Bethany Bates
Awardee: Individual secOND Prize
Title: 20/20 Vision
When I asked my Mom what the hardest part about aging was, her immediate reply was that "people view me as incapable." It made me think about all the negative words associated with and thrown at older generations. Useless, burdens, and as my Mom said, "incapable." It seems an unfortunate experience with aging is the older you get, the more people believe you are out of touch, less than, and not seeing clearly. It sparked the idea in my head of how actually, individuals who only see older people as worthless are those with the actual vision issues. Thus, I created my piece to represent the clarity and reality of the inherent value, importance, and wisdom of the elderly that contrasts with the burdensome, less than, slow-minded stereotypes that get thrown their way. The left lens represents a small portion of all the positive and beautiful truths that can be seen in older generations, with a crystal clear lens. The right lens shows many of the unfortunate stereotypes and hurtful words that are associated with older people, through a cloudy, broken lens. The message "get your eyes checked" is a play on words in that while older people do tend to have worse physical vision as they age, it is the younger generations and those who trust in hurtful stereotypes from the mental lens on the right that really need to check their vision.
Bethany Bates
“I think the opportunity to create and be artistic interested me, and with competition specifically, I thought the concept of aging was very unique because it’s something that isn’t discussed super often… I thought it would be a good challenge to see what I would create.”
Bethany had previous experience with an open-ended final project last year. She picked mental health and made a mental health dollhouse where each room represented a different disorder.
“I think when you have a specific prompt or one thing you’re making the art about that you’re passionate about, the art ends up creating itself.”
On a starting point for her aging art piece: “I think the starting point for me was I wanted to talk to my mom about it because I didn’t have any sort of idea about what I wanted to create. Bias as someone who is getting older I wanted to get her perspective. That gave me an emotional feel toward the topic we are going for.”
“The first thing she said that inspired what I wanted to do was that people view her as more incapable the older that she gets. And so it got me thinking about all the different stereotypes and belittling that some people go through just because of their age.”
On what this project meant to mom: “I think in a way it brought us closer just her see that and being able to feel understood and have those feelings portrayed that way. And I had no idea she felt that way.”
What Bethany learned about aging from this project: “I think something I realized was how easy it is to accidentally slip into those stereotypes myself, even when I’m talking to my mom. I learned that even my own lens is kind of skewed. Being able to adapt helped me realize how things feel from an older person’s perspective.”
On sharing this project with other people: “It's exciting and my favorite thing about it is that everyone who views the piece may interpret or take something different from it. The other piece that I think is really important and why art can be so impactful is because people can look at that piece and feel understood.