Kristen Schaal

BFA Alumni

Major: Illustration

Graduation Year: 2015

Artist Statement:

While society is continuously moving forward on the coattails of technological “progress” and the excessive culture of consumption that it entails, the need to return to where we started is becoming more and more apparent; where will we be if we forget the building blocks of culture amongst the conveniences of technology? Yet to look back or exercise nostalgia is seen as a taboo in our modern world bent on progress. Really, our tendency towards binary systems hurts us; that the past is then and this is now, or that to look back means you don't want to go forward at all. When we take time to take in all the other choices and possibilities outside binary views, we can choose something that feels more ourselves. In the face of our modernity, I emphasize simpler and more alternative values, such as the practicality in being able to produce or locally source the objects in one’s living space, and to purchase with intent on the grounds of function and real value to you, rather than blind consumption.