Stepping Up to Loss: Crafting Feelings through Encounters with Crafted Memorials

Simple item page
dc.contributor.authorRena, Tom
dc.date.accessioned2024-04-08T15:04:13Z
dc.date.available2024-04-08T15:04:13Z
dc.date.issued2024-03-09
dc.description.abstractThis paper investigates the role of crafted memorial objects created to address personal loss. They differ from formal, large-scale objects of commemoration or personal possessions of the deceased due to their chosen materials and handmade qualities. Scholarship concerning memorials generally takes an art historical or material studies approach or involves analysis in the context of social practice. Existing craft discourse about memorial objects often centers the object-making process rather than the act of encountering the finished work. I utilize the concepts of emplacement and attunement to refocus attention from object to encounter by recounting my affective states through ethnographic engagement with the work of three artists: a roadside memorial, memory seed bombs, and a funeral wreath made from hair. Multisensory encounters with crafted memorials, situated in their particular environments, have the power to invoke constant shifts in affect and create a different perspectives on grief, absence, and presence. Reframing crafted memorials as stepping stones instead of endpoints offers the potential for rich insights into not only how objects convey information but what their role is in tending to loss.
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12667/100
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.subjectcraft research
dc.subjectmemorials
dc.subjectgrief
dc.subjectloss
dc.subjectembodiment
dc.subjectencounter
dc.subjectabsence
dc.subjectfuneral wreath
dc.subjectmemorial objects
dc.subjectroadside memorials
dc.subjectkeepsakes
dc.subjectaffect
dc.subjectemplacement
dc.subjectattunement
dc.titleStepping Up to Loss: Crafting Feelings through Encounters with Crafted Memorials
dc.typeThesis

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Stepping Up to Loss-Rena Tom.pdf
Size:
19.87 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Download

Collections

MA Critical Craft Studies Practicum Projects