Continuity

My name is Sydney Hruska and I am a New York City based artist currently attending NYU. Through a combination of mediums ranging from acrylic paintings to colored pencil sketches, I often focus on making collages that capture specific feelings attached to the world around me, taking inspiration from music, books, and other media that I feel a connection to. This piece, “Continuity,” is inspired by Sufjan Steven’s “The Only Thing,” a song about losing someone close to you and still constantly feeling their presence. When I made this collage, I had also just finished reading the book A Little Life, which follows a similar theme, dealing with the loss of loved ones and wanting to stay connected to them; on the last page of the novel, there’s a quote that says “And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.” For the collage, in addition to the written song lyrics, I put together old photographs from a magazine for a sense of nostalgia, as well as an old pack of forget-me-not flower seeds symbolizing enduring love and remembrance as well as the growth of new, beautiful things out of the old despite it all.