Happened Again

Sam Thiele

I create my work to express and assist me in better understanding my past personal experiences with domestic abuse, rape, and the PTSD that has developed following these events.  During the creation of my pieces, I personally explore the emotions I felt during the abuse and my current feelings towards those past events. 

Consistently present in my pieces are deformed figures with elongated limbs and boney backs.  All of my characters are a depiction of my close companions from either my past or present.  Though all figures seem to have a strikingly similar appearance, each separate character has a distinct physical trait that is carried throughout my entire body of work.  I prefer to work in a more abstract manner and choose to deform parts of the figures bodies as a means of better communicating a sense of overwhelming emotion felt by the characters. I choose my materials and techniques solely based on how I currently feel about the personal event I am reproducing.  For example, if I am angered or upset about a past interaction I often decide upon using materials that allow me to chip away, destruct, or reduce a form.  However, if I am still processing the specific event that the piece depicts, I tend to choose a longer and more time consuming process.

It is through my work that I hope to achieve a communicated sense of both the attraction and repulsion I feel towards my personal past.

SAM THIELE is a junior visual arts major at Interlochen Arts Academy. She is from Springfield, Illinois. Her works depict her past personal experiences with domestic abuse and PTSD. She has won several awards in the 2016 Interlochen Visual Arts Juried Show as well as in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards.