Ryan Seaton-Evans

For a senior, the first question after pleasantries in any conversation is “So what’s next?” The prospect of graduating college and stepping out into the unknown is exciting, but also incredibly terrifying. For me personally, there is one moment that I cling to for comfort when the future becomes too overwhelming.

One summer vacation in Maine, my group decided to watch the sunrise from the highest peak in Acadia National Park. During this sublime experience, I felt incredibly small and insignificant in the face of such beauty, but I also felt the surest of myself I had been since the start of college. Philosophers, from Longinus, to Burk, to Kant all point to the sublime experience as holding the purpose of human life: striving to go beyond the limits, towards infinity, or towards the divine. The sublime experience allows the modern subject to achieve autonomy through transcendence.

Through this series, I hope to capture the intersection of the sublime experience with the creation of self-identity. Each piece represents a different stage of life made clear by the glass silhouette mounted on the wall behind the hanging stained-glass pieces. Each stained-glass piece symbolizes a key memory from that period of my life that has made me who I am today. From most viewing angles the stained-glass memories create a jumbled mess, with no pattern, but from one specific location the pieces come together to form the shape of a phase of the moon, a symbol often associated with the passage of time. With each piece, it is the viewer’s job to complete the artwork by finding the spot that created the phase of the moon. This might take some moving around within the gallery and testing out different eye levels. I am 5’4’ so the vantage point where the moon’s image is visible is at 5’4’. If a viewer is taller, they might need to crouch down, and if a viewer is shorter, they might need to stand on their tiptoes. At each point where all the memories line up to create a phase of the moon, it shows a sublime experience I had during that stage of life. Each phase of life builds off the next, creating a fuller moon until it reaches the final piece, which is representative of death, the final sublime experience. Projected onto the central piece is an animation. The story is meant to represent the brief glimpse of “divinity” or the infinity of life that we experience when we interact with the sublime.

When people view this series, I want them to remember to find comfort in the sublime. When confronted with all that we do not know, instead of getting sucked into how terrifying that is and turning our back on it, it is imperative to lean into it because it allows us to remember who we are. As my peers graduate from college and step out into the unknown future that is so terrifying to most of us, I want them to remember all that they are and know that they will be okay. If you have not “found yourself” in college that does not mean anything, because the wonderful thing about life is that we continue to find ourselves every day until our last. If we knew everything, then what fun would that be?

Ryan Seaton-Evans ‘23