Tiny Stories

#1
Emilio saw her first the day she died. Victoria saw him first the day she was born. The day they married was the fiftieth for both.

#2
Drowning, Chris saw his childhood nursery. With horror, he realized this was his fourth time reliving his life; once for every time he tasted death.

#3
I tripped on a stranger's foot.
"Hey, watch it!" I yelled.
"You can see me?" the stranger replied.

#4
Toby giggled at the dinosaur in front of him, turning the cogs to see it die then hatch again. Daddy would be livid if he was muddling with Cretaceous.

#5
She threw the throttle, punched the circuits, and sped toward the shimmering image of San Diego as the corsair chased the strange contraption labeled "SeaDoo."

This project has given me a chance to challenge myself in terms of storytelling. To limit yourself to a certain number of words forces you to choose only the most important details and put them together coherently. I noticed that my ideas at first were still way too big to fit into that small amount of space. Ideas can be simplified, honed down to the very essence of their message. Just like the Mormon message we watched in class, I needed to focus on the simple artful expression that came with brevity. They turned out pretty well in my opinion.

If you hadn’t guessed it, the theme of this assemblage is “Meddling with Time.” There is a certain mystery about time because it can’t be explored in the physical world, so it becomes a creator’s sandbox. The first story is about a husband and wife who live their lives opposite of each other. They’re living in different directions you see. I made this picture with two clocks because of their opposing timelines.

The second story is a fear that some people have brought to light: what if we’re living in a flashback of our life after we’ve already died? The picture is of a man falling from his drowning death into his childhood nursery, beginning his life over again for a fourth time, but he always forgets until the moment he dies again. I wanted to use the blues to feel like the nursery was swallowing him like the water.

The third story is about a time traveling man who believes he can travel through time but not be seen. To represent this story I wanted to convey a sense of “fish out of water” and made him black and white while the background is an earthy tone. The image of the eye represents those who can truly see him and therefore become important to him just as he becomes important to them. A bit like how we form our relationships today.

The fourth story is about a little boy playing with his time traveling father’s watch (a pocket watch with no numbers, just tick marks). I wanted this to be the son of the black and white stranger. I also wondered where a child would want to go in the history of time? I thought of my childhood love of dinosaurs. Time in the hands of a child could be extremely dangerous, but still intriguing as to the insights of what they believe time to be. Time feels relative to how long you’ve been on the Earth, how do they feel it?

The fifth and final story was inspired by a random idea of my drawing professor’s challenge. A jet ski time machine. The only downside would be it could only travel through time on water. I wanted to make this image seem like a painting was made of a peculiar incident some crew member had to document. It doesn’t take a leave from Back to the Future or Doctor Who time travel, but more creates a wormhole, something the likes of StarGate would appreciate.