Creating My Home

sophia bassett

In my work, I look at the idea of childhood memories and examine their importance in my life when they were first created and how they continue to impact me. I romanticize my childhood while still holding bitterness and acknowledging its faults. I explore moments I didn’t know would be so important to me at the time. I use feminine and domestic imagery to allude to the expected standards placed upon me and the expression of childhood whimsy that was stolen at a young age. I don’t want to lose those memories, so I transform them from mundane into more imaginative and impactful ideas. 

In my earlier works, ‘Cumulative Experience’, and ‘Enhanced’, I articulated a feeling of comfort for myself and the viewer. All these pieces represent a memory or time in my life that has shaped who I have become. In making ‘Bygone Fragility’, I wanted to express the idea that this period of time in my life will someday become a memory that I will look back on, and that these difficult and uncomfortable times will pass and eventually become memories. That piece was my way of creating the comfort I aim to achieve in my work in the present because I don’t have the luxury of looking back in time at this moment now. 

The garments I make hold this power of being able to create an environment. The place they create is an internal experience for myself. They transform me into my most comfortable self. Letting the garments do that allows me to create an environment for the viewer to have a small glimpse into my truest being. 

I use scale and layering patterns on top of patterns to make viewers question their surroundings, creating a portal into a different world. In my newest piece ‘My Sacrificial Home’, I comment on how I’ve always felt that men in my family have held power over me. I take my power back by heightening my appearance to make them feel the discomfort I’ve felt by them my whole life. In addition to amplifying myself, I also enlarged the tomato plants to make the men feel small and overpowered by the environment around them. I layer these different mediums, memories, ideas of nostalgia, comfort, nurturing, and unease together to create an environment for each of the pieces. I straddle the line of discomfort and comfort by making pieces that interrogate those memories—forcing viewers and the men in my life to question and immerse themselves, and lose track of themselves in my work, leaving them wondering and reflecting on their own experiences.

Sophia Bassett is a postgraduate from Spring Lake, Michigan. She has attended Interlochen Arts Academy for 2 years. In her work, Sophia looks at the idea of childhood memories and examines their importance in her life when they were first created and how they continue to impact her. She explores the abstraction of childhood memories and what happens when you lose control of their linear nature; how the memory and experience change when there is no order to the viewing. Sophia received national Gold and Silver Keys in the 2021 Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, and was selected as a 2021 YoungArts Visual Arts Finalist.