Witch Hunts, Newspapers, and Everything In Between

The year is 1888, and chaos is running rampant through the streets of Victorian London. While it seems impossible to escape death and fear, another story seems to be unfolding. During initial brainstorming, I thought about what made me want to be an artist. The earliest memories I have of creating involve designing spell books, paper wands, and ephemera with my younger sister. We’d take these crude creations and use them to act out stories for hours on end. Designing the details was always my favorite. I credit these memories with starting my love for storytelling through art. I wanted to honor both these memories and my creative journey throughout college, so I decided to explore my passion for history, combining fine art and design, and using small details to tell a story-within-a-story. Using mise-en-scène, a film theory that focuses on how production design can tell a story in a single shot, my project asks whether or not a complete story can be told solely through production design. In order to answer this question, I designed a set that explores an original story of love, horror, mistreatment, and propaganda through newspapers, telegrams, posters, and more.