"Homebody"
A passion project.
I am a homebody. I enjoy being comfortable in every sense of the word and am incredibly sensitive to whatever environment I find myself in. Any state beyond one of complete physical comfort feels absolutely ridiculous to me. So why, I ask rhetorically, have I found it so difficult to build a comfortable home in my own head?
In recent years, I've become an incredibly anxious person. It got to the point that I couldn't stand being alone with myself for more than an hour in the conscious world. I would drown out the noise in my brain with podcasts, TV, Youtube—anything to keep me from having to deal with whatever was making me anxious as I ran errands, cleaned my apartment or tried to just sit quietly.
Through therapy, medication, and lots of time, I’ve finally begun to make a habitable space up there—but not quite cozy yet. I decided to design and build a dollhouse as a means through which to think, meditate, and re-inhabit the physical world.
In recent years, I've become an incredibly anxious person. It got to the point that I couldn't stand being alone with myself for more than an hour in the conscious world. I would drown out the noise in my brain with podcasts, TV, Youtube—anything to keep me from having to deal with whatever was making me anxious as I ran errands, cleaned my apartment or tried to just sit quietly.
Through therapy, medication, and lots of time, I’ve finally begun to make a habitable space up there—but not quite cozy yet. I decided to design and build a dollhouse as a means through which to think, meditate, and re-inhabit the physical world.
"Constructed wholly
by hand..."
by hand..."
This dollhouse was constructed wholly by hand, each piece entirely separate at the beginning of construction. Over weeks of careful, monotonous practice, I created the bare bones of a home—painted, primed and ready to be filled with personality. The decision to leave the outside of the house very bare was intentional: I want viewers to be just as surprised by the inside of the home as they tend to be once they get to know what’s going on within the four walls of my brain.
"On a surface
(floor) level..."
(floor) level..."
The bottom floor of my tiny home was intended to be traditional, clean, unoffensive. These adjectives also lend themselves to the way in which most people perceive me at a first glance. On a surface (floor) level, I am all those aforementioned things, but the real fun lives upstairs.
As we enter the tiny—yet explosive—world of the second floor, I allow all of you a silly, unsettling, confusing peek into my brain as it stands. A forest of plush mushrooms, and a tiny-yet-too-big guitar. A puffball sitting in a chair of insecurity, all eyes watching with a full range of emotion behind them. In the midst of this chaos, I sit comfortably, straddling two, very different versions of myself between the first and second floor of my homebody.
As a semi-proud member of Generation Z, I have come of age in a world of incessant stimulation. The noise is never-ending and the media is all-consuming/consumed. I’ve come to view my Instagram account as representative of who I am. I’ve even relied on it to tell me so, on nights when I just don’t feel like myself. I want to make this dollhouse to express that I exist beyond the static of the internet. I am a homebody who embodies comfort wherever she goes and I exist in the hand-made world.
Click below to enjoy a private tour of "Homebody."
>>> Bits n' BobsAs a semi-proud member of Generation Z, I have come of age in a world of incessant stimulation. The noise is never-ending and the media is all-consuming/consumed. I’ve come to view my Instagram account as representative of who I am. I’ve even relied on it to tell me so, on nights when I just don’t feel like myself. I want to make this dollhouse to express that I exist beyond the static of the internet. I am a homebody who embodies comfort wherever she goes and I exist in the hand-made world.
Click below to enjoy a private tour of "Homebody."