Case Jernigan
Zizou
Risograph on paper
17 x 11 in.
I saw it and I knew it. This was the artwork that I wanted in my room. It took me quite some time to actually place why I had loved this work so much. I liked doodles and comics but I am completely disinterested in wrestling or soccer and care even lesser for its athletic figures. The work is not particularly colorful and is mostly greys and whites. And least of all, I do not speak French. No, it ultimately wasn’t the content of the sketches that made me love the work, it was the form. The white triangle in the middle felt like a clean cloth wiping the dust off the surface of childhood memories, my own childhood memories.
I am so persistently occupied with looking forward, the classes I must take, the projects that I must do all aimed towards the future, that I think I often forgot to truly reflect on my past. My own memories continually hanging limply in the chasm of my own mind, quite like zombies, until this work gave it a form. Looking at it felt like dusting my childhood, giving me moments to think of the play and imagination that my childhood was composed of when I most needed them. It was a prompt to slow down, wipe a little, and think through. I have housed this artwork in my room for the past, more or less, two years. But, I think I always knew what I can only now articulate, which is why art is special.
I do believe that art has an intellectual project. That it contains Knowledge that sense perception, language or reason cannot provide. That it can be both the container and communicator of that knowledge. The experience of interacting with this artwork doesn’t sound intellectual but I would think that it is a symptom of our modern world that emotional knowledge feels so divorced from intellectual knowledge.
So many friends I know have refrained from participating in Artmate because they feel like they do not “get” art, but I guess you don’t have to get it to love it. It is inexplicably sad that art became something that we had to be good at to achieve or to access, that this vital medium of expression became a privilege that you needed an overflow of money or time to obtain. Artmate feels like a way to bridge that, at least while we are still at Davidson. But I think I’ll carry that splash of greys in my mind even beyond.
– Toshaani Goel ’24