Morgan Thibeault

 My current work explores the idea of how trauma can break a person but overall it is their choice to choose to grow from the pain or stay broken. The title of my series is called Stages and comes from the idea of my own trauma of being raped in 2017. This event left me broken for a long time, however with the support of the people around me I choose to rise above and be where I am today. That is not to say that I am perfectly fine and that there still are not problems in the future however, it is the choice that I have made to move forward and not be held back by what has happened to me. 

I created five different spheres in different configurations to express the five different stages I’ve felt so far in life. I chose spheres because to me a sphere represents each person as an induvial and we are all made up of our own swirling energy. Due to different events in our ever-changing lives the colors that make up each person are always changing. Whether this means as a person you go through something triggering and you lose the idea of being able to trust anyone; your sphere might lose blue which means trust as mine did. The first sphere is named Denial. This is from the idea of being a child and the idea of living in a perfect world. It is colored with pastel colors that represent my childhood. The colors I have chosen are orange for optimism; blue for trust; purple for imagination, and pink for unconditional love and immaturity. The second sphere is named anger which come from the anger I felt at myself for having to go through it. Anger is colored the same as the first however, the colors are muddied using a black copper oxide; Anger stays whole to represent the act of darkening my life at a specific moment when everything changed for me. The third sphere is named bargaining. This comes from the idea that I believed for a while that I could hold myself together when it was not going to last. Bargaining is shattered in half and the pieces are all around it as if trying to put the puzzle that was myself back together. The inside of all the spheres is red and gold colors that represent the idea of love because no matter what had happened to me the constant feeling I always had was that I was loved by a lot of people around me. The fourth piece is named depression. This is from the idea of realizing I wasn’t ok and that I needed help and did not know how to get it. Depression is shattered to represent my own breaking point. The final sphere is named Acceptance coming from the idea that accepting what happened to me doesn’t mean I forgive the person who did it. It means I forgive myself and that it is time to grow and be the best person I can be. Acceptance is also shattered with the same color scheme as Anger however, I use the broken pieces to build the bottom of a vase and I created a cylinder to put on top of it to create the final piece. I chose a vase as the final piece because after everything I have been through, I feel as though I am something that should be displayed for how far I have come. The thrown portion on top is colored with bright colors to represent the growth that I have had in the last three years. This series for me is the idea of being able to close a chapter in my life that has stayed open for too long and was in desperate need of having its story told, but also coming to final terms with myself and who I choose to be.