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Black print on white paper of a girl in a black polka dot dress and pigtails, sitting on a toilet seat in a bathroom stall, with a piece of toilet paper on the floor, hunched over, with one arm resting on her legs and a hand clasped over her mouth. Her face is distraught, on the verge of tears. The walls of the bathroom are a gradation of white into black with crosshatching texture. The arms, legs, face, hair and toilet paper dispenser are also crosshatched.

Spelling Bee

Elise Goldberg

Relief ink, linoleum block carving, Rives BFK paper

Undergraduate
In fifth grade I lost the school-level spelling bee. This was devastating to me, and I was so humiliated I spent the rest of the school day locked in a bathroom stall sobbing my eyes out. In retrospect it's funny that something so insignificant upset me so much, but I thought it would be interesting to try recreating this moment with a properly serious, devastating mood to properly convey the way this felt at the time. My mom took photos of me in costume for this project and afterwards I picked the one that felt right.