"The Brain," 2018-2019
Mixed Media
This project was Casey’s way of expressing how much people are defined by their brains. Each part is completely different and she wanted to identify how that is so by metaphorizing how every part works. No one fully realizes that every section of the brain is only a hint of who people are as humans. One part is distinctly designed for our personality (the Frontal Lobe), while there are parts that are only for extremely fine motor control (the Endorestiform Nucleus). Casey decided to explore a mixed media route because she felt it would point out the imagination versus reality aspect of each piece and so she could not only practice on specific art styles but on multiple. Each piece is metaphorized differently even though they’re all parts of the brain. This is to highlight that no sections work the same way, and that shows that each person is individual.
For a long time, Casey was struggling with what this project should be based on for her AP Concentration. She wanted something that would be emotional to her, but would also help people understand something important and quite possibly hit them emotionally as well. One day, she talked to her mom about what she should do since she had no idea what she should create that would be moving to the world and to herself. The one distinct thing she remembered her mom did was to grab a piece of notebook paper and a pencil and scribbled just a random sketch of a brain and placed it in front of her. She told Casey that Casey would think of something and that she wasn’t out of ideas yet. At first, Casey didn’t really know how this would help, since ideas weren’t just going to show up, but later she looked back at the brain scribble and realized that it was right in front of her all this time. The brain isn’t just a brain. Every single part makes up a certain piece of her, and that makes her different, just as every part is different for every single person. There are those people who mention that every person also lives a life, and we’re all normal, but that’s not true. People were designed to be completely different, and that began with our brains because that’s how everyone has begun as their own person. So the world can be its own. Casey hopes more people realize how unique they all are. People push such negative words at one another, but the reason people say those things is because they haven’t realized that they can be their own as well. Uniqueness begins with the brain and its complexity.
