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Simon Tatum

Departure Story Board 1 (left)

Departure Story Board 2 (right)

Photograph and text

WIP

Simon Tatum

Panic Buying Alter Ego

Digital Photograph

WIP

Artist Statement:

“Departure” is a short story project. Shown through a set of photograph story boards and a monologue text. The story boards are used to illustrate the monologue which is written from the perspective of my alter ego. The purpose of the storyboards and the monologue is to describe a desire for air travel and the choice to leave a Caribbean paradise in search of other destinations.

“Panic Buying Alter Ego” is a responsive project I created during the early weeks of social distance restrictions in Ohio. It is a small series of photographs made by documenting items that disappeared from shelves in my local grocery store in Kent, Ohio when panic buying was occurring in the local community (end of March 2020). I found the circumstances for panic buying to be abnormal to witness within the US and wondered about what parts of our inner personalities might promote behaviors to participate in panic buying.

Afterwards, I created projections that were crafted in part from hand drawing transparences and cast shadows to draft an alter ego for myself. An alter ego that might help me participate in panic buying. Some of the items used to cast shadows for my alter ego were the same items that disappeared from the shelves in my local grocery store during the early weeks of social distance restrictions.

Both projects were made during social distance restrictions, after I lost access to my graduate studio at Kent State University’s School of Art. I made these projects by using methods of writing, digital photography and projections. These methods previously served as primary methods used to draft ideas that would be finalized through drawings on paper and mixed media sculpture. Now I am using these methods as ways to work and explore ideas quickly during

Bio:

Simon Tatum was born in 1995 in George Town, Grand Cayman. Tatum received his Bachelor of Art degree from the University of Missouri (USA) in May 2017, and he is a current MFA candidate for the sculpture and expanded media program at Kent State University (USA). He has shown a solo exhibition within the University of Missouri titled Discover and Rediscover and he has shown a solo exhibition within the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands titled Looking Back and Thinking Ahead. He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions that include, Open Air Prisons at the LACE Gallery in Los Angeles, California and the Sense of Place exhibition at Spinnerei Halle 18 in Leipzig, Germany. Tatum was honored in 2016 with an international travel grant from the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands to attend the Caribbean Linked IV residency program in Oranjestad, Aruba. He is also the first graduate scholar sponsored by the Thomson Foundation in Grand Cayman for an MFA program.