Senior Spotlight: Luci Busch

My art practice has become a focus in coping, moving on from the past, healing, and reconciling.  I’ve lived with these haunting memories for far too long and I can’t continue living like this anymore.  My work has been a way to work through these emotions and find some sort of peace within myself.  I use a variety of materials to portray my ideas including iron, glass, wax, found materials, and latex.  The materials are influential in the meaning of the work somehow and there’s an intention about my choice of materials. 

With and Without was a project with several renditions before finally coming to the last version.  This work was targeting how I’ve allowed the walls I’ve built up are more harmful than helpful and that if I don’t make a change then I will continue to be in pain.

    

    

Not The Same, But That’s Okay was meant to be a way to show healing.  One of the things I’ve come to realize is that healing is not always a pretty process, and sometimes it doesn’t feel like much but it’s better than you were before. 

 

 

The creation of What You Almost Took From Me was when I realized that my work is in a timeline of some sorts, and that while I might be making it all out of order they influence each other and the projects are in a timeline of healing.  This work is one of the earliest in the timeline, because it’s the coming out of the relationship and having to deal with the wreckage. Sometimes there isn’t much left, but better to have walked away with some of yourself. 

What You Almost Took From Me

Relief was the first project that got me thinking about relationships, trauma, and the healing process.  Relief was a way for me to metaphorically shed the touch of others, the memories that I wish I could be rid of.  If I could, I would do almost anything to be rid of their touch and this was a way of working through that desire.  I was making the decision to remove their claim on me, taking myself back and reclaiming what was mine.  

 

During my Junior year, I was learning to work with sculpture on a bigger scale and experimenting with materials that I hadn’t previously worked with.  Cape of Shame was my final project, a collection of plastic bags that were hand knitted into a 15 foot long and 2 foot diameter shield, worn by our King Alfred statue.  Intended to point out the environmental effect of plastic and how most of it isn’t ever recycled.

Your Hand was an enlarged Jenga game for people to draw on the blocks and leave their mark behind.  My hope was that it would encourage people to interact with each other.

 

Possibly the most complicated iron work that I’ve ever cast, my witches cap mushroom was mostly just fun and because I wanted to make a large mushroom.  Not much behind the meaning, it was just supposed to push my skills as a new foundry student.