The Full Story

   This project is about the emotions regarding transitional times in an individual's life. This comes from experiences in my own life, but universally, as a testament of time, everyone experiences change in one way or another. As a whole, the project is currently two and a half official years in the making, spans ideas that originated across three states, and has had a handful of wonderful collaborators.

     The undemanding painting of the alleyway, run-down and overgrown, has an air of mysteriousness about it. Unknown to the viewer of what lies on the other side of those walls. Yet, simultaneously, it is as familiar as any other random alley one may walk by. As a freshman in college, little did I know when seeing the real-life alleyway, that two years later it would become the entrance to my first apartment, and a place where friends would frequently gather. It looked like a fire hazard with all the telephone poles and wires sprawling in every direction, but finding small moments of beauty in chaos on my walks kept me going, in finding ways to stay focused in school - and in making Tennessee my new home.

    My second year of living in that apartment, it dawned on me that the time I had spent cultivating Tennessee, and more importantly, the people there, into Home, was already coming to a close. That's when I began ideas for the Last Walk Home project. 

   My senior year of undergrad I approached a peer about composing musical work for a personal project honoring the friendships made over the course of our academic journeys.  This project was to particularly be a collaboration between three of us who auditioned at the same time, and would be finishing in the same year. And so I painted the alleyway as Last Walk Home, and Jacob Bowman composed the musical piece with the same namesake for Connor Boiling and myself to perform. This was to be commemorating that we were graduating, and soon would each take the last walk from campus to our respective apartments around the outskirts of campus. While I was the only one who lived behind the door in the painting, the idea of the last walk home, or to the people we had grown to consider our home, remains something each of us was experiencing as we prepared for that chapter to end, and our lives to move forward filled with change.

​    Musically, the piece meanders and is melancholic as it reminisces on the good times had. In "Studio Ghibli-like" fashion is hopeful to what is to come.​​The premiere performance was on March 17th, 2023. Unfortunately, there is not any recording of the premier. 

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Evolution in 2024 

       Since there was not a formal recording of the piece, and I knew I really wanted this to be a part of my contribution for the 2024 Columbus Artist's Guild's Exhibit, one more special collaboration has taken place. Georgia has now become home, and I have new people in my life to add to the evolution of this project. Reeve Cobble has wonderfully taken on recording me and Kira Babbs performing the piece. Both of these people have been instrumental (pun intended) in making the transition from Tennessee to Georgia as smooth as moving further away once more from dear friends and family can be. ​

     I have loved the process of this project, learning the balance between holding onto what is precious, and also accepting that life is ever changing. People, places, things - they all come and go, but I think that might just be part of what makes appreciating the moment, and your surroundings, so special.  Keep meandering, and stay hopeful of what is to come dear friends.