Dajha Thurmond ENGL 1320 Term & Critical Reflection

After a stressing and hesitating over choosing my final artifact, I’ve decided to choose number 5. I believe this artifact is more beautiful and more meaningful than the rest because every aspect of this vanitas has deep meaning toward me. My vanitas still life represents my relationship with my girlfriend/fiancé Brittany Bush. The items contained within my still life include the things we love and enjoyed together. Also the photo of us, which would have to represent the young love we share, capturing one moment to remember forever because you never know what good or bad tomorrow brings. The more I arranged the items around I eventually came up with the perfect arrangement to specify what was the most and least important. The second candidate is somewhat better than the rest because it shows all of the smaller but more important things. The important things including the rainbow bracelet symbolizing LGBT love and how you have every right to love who you want and stand for something and go through with until time is up, my ring symbolizing our engagement and how we will get through life’s journey together till death do us part, the dice symbolizing mutability and uncertainty, because the chances coming with the roll of a dice encodes how you could gain so much or lose everything by one mistake, the roll of the dice signifying the mistake, and red lipstick symbolizing the kisses I put at the end of every letter, but also the fading away of the “outer beauty” that I have because eventually she helped me understand it’s all temporary, and lastly my glasses symbolizing how my vision is slowly going bad and how my health is a serious issue to us as a whole. All of the small things are things that matter to our relationship. Even though the second candidate was up to par my other two candidates were almost as equally good. I honestly believe my audience at my gallery would gain softness of heart from my vanitas. My audience would then understand that the small things in life count the most and you should cherish those things before it only becomes a distressed memory, illustrated through a still life. My artifact would speak for itself because all of the pieces’ meanings tied up as a whole make up to be one big understanding on how no matter what, love you want, be strong through it all, and gain the knowledge to know that everything will be greater at later period of time. I believe if I had an audience member that didn’t understand the concept of the vanitas tradition they would still understand what I am trying to do because of the mail, photo, and engagement ring included the vanitas and the title of the medium. Once those three things are observed in this still life they will then understand the separation of me and my significant, how much it means to me, and the concept of loving hard before the end comes near. Even if the audience did not understand my meaning of my vanitas I feel they would have some type of emotional response because everyone in life has someone they love so dearly and never want to experience the separation and sorrow I am undergoing. This would be enough for me as an artist because everyone has their own different views on certain subjects or life hardships so I would never know if someone feels the same way as me if not deeper than me. I would not feel like I did not accomplish my goal of the