ELAINA SMITH

My initial ideas for this project revolved around invoking a sense of home, belonging, and nostalgia. Feeling sentimental is such a big part of my personality and I know for a lot of people, nostalgia is best invoked from the feeling of setting a record into place and hearing the crackle before the first few notes ring out. I didn’t actually have a record player growing up but I used to collect money from jukeboxes, which is basically the same thing, right?

I wanted to impose my artwork onto vinyl records because it felt like the easiest way to acquire a perfectly cut, round canvas, which is something I’ve never used before. Every single old record I found and used for this project is warped just so, just slightly, in its own way, and it made painting each one a unique experience.

Each of the records themselves don’t have anything to do with the songs I chose to influence my work, as I always knew I would be completely covering any markings or print on them. The songs I chose for this project were selected from a large playlist I created entitled “Childhood Nostalgia” where I gathered songs that sparked vivid memories of different moments in my life.

I had hoped to create dozens of these records. I wanted to create a record wall, full of nostalgic little moments meant specifically for me. I wanted to display my pieces to other people for them to look at, to touch, to inspect up close in minuscule detail and far away as a whole. I wanted to talk on and on with anyone who cared to listen or wanted to share their own feelings and stories. hopefully I can continue this project and have that experience in the near future.

On my last page is a QR code which links to a sound experience I created to go in tandem with this project. It is a reading of the final record which is a poem that I wrote spontaneously out of frustration for the current state of the world.

The Dock, acrylic, 12”

Seventeen, acrylic, 12”

Fifty Dollars Plus Gas Money, acrylic, 12”