LIA FIGURELLI
Paired With: Cynthia Joan Smith
Untitled
While looking through the Syracuse University Pan Am Flight 103 Archives, I came across a poem that Shannon Davis, one of the victims of the bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland wrote. “A butterfly lights between us” is the first line, and it inspired the butterfly in my artwork.
For my artwork, I was paired with Cynthia “Cindy” Joan Smith. I found that the two of us have a lot in common, such as being involved in peer education and leadership and hating being rushed out of museums. Since she wanted to be a fashion designer, I decided to incorporate a lot of texture into the artwork by creating a mixed media collage using acrylic, glue, magazine scraps, and paper. I hope she would have liked my artwork.
I’ve always appreciated the symbolism of the butterfly as change, hope, and transformation. In my artwork, I wish to convey in the background all of those negative emotions that come with any tragedy, like loss, despair, isolation, abandonment, and confusion, but I also wanted there to be a glimmer of hope – for us to know that there is reason to keep going, in spite of it all.