Further_info_I_love_you_this

I love You this much, 2006, Dimensions: Casket: 5'5" x 22" x 2'. Table: 6' x 3' x 30".

For this piece I collected fake flowers from cemetery trash cans for a month. I gathered the flowers 2 times a week from
the Herrin, Carbondale, and Marion cemeteries (to clarify I went to the 1 major cemetery of each town). The emphasis of
this piece was the materialization/commoditization of mourning and how people use it more for themselves than the deceased.
The cost of funerals, the prices of caskets, the fees for the halls, funeral home, flowers, are all traditions that
stemmed from a marketing ploy developed after the civil war. As bodies were piling up during the civil war, the funeral
industry decided to market the "Patriotic Funeral", encouraging the bereaved to basically go in debt out of tribute to the
dead soldiers. It soon developed into the American way of mourning, more on that topic can be found in The American Way of
Death by Jessica Mitford. This piece utilizes about $100 dollars worth of materials along with a month's worth of flowers
picked from the trash. The amount of money spent on the piece was important to me, as I didn't want it to become
expensive, and I wanted to use a minimal amount of new materials.

In this piece the focus for me was in the casket becoming more important than it's contents. In my experiences with
mourning I've felt myself betrayed by traditions my family practices. Though I wasn't raised in a strict religious family,
we have religious funerals, usually Christian, Catholic or Baptist. While I think mourning is important, I just don't feel
comfortable with the wake and funerary services.

I desperately hope my family won't go through the same process for me. I've expressed an interest in an alternative
funeral to my "next of kin", and I know that certain traditions are so rooted in our culture it will be difficult for them
to grant me my wishes. I want a celebration of life, a reminder of mortality and to live well! I want a natural funeral,
maybe a small marker, and a tree planted over me. If I could have it all I'd get the land preserved. Not because I'm
special but because we need to preserve our land. I want them to celebrate my life not mourn it. The more funerals I've
been too, and the more I frequent cemeteries the more I feel them as indicators of a bad memory.