I am Casey Jewett, a second-year double majoring in Studio Art and Chemistry. I am a visual artist focused on painting and ceramics. For the last year I have been working on a series of paintings and sculptures that are a reaction to feeling haunted by the deaths of my grandparents. When they died, I felt my life move on without them, but I did not want to consider the gravity of the loss. Despite that I felt them haunt the spaces and objects they left behind. I began this series to explore the experience of being haunted and to come to terms with it. As of today I have completed three paintings for the series. Two of them, Active Death and Inheritance, are currently on display in the Gadsden Museum of Art and the Honors, Scholars, and Fellows House, respectfully.
Now I choose to connect with the memories of my late grandparents and family history.
This summer, I will spend a month in Jay Peak, Vermont living alone and painting in my late grandparents (Theresa and James Jewett)’s old house while taking care of it and keeping it clean. I will also be visiting the Berkshire cemetery where my great-grandparents and grandparents are buried and volunteering to help maintain it. My time in these places of strong connection to my family will be both a solo artist residency and performance piece that I will produce documentation for. By not only living in the house and spending time at the cemetery, but also actively taking care of them, I aim to build an intimate connection with the tangible and intangible aspects of my memories of my grandparents, which I will use as inspiration for a series of large conceptual paintings. These will contribute to the series I am currently working on, where I grapple with my relationship with my late grandparents and the objects and spaces that they haunt. I have already begun painting the next 2 works that I will finish for the project.
This project will mark a significant step forward in my artistic practice. I have painted for four years; however my time in Vermont will be my first experience with solo practice. I intend to conduct this project as a solo artist residency and artistic embodiment. By establishing a studio in the space that I am reacting to and defining all my interactions with the space, living, working, and maintaining, as artistic. I will transform the mundane into artistic practice so that I am doing art even when I am not actively painting. By living as an artist, I become attuned to inspiration around and within me, deepening my daily practice.
I will also grow from this project by exploring a new workflow. Due to limited studio hours on campus, I have learned to paint in small bursts between my classes. Typically, this only allows me to work on one painting at a time. When I am working in Vermont, however, I will not have this challenge. I intend to adapt my methods to a full-time solo practice by working on multiple paintings at once. I will experiment with this methodology as an aspect of my overall research so that I will come away with a better understanding of how to conduct solo practice.
This project will catapult me to the next steps of my artistic career. The 6-10 new paintings and documentation produced during the project will be a significant expansion of my portfolio. I will use the new works to apply to more exhibitions, expanding my opportunities as an artist. My long-term goal is to attend graduate school for a Master of Fine Arts (MFA). The outcomes of this creative research project will demonstrate the breadth and sophistication of my work toward this goal. After I graduate MFA, I will become an artist full time to share my work with the world. Today this will be the most ambitious project I have ever proposed, but in five years it will represent of begin of my professional career in art opening the gateway for the greater body work that I intend to create.
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