Lauren Schweighardt

Self-Reflections

Lauren's exhibition titled “Self-Reflections” is a personal, visual expression of herself and what makes her feel confident. “Self-Reflections” is, at its core, a matter of self-reflection literally and visually while exploring the themes of confidence, motivation, self-care and self –love. Her exhibition includes six different portraits of herself. The photographs are taken in different locations, using a number of poses and the clothing she is wearing has collaged words projected onto the fabric. Lauren chose six specific words that I feel best describe herself for the projection. The locations, poses and clothing used in the individual portraits relate to one of the specific words.  The first part of creating her exhibition was to choose words that gave the best portrayal of who she is and what makes her feel her best. Lauren narrowed down the list to six words: active, beautiful, driven, involved., outgoing and tranquil. She then began the process of creating the collages of these words for the projection. The next part was to determine the clothing to be worn and locations for the photos; both needed to harmonize with a specific word. Lauren then coordinated with one to two people to assist her with the portraits. At each scheduled photoshoot, she did images with the projection of words, as well as, without. The editing process took place after all of the photo shoots were completed. In editing, she extracted the images with the projection and selected out the clothing with the words projected on them. Once the clothing was selected out, Lauren placed the projection clothes on top of the image without the projection to create images with both projections and non-projections.  This project really gave her a chance to self- reflect. Lauren took the time to evaluate her thoughts, behaviors and motivations and gained a healthy perspective of who she is, what makes her who she is, where she is in  life and where she wants to be. Lauren's work reflects who she has always been and who she has grown to be. As a senior in college, Lauren has  truly found myself and is more confident in the person she has become. Everyone has different layers to who they are. What if we all wore clothing with words that describe oneself? What if it gave us a window into really understanding one another on another level? Although her exhibition is about herself and her life, her hope is that the viewers will be motivated to look within themselves and gain sight of what truly matters to them. Lauren wants viewers to think about what makes them who they are and what words they would use to describe themselves in a positive way and then use this idea to encourage, influence and empower others.