Born and raised in Southern California, Taylor Sietsema recently completed a BFA in photography from Lesley University, College of Art and Design. She is a visual artist who works primarily with photography, using alternative processes and methods, as well as mixed media to create abstract images. Her work looks at the human body, how it interacts and relates to sensation, discomfort, and pain, especially from a chronic endurance perspective. Sietsema’s work describes one individuals experiences and coping methods while in a constant state of altered reality, depicting one perspective of a chronic pain sufferer. The use of different processes emphasizes the numerous ways to approach, view, and feel the sensations she describes.
THE ARTIST ON MUSCLE MEMORY The words muscle memory are very literal to me, as in what the muscle remembers, holds, and learns. How the muscle lives and interacts within the world. This image speaks to that remembering, specifically the memory of pain in the body, how it can blur through time while also being vivid in a constant chronic state. How pain and experiences are imprinted on the body and can carry it around, hold it in the muscles, tissue, and bone.
& ON WHAT IT MEANS TO BE KALEIDOSCOPED To be kaleidoscoped means having a refracting pattern that repeats in a constant yet not predictable way. To have something continually changing and yet, something stays the same or appears the same, with familiar elements connecting one moment to another. There is an element of a repeating loop, with factors shifting in unpredictable patterns. It’s a bit dizzying at times and sometimes comfortable, and then other times excruciating.