This is a personal project on PEZ and the feelings it evokes:

As a child, I spent many hours amusing myself with PEZ candy dispensers; they assumed the role of fantasy playmates. More than simple, plastic objects, they invited me into an endless world of story and imagination. For people, of several generations, PEZ has been a powerful reminder of childhood memories, yet, for me, there is a unique connection: my great-grandfather was its inventor. Consequently, these recollections are heightened by an awareness of my family legacy.

In this project, I have fused those candy dispensers with images from my travels; this landscape of merged pictures and playful colors allows me to experience my current reality as filtered through those childhood perceptions, so often inspired by the characters depicted on PEZ dispensers. The use of multiple layers and accentuated colors suggests the complex, and dreamlike nature, of memory, and questions the extent to which our adult sense, of the world, is consistently impacted by those impressions we have carried with us since childhood.

Equal parts fantasy landscape, technological experiment, and personal exploration, this project is a tribute to family and they ways in which my creative identity has been formed by their labors. Read Less