This past fall I had the privilege to travel across the world to continue learning about my passion: art. While abroad I spent a full three months trying to find myself. Now I know how cliché that sounds, oh you found yourself while on an amazing trip across Europe? But yeah, I really did. I learned a lot about myself. One part of my journey that helped me was this self-portrait booklet titled The Imperfect Mirror. I spent my time there understanding my body and trying to mend my body image. With this booklet, I focused on how American culture affects women, especially young women like myself, by portraying that ideal body image in an unhealthy way. I wanted to take this problem within our society and show how it has affected my life.
I found my perception of myself changed significantly throughout my college career. I went from focusing on experiences with friends and family, to focusing on how my body looked to others when I was with them. I began to over eat and compare myself to those around me. By the time graduation came around, I was unhappy with my weight and myself. I decided that I needed to make a change. I needed to take the negative thoughts out of my life and focus on fixing my self-image.
I took the summer away from my friends and family to start my journey. My mom and I lived in Door County, Wisconsin and I worked a little clothing boutique job. I started eating healthier, going to yoga and changing my lifestyle. I didn’t make any drastic changes or try any crazy diets; I just wanted to become healthier. As I moved into fall I decided to take these new lifestyle changes with me. Whitney and I found a yoga studio in an old chapel in Florence that we became members of, and I joined her as a vegetarian. A lot of people ask my why I went vegetarian, and for me it wasn’t about trying to save the plant (which I do think is important, don’t get me wrong), it was a personal choice. With my bad eating habits, I would focus my meals around a carb, or a meat but with one of those gone I had no choice but to add more vegetables as fillers. It forced me to become healthier in the best possible way. Yes I might bring meat back into my diet but for the moment I am happy and that is why I continue to be a vegetarian. I started the fall very self-conscious and always comparing myself to others, so I decided to create something very personal to help me cope with this issue.
My booklet has six different mini sections; each with a letterpressed velum sheet, a screen-printed piece of velum and a screen-printed pattern on craft paper. The letterpressed pieces each have a red quote found from snippets of news articles and transparent type on the reverse reflecting my reaction to the quotes. The faces represent imperfect self-portraits blind contour drawings to show the beauty in imperfections. The third part of each section is a pattern hand drawn and screen printed in various shades of pink and purple to show the repetitiveness of these messages through society and the media. Each is hand printed which in turn creates its own imperfections because of all the mistakes that can be made along the way. And let me tell you, there were many mistakes but that became part of the beauty.
Although this did not start out as a self-portrait, it became an important part of my journey. It showed me that no one is perfect but the uniqueness we each hold is part of our beauty. I hope that you enjoy my piece, it is a glimpse into my heart and soul. As always that you for reading, ciao for now, Georgi.
