Fallain O'Connell, FCLC 2024

MAJOR: Visual Arts (film) and English

BIO:

PROJECT TITLE: The Sinful Woman

MENTOR: Mary Bly, Department of English

ABSTRACT: In the springtime, I felt intuitively drawn to Mary Magdalene, which led me to researching her. I found that she held many beliefs that resonated with my own and that her vision of Christianity was expansive, introspective, and deeply inspiring. In the summertime (and as part of my 2023 FCLC Dean's Undergraduate Research and Creative Practice Grant), this curiosity led me to visit the Provence-Côte-D'Azur region of France. This is where Mary Magdalene was said to have given herself up to a life of contemplation and prayer. It was there that I produced this work with Mary Magdalene's ideas swirling around in my mind, like ascension being "a descent into the heart, [where] farther up is actually further in" (Meggan Watterson). In this interdisciplinary project, I wanted to go "further in" and both broaden and abstract minute details in my work to turn what I had been seeing into the truth of how it felt rather than what it actually was. I think that a fixation upon details is a way of experiencing the divine nature of reality and splendor of existence. It means going into a quiet place within yourself to experience the loud and incessant beauty of living. This is twenty-first century Christian art about living in the way the light hits the water, your friend's smile, your boyfriend's hands. A bus ride, a construction site, a shell in the sand.