Persistence — School of Visual Art and Design at the University of South Carolina

BFA Exhibition by Hannah Rockholz, Studio Art / Drawing

In this final season of my college years, things shifted and felt like waves. I decided to draw ships in many forms. I also decided to draw crows and ravens.

Ships because they are vessels that carry you and you trust them, but then unforeseen weather can occur causing violent waves or an undetected crack in the hull and you begin to sink. You embrace the relationship you have with the ocean. The shifts in the waves, the waxing and waning of the moon that pulls you to and fro with the water. In this tumultuous interference, it is time to accept it, that you have to either sink or swim. Rise above the adversity and adapt to the ever-changing currents or sink.

The crows and ravens are there to signify relationships. Crows and ravens are misunderstood creatures but ever intelligent. Corvids such as ravens use tools to help them along the way. The corvid pulling my ghost ship is a recovery from the sea of sinking indifference, heading towards the moon that pulls them away from the currents. The moon holds us together; in a way it is the world’s traveling companion.

The art placed on the paper is not always apparent when it lands in translation it gets lost and shifts like life, like people. Sometimes reminders are there that we are not alone, or that we need to sometimes muster up anything left that was already taken and ask for help. Even when you do not ask for help, there is something there that will push or pull you in many directions. Life changes. Art changes, things change, sink or swim, different things can come to other conclusions. What I put on paper may mean something completely different to the viewer than to myself. It is a story unfolding out my mind to theirs. It is like saying 'hey we are on this journey together even though we are not in the same place or time,' you see something like a drawing and there is a connection that makes the mind shift and you have to think about it and ride the brain waves to a resolution or a conclusion of what it is before you. That just may be it, though, that there is not a conclusion, it could just be a process unfolding, a current occurring.