Arts Thread

We often think of stone as static, unyielding, and unchanging. Yet over time stone will erode, change shape, reveal hidden secrets, and even transform into entirely new structures. None of these changes happen spontaneously; they are the result of external forces interacting with each rock. Heat, pressure, gravity, wind, and water will all leave their impact on stone and no one piece will undergo the same journey as another. In this way, people are a lot like rocks. We are constantly interacting with each other—abrading, smoothing, and chipping away at one another—with every interaction affecting each person uniquely. Memories, like stones, are markers of place and time, subject to the transformations of external and internal forces that continue to tumble and shape them long after they are formed. Memories serve as an internal framework through which we structure our understanding of ourselves, others, and our past experiences, but they are not infallible. Memories distort over time and can be inaccurate artifacts—we can hyper-fixate, romanticize, superimpose, and even forget. The experiences these memories are formed from are just as subjective, filtered through our own lenses of perception. By acknowledging that our experiences have countless alternative perspectives we can ease some of the weight of those memories that have become burdens. This body of work is simultaneously an acknowledgement of both the subjectivity of perception and the natural distortion of memories, and a space to reflect on the existence of multiple perspectives.