Sydney Hayes
43% ACRYLIC, 39% NYLON, 18% WOOL, 2020
Mixed media
Dimensions Variable
My paternal grandmother died when I was three years old. After she was cremated, her ashes were stolen and never recovered. Just before she died, she gave my mother a knit sweater as a gift. In this multi-media artwork, I feed a fire through the “cremation” of this sweater. It is not necessarily putting my grandmother “to rest,” but rather another transformation of shape. Rather than sitting as a sweater collecting dust in my mother’s closet, I realize and release the potential energy held within the sweater back into the world. There is no “beginning” or “end” to the atoms that make up any object. Labels like “me” or “you,” or “sweater” or “fire,” are only the human mind’s pathetic attempt to comprehend the entropic world we inhabit. We ultimately are all just one collective group of interacting protons, neutrons, and electrons, so what makes things matter at all?
Humans have a limited amount of time with our consciousness, and the knowledge of our mortality always looms in the backs of our minds. The collection of atoms that make us up, however, still exist after our death. The fact that matter cannot be created or destroyed has been something that gives me peace of mind; my body’s atoms will still contribute to the natural cycles of the world after my consciousness is gone. I am inspired, on a much larger scale, by the evidence of time’s passage that is visible in the geology of the Earth and various organisms’ evolutionary adaptations over millennia. To me, there is a beauty in both creation and decay; the processes of growing, aging, and dying are all beautiful because of their cyclical nature. I don’t believe there is a greater purpose to our consciousness, and this lack of meaning is liberating and wonderful. It reminds me not to take life for granted, and find happiness in even the simplest things.
Through my art, I seek to make viewers conscious of these cycles of time by tracking and acknowledging the passage of time through layering (like sedimentary rocks), recycling of materials (as the nitrogen and carbon cycles), and allowing my pieces to change with time (through decomposition). In this case, there is video evidence of what the sweater was, and how it became what it is now - as displayed in a handmade glass box. The ashes from that fire serve as physical remnants of what existed before, accompanied by the collar of the sweater, to honor its prior form. Exposing the ways that life and matter have changed and endured over time is central to my artistic vision and to this piece.