A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
By Cadence Patton
Artist Statement
A Reflection on a Life Well Lived
Images have been something that I have always felt connected to. They tell the stories of your past that can sometimes be difficult to fathom in words. They reveal the all the different people you are in one lifetime and show possibilities for the person you are bound to become. Through observing the images that I have taken throughout my life, I tried to look for patterns between events in my life to connect it to the general theme of ‘Cause and Effect’. Every moment brings us closer to the person we are destined to become and that is why I chose to bring the image of the Invisible String to life in all my stories. The Invisible string is present at the end of every story, with seemingly no explanation as to why it is there. However, in the end, the final culmination story serves as a reflection of future me, explaining to all the other versions of myself why the string appeared in those specific moments. These stories' main message was to explain how every moment in our lives happen for a reason, whether we believe it or not. With this project, my hope was to uncover all the moments in my life that made me who I am, and the ones that will lead me to the person I want to be.
The Proposal
For my final creative project, I will be creating an autobiographical story told through images. My main vision for the project is to be able to go back in my past as well as envision my future through the central theme of cause and effect. I will be picking a few different images (approx.10) from my life and my family's life that I believe show a connection, whether it be a moment that leads to another or a time that was essential in the process of becoming the person I am today. The stories I will write for each image will be short pieces of flash autobiographical fiction, and at the end, I hope that there will be clear lines of connection between all the moments. Since creative writing is such a fluid process and things can change very easily, I am not able to share exactly how these will be written or how they will be narrated, but they will all have a connection to one another.
I want to do this project because the phrase “A picture is worth a thousand words” has always been something I’ve been very inspired by. I want to tell the story behind every photo because they all feel so essential to my life, and I am fascinated by the way one action I made at the age of 12 can affect what I am doing at 18, therefore I want to explore that idea. This also plays into a cultural element for me since I come from a Native American family where storytelling is a very essential part of the culture. By looking into old pictures of my family, I will be able to tell our stories as well as feel more connected to them.
Finally, the final product will either be in an essay format with just the images and text or a scrapbook/online scrapbook format where I animate/illustrate it with visual connectors of the moments and stories. I don’t anticipate it taking too much time since I find that when I am able to get into the zone with writing I am able to produce a lot. Overall, I feel like I will be able to make this project encapsulate the general theme of cause and effect and I am excited to see where this project will take me.
Get in Touch
I hope you enjoyed reviewing my project - please contact me if you want to learn more or if you have suggestion. I’d love to hear from you!