects partially on my need to practice more, it mainly reflected the unchanged idea of the person in my mind. The goal was to show that while something in the person might have changed due to the release, nothing about them changed to someone else, letting them stay in the somewhat security of an unchanging idea.

  

Sadly, there are no photos of the performance itself.

    In concept, I love what I've put together. It's largely inspired by my partner Jules. I wish everyone could share time with Jules, since they've got a bottomless heart and the courage to share it graciously. Sadly, I can't share Jules with everyone, so I settled for a critical moment in our relationship. We shared things we had both told precious few that we felt were important to our relationship, and in seeing each other during those things and loving each other through them, I experienced radical, borderline violent, levels of healing.

    My failure to share this with the class is a testament to both the power and import of that moment, but also the intricacy and depth of human relationship, and how difficult it is to manufacture. I know for some people it was meaningful, and I knew it wouldn't be lifechanging, but I wanted to try anyway. I had a couple other ideas for restoration, and the portraits seemed like the best, but even still I think I failed to capture the moment I wanted. I am okay with this.

    Relationship is a huge topic in my art, and is only getting bigger, so I think I'd want to revisit this topic again, but instead of trying to synthesize a specific moment for others, I'd like to celebrate the difficulty in building something like this naturally. We'll see where it goes.