BHSU Senior Show 2026

Artist Statement

My work combines the concept of death with beings of life. Two years ago, my father committed suicide This single action shifted my entire world view, changing how I viewed death and forcing me to learn how to grieve. In the time since, I became interested in how people in the past have tried to understand and represent death through symbols. While researching these traditions, I was particularly drawn to birds, which appear across many cultures as symbols connected to mourning, death, and grief.

This piece explores those associations through the structure of a deck of playing cards. A standard deck contains twelve face cards, and in this work each one is depicted with a watercolor painting of a bird historically associated with grief, mourning, or death. Spanning from different cultures across the world. Each painting was then scanned and digitally formatted to create cards. Using the deck of cards to represent how a game will always end just like life.

By using the structure of a deck of cards, the work reflects the way games are played with a beginning and an end. The deck becomes a way to think about the inevitability of endings in life. Through the combination of living birds and symbols of death, the work brings together ideas of life, grief, and mortality.