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YELENA BRYKSENKOVA – THESIS PROPOSAL

Fall 2009 Senior Thesis and Seminar – Bradley / Comport

In 1841, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Though we travel the world over to find
the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.” Having read this quote, I looked
around my room – old books, sketchbooks filled with things that I encountered on my
travels, postcards, special objects with special histories, herbariums, maps, photographs –
and decided that I am a born collector. And not just a collector of physical objects; the
objects represent the true collection that is a part of me: vivid memories of the cities,
landscapes, people, and colors that I have seen and dreams of the worlds which I have yet
to discover. Another thing Emerson said was, “A man is what he thinks about all day
long,” and I do, and this is what I am. I collect these images and I carry the beauty that I
have found with me wherever I go, and every day my collection grows.
While living in Prague during the spring semester of last term, I made my first
true attempt to visually record the things that I see and love. I kept a sketchbook in
which I drew my favorite places, patterns, objects, and people. I found that drawing these
things made them my own and gave me a sense of having achieved a mutual
understanding with them. They left a stronger and friendlier image in my mind than they
would have if I had only looked at them, or had only taken a photograph. In this
sketchbook, I have put together a collection of all that I find beautiful, moving, and
precious about aspects of Czech culture that I experienced over the course of five months.
I have decided to apply this technique to cataloguing my fascination with certain
regions of the world that hold special meaning for me, except instead of a sketchbook, the
results will be in the form of detailed, finished illustrations. I chose places from my past
that have left the most vivid impressions on me, that haunt my memory and stir my
imagination. One of these places is the Czech Republic, the visual culture and history of
which I would like to continue to investigate. The three other regions that I have chosen
to work with for the next four months are places of my childhood: Saint Petersburg,
where I was born, Crimea, the place of all my childhood summer memories, and Kolyma
in the Russian Far East, where I spent the winters of my early years. The geographical
and cultural distance between all four regions is vast, but I credit them all with playing an
important part in the development of my inner world and my aesthetic.
A month will be dedicated to each of the four regions. I will spend that time
combining my findings about the region’s history, geography, and culture with my
personal recollections of it. The illustrations that I make based on my findings – maps,
portraits, historical anecdotes, natural and urban landscapes, drawings of traditional crafts
and costume, patterns, recreations of postcards, and anything else that appeals to my
imagination, aesthetic, or sense of humor – will come together in a kind of collection, a
personal catalog of the images that I carry with me. In a sense, the final collection will be
a kind of love letter to places that have helped shape my world.
Every week I intend to complete approximately 3-5 smaller pieces, varying in
size. This will result, over the period of one month, in 12-20 items for one region. In
addition, I will work on larger illustrations, which will take two weeks to complete, one
of them being a sketch week. At the end of the semester, I should have a total of 50-60
items.

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