THESIS PORTFOLIO

This page is dedicated to my thesis work, upon graduating from Auburn University Montgomery, fall of 2024. I researched, examined archives, journaled, sketched, and painted this composite section for nearly two years. 

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This body of work is composed of many different media: drawings, watercolor, and acrylic paintings. Beneath the physicality of these pieces, though, lies an instinctive longing to preserve my past and make known the importance of familial history.

 

In the recent years, I have been captivated by the idea that I am connected to a past so much more profound than something that can be easily understood in our high-convenience modern world. In a response to this inherit inquisition, I created a body of work upon the ancestral tie between myself and the founder of my hometown, Daniel Pratt. My fifth great-grandfather, from a poor New England family, transpired to become an ambitious architect who created the world’s largest manufacturer of cotton gins in the 17th century- the Pratt Cotton Gin Company. Built off the Autauga Creek, the mill transformed a primarily rural agrarian economy into a hustling industrialist city that would become known as “Prattville.”

 

My researching and exploring of antique archives would eventually give me a multi-faceted body of work: the cotton and equipment used in the mill. In my image making process, I strove to capture the subjects of my work as accurate pictorial scenes that bring a distinct sense of realism; the organized and meticulous system of these pieces lends as a creative process where I could convey a series of work rooted in important ancestral identity.