New Media Project Statement

This idea came to me after a trip to the Barbados Historical Museum. In one of the rooms, something caught my eye; it was a Sailor’s Valentine. These very intricate, colorful objects were created by using many shells of different sizes and colors to create a pattern. This sparked something inside of me. At first I wanted to recreate one but later moved on from that idea and decided to use the idea of a sailor’s valentine being used as something for sailors to send back home to their families or what we call souvenirs. I decided that maybe a postcard, something that we use to let people know where we have visited and when would be perfect for this project. But I wanted the postcards to have some reminisce of the sailor’s valentine. I did some research and got some information from the post office (who made some special edition stamps of sailor’s valentines). I put together some images and manipulated them in Photoshop to somewhat resemble a sailors valentine. My second idea was also based on the idea of a souvenir, but the fact that most souvenirs such as; postcards, key rings, bookmarks and other items you see in a souvenir shop, always have these beautiful scenes and photographs on them that people who actually live in the country do not relate to or encounter on an everyday basis. So I decided to take photographs of what I see everyday, garbage, abandoned and destroyed houses, lots of unkempt lawns and gardens, sheep or goats that are left for dead. I thought that this would be ordinary or shocking to see on a bookmark or on any souvenir for that matter. I put together the images in Photoshop and made them in the form of a bookmark.