By Amy Graham
McKenzie Simpson is from Quitman, Georgia and is a senior at Valdosta State University. Simpson’s work in “Spectrum,” the Valdosta State University’s spring 2024 senior show, focuses on the theme of home as well as bringing printmaking from the two-dimensional space into the three-dimensional world. She uses mixed media to incorporate screen printing into three-dimensional objects. She explains that the theme of home came to be after she was asked about her interior designs and why she created them. Prior to that conversation she thought the interior spaces were just an obsession with colors and rooms. However, that changed once she realized they were connected to her idealized version of home. She explained that home was not necessarily a place, but the people she cares about.
After she graduated from high school her parents divorced. Their divorce caused her to lose, not only her family, but also her home. She explained that she would move from house to house which caused her to lose her sense of home. She felt like she could never find the security of home like she felt in her childhood. A couple of years after high school she got in a terrible wreck that left her injured. But she says that the accident was a blessing in disguise because it brought her family back together. New Beginnings is a representation of her finding her sense of home after the wreck. The red shirt is the same one that was cut off of her in the accident. The print on it is based on her mother’s front door because after the wreck she moved back in with her mother, while McKenzie recovered. McKenzie wants the viewers to look at this piece and see that “this shirt has clearly been through a traumatic event.” She explains that the shirt is purposely hung for the viewers to see the cuts, shadows, and rugged nature of the piece. She described it as a “visceral canvas” because it is such a raw artwork, that represents such a vulnerable moment in her life. That vulnerability, however, is also connected to hope and optimism for the future. New Beginnings bring a sense of peace which shows that during demanding times, there is an opportunity for something new and better. It shows how the wreck was the turning point in her life.
She explains that the wreck started a new chapter in her life, including a new art style. After the wreck, she came back to school. She explained that in high school, she did not enjoy art because of her art teacher. Therefore, she was scared to choose art as her major in college because she did not know if she would be successful in it. After taking a few art classes at Valdosta State University, she fell back in love with it and decided to pursue art with a bachelor’s degree. She specifically fell in love with printmaking and other process-based mediums like graphic design. She said she is drawn to process-based art and the process of making art, rather than the final product. She likes the art processes where she can make multiples of her art because it makes it easier to let go of as compared to painting and ceramics where she pours the same time and effort into one piece. Graphic design was the starting point of her art. It helped to develop her bright colors and flat shape style and helped her find her voice in art. She specifically likes the bright colors that she can get on the computer, which can easily be translated into screen prints. Our Bubble and Comfortable Silence display these graphic designs combined with screen-print.
Our Bubble is made up of seventeen different prints of interior spaces that are encased in plastic bubbles. This is the largest project she has ever created, to this point in her life. It is also the first one not prompted by an assignment in class. She talked about how Our Bubble has gone through eighty-seven different renditions and several changes over its creation. Simpson even joked, “Have you given it your all, if you haven’t gone through eighty-seven renditions, and completely changed your idea, from start to finish and don’t even recognize your final project?” She explained that the idea came from this image of bubble-like windows on a restaurant. She really enjoyed the shape of the windows and wanted to explore it farther. She thought of creating a sculptural bubble wrap roll, but after talking with faculty and other students, she decided that hanging it on the wall was not the best way to present the prints. She wanted the prints to be appreciated individually and collectively. She finally decided to create spherical bubbles that are free floating to create a playful and whimsical experience. The images inside the bubbles were supposed to be based on how she decorated her room. She spoke about the ability to decorate her space freely, after moving back in with her mother, and how it motivates her and allows her to be comfortable and happy in her room. She wants to invoke a sense of comfort in her piece while allowing others to be able to put themselves into those spaces. She calls them dream-like spaces because many of them are not based on reality. She said that she regrets not making more real spaces and would like to do so if she expanded on that series in the future. She wants to have more spaces and objects that mean something to someone in her piece because that would represent the project in a more productive way.
The current prints in the Our Bubbles series are based on aesthetics, patterns, and colors. She put a lot of thought into the colors and patterns chosen. She focused on how they would interact with each other and how they interact with the space they were hung in. She worked with not only the way the bubbles would be seen but also the way they reflected light. She worked on making the installation more interactive. She did this by staggering the heights of the bubbles and having them spaced out enough for someone to walk through. She wanted variety in sizes and heights so that the bubbles felt natural. She used glass-blown spheres to create the variety of sizes because all her prints were the same size. She mentions that if she knew she wanted to make floating bubbles in the beginning, she would have created a variety of sized prints focused on specific moments or objects in these personal spaces.
The next piece we talked about was the Comfortable Silence, which is a sculptural print, where each part of this piece is a screen print stretch across a form. The water is a screen print stretched across chip board, while the island’s grass pattern is screen printed on fabric and stretched across a foam form. The island also has paper flowers that are pushed into the form with push pins. The house, however, is designed like a product packaging that is put together with chip board for extra structure. She farther explains that the house has stained glass windows and a flickering tea light to show warmth in the piece. She states that the stained glass and the tea light are meant to give the viewer a more realistic feel of the house.
The meaning behind Comfortable Silence was to play with scale. She played with different heights to see which one had the most impact. Simpson said, “You are dealing with the question of, do I want people to see the details or do I want them to experience the scale.” She ultimately went with scale because she wanted the house to feel small because she wanted people to have a sense of “being alone but not in a way that is scary or intimidating, like comfortable silence and the comfort of being alone.” Simpson states, “It is important that you are comfortable with yourself and learn to love yourself and be okay with being by yourself, like you are enough on your own. I think a lot of people are so terrified to be alone…” She goes on to explain that people will try jumping from relationship to relationship, both romantic and platonic, or cling to friends to avoid being alone. She believes it is important that people can love themselves when others are not around. She said this is something she had to learn herself over the past couple of years. It is important to her that this piece shows that warmth that loving yourself brings. The colors are meant to be child-like, and it brings her back to memories of her father telling her stories of crashing on an island, which were her favorite stories as a child. She also explains that the large house on a tiny island is something that she would have created as a child. Therefore, this piece brings childlike wonder and harsh truths together to form this little house on an isolated island. Similarly, it connects the whimsical Our Bubbles to the harshness of New Beginnings. All of Simpson’s work is connected to one another. However, the final piece in her show is a bit different because it was an award for her hard work creating the other pieces.
Printmaker’s Bathroom was created for a class assignment. She was creating this piece at the same time as Our Bubble. She thought that it would be nice to create a metal as an award for tackling such an ambitious project. She decided to create a separate interior space for the metals project, a bathroom scene because the bathroom prints are her favorite. She wanted to create obvious connections to the prints she was creating, so she added little elements of printmaking into the metal piece. The little hand towel is created from her apron that she used to create almost all her prints for the Our Bubbles series. The apron was covered in layers of ink and color. Some of the parts were so beautiful to her that she cut them out and created the hand towel using them. Simpson explained, “I wanted to bring the idea of print farther into it, so I wanted to make the smallest thing I’ve ever made, going the complete opposite of the spectrum, to commemorate the largest thing I’ve ever made and made a teeny tiny, two-layer screen print flower for the little mirror.” Then she explains how she used other print making techniques like etching to connect the piece farther with print making. She describes how she got more details using the etching techniques than by carving it in her metals class. The final product reflects the nature of her other pieces because it represents the demanding work, she put into creating her senior show while still being playful and fun. Simpson’s pieces are all interwoven parts of her story. They bring attention to the harsh realities of life, while simultaneously being fun and playful. They are a reminder that life is not black and white and has more to offer than a person can see in a singular moment in time.