When Elizabeth realizes that she will soon be “seven years old,” her brain connects aging with adulthood (Bishop 55). She struggles with the emotions that come with her realization that she is growing old and attempts to fight the passing of time. When faced with the image of the African women, she notes that “their breasts were terrifying” (Bishop 31). Instead of exploring her horror towards the outside world, I explore the fear of maturation and her curiosity in my project. At just six years old, Elizabeth has yet to undergo puberty and the changes that will transform her body. To her, breasts belong to women, beings that are separate and distinct from her as a child. Seeing those images, therefore, adds to her epiphanic spiral that she, too, will soon develop breasts and become a woman. Young Elizabeth’s existence is shattered by the inevitability of aging into adulthood. It is perhaps at this time that Elizabeth comprehends that growing old is inevitable, but growing up is a choice.
My watercolor and pencil drawing is my original interpretation of Bishop’s poem “In the Waiting Room,” highlighting her epiphanic spiral as she faces the inevitability of aging and becoming a woman. My composition is surrounded by a yellow border, whose color and design is widely recognized as the logo of the National Geographic publication; however, in my creative rendering, this well-known yellow border becomes a cautionary yellow tape, a warning signal: hazard ahead proceed at your own risk. When her curiosity prompts her determined little fingers to flip the front page Elizabeth opens a portal of no return that thrusts her into a torrid spiral, stealing her child-like innocence. Elizabeth is unable to erase what she sees, reads, and feels. As the magazine triggers her epiphany, she is no longer the child that she once was—she has changed, she has grown up.
The center of the piece features a silhouette of a girl, outlined in white, walking towards a light. I chose to use a silhouette of Elizabeth instead of her visage because the spiral she undergoes is so relatable that it can be applied to anyone in a transition phase of their life. The girl in my project has pigtails, which highlights her youth through a characteristic hairstyle for a six- or “seven-year-old” girl (Bishop 55). She is surrounded by an intricate spiral broadening behind her, which is representative of Elizabeth’s own panic attack-like spiral triggered by the National Geographic magazine. A spiral is characterized by negative emotions, and to capture these emotions, I used dark blues, blacks, and dark purples hues. In the poem, the narrator uses choppy sentences and alliteration to convey young Elizabeth emotions in the form of questions, “How—I didn't know any / word for it—how "unlikely". . . / How had I come to be here,” as she attempts to rationalize a shocking experience (Bishop 84-86). She experiences the “sensation of falling off” the world into “blue-black space,” which are the spiral’s prominent colors in my artwork (Bishop 59). The hunched-over figure, grasping her head, represents the terrified Elizabeth who has an overwhelming desire to protect herself. This creates a juxtaposition between the Elizabeth that walks to the light after her epiphany and her ‘shadow’—the Elizabeth that attempts to resist adulting, avoid aging, and negotiate with time. The curled-up Elizabeth is stuck in the spiral and takes up only about one-fourth of the canvas, seeming to almost want to disappear while her counterpart is featured in the middle of the artwork and confidently takes up the other three-fourths of the space. The figure reaching for the light is an enlightened Elizabeth emerging from the spiral with realization that she must face the world, grow up, and find herself. After she snaps out of her realization, Elizabeth finds that it is still “the fifth / of February, 1918” and although her perceptions of the world and herself have forever changed, the world is still as it was before (Bishop 99-100).
“In the Waiting Room” stirred up a strong emotional response in me. Despite being in a different stage of life, I relate to young Elizabeth's fear of facing the unknown, growing old, and growing up, since I will soon be thrust into a college campus, have to navigate new relationships, teachers and begin my life as a young adult. The idea of leaving behind everything and everyone that so lovingly supported me all these years—my home, family, school, and friends—is unsettling, and at times I would rather escape to Neverland to stay with Peter Pan and the Lost Boys without ever having to grow up. Change can be absolutely terrifying, but growing up requires that we give change a chance. Nevertheless, I embrace the privilege of sculpting a new me and I can't wait to witness the metamorphosis that I will undergo as my true self emerges.
project_6.jpg |