My life and artistic practice are shaped by my experiences with mental illness, addiction, and loss. At eight, my sister and I entered foster care due to our mother’s struggles with addiction and schizophrenia. This was our only option; our father had been absent since I was four, battling his own struggles that led to incarceration. We eventually found stability and safety with our grandmother. While my childhood was unstable, it was defined by a deep love for my mother. Moving back with her at seventeen felt like our chance to finally be a family. Slowly, things changed. She began abusing medications and turned to illicit substances to escape constant mental distress. I stepped into a caregiver role, feeling an immense responsibility to save her. I monitored her, encouraged her, and tried to hold everything together, not yet understanding that love alone cannot cure these issues. This environment distorted my sense of normalcy, leading me to briefly turn to substances myself to cope with the trauma. Witnessing my mom, who was also my best friend, slowly slip away was a slow, agonizing grief. But nothing prepared me for her sudden death. That evening, I remember a terrible dread about leaving, but she insisted I go out and enjoy myself. While I was gone, she stayed up drawing; art was always her sanctuary. The next morning, I returned to find her on the couch, her face resting on a piece of artwork. I thought I was hallucinating until I touched her cold hand. Time stopped, and my world caved in. This discovery broke me. My memory is blurred, and my head feels like television static when I think of that night. I see flashes from my perspective, I feel as if underwater, and sometimes from a third-person perspective, as if hovering outside my body, watching myself. However, I find solace in knowing I protected my little sister from finding her. Carrying that heavy burden so she would not have to remains a relief. Struggling daily with debilitating grief, I enrolled in college to reassure my grandmother and loved ones that I wasn’t stuck. What began as a facade, a performance of moving forward to comfort others, slowly became a genuine sense of purpose, as art shifted into my primary vehicle for healing. Today, I am an interdisciplinary mixed-media artist. I create visual tributes to my loved ones, using religious and personal symbols to build complex allegories centered on memory. My work serves as an emotional map of my life's path: feeling powerless against a loved one's decline, navigating painful memories, and processing the vacuum left behind. Layering media to build heavy texture and depth across sculpture, drawing, and painting allows me to construct complex pieces that convey true psychological depth. Naturally, this practice evolved into merging sculptural elements within my two-dimensional mixed-media art, allowing me to focus on creating immersive work that engages both the visual and the visceral. Because trauma and grief are deeply complex, they cannot be accurately communicated on a flat surface; human suffering is layered, fractured, and heavy. Creating dynamic reliefs that hold physical space allows me to translate these complex emotions into a reality where pain can be seen, felt, and shared. My trauma has shaped my life, but it also defines my direction. I cannot change what happened, and my purpose isn’t to dwell on the past. Instead, my goal is to use my education to expand my practice and transform personal pain into a space for connection. To continue managing my recovery and protecting my mental health, my studio practice serves as my daily sanctuary and grounding mechanism. By channeling complex psychological weight into physical textures, I process ongoing grief productively rather than burying it. Beyond the studio, I am dedicated to a structured clinical care plan; I regularly attend therapy to process my trauma and utilize proper medication to manage my daily highs and lows. This support helps regulate my emotions and allows me to regain control over my life. Guided by the safety and stability my grandmother provided, I remain fully committed to emotional boundaries and mental health accountability. Ultimately, "turning pain into purpose" means using my lived experiences and using my artistic voice to offer a mirror for others navigating the dark spaces of recovery, survival, and memory.

My life and artistic practice have been shaped by my personal experiences with mental illness, addiction, and loss. At eight years old, my younger sister and I entered foster care due to our mother’s struggles with addiction and schizophrenia. This was our only option, as our father had been absent since I was four, battling his own struggles that ultimately led to his incarceration for the same reasons. Eventually, we found long-term stability and safety with our grandmother. While my childhood was marked by intense instability, it was also defined by a deep love for my mother. When I moved back in with her at seventeen, my sister and I felt we were finally getting our long-awaited chance to be a real family. Slowly, things changed. She began abusing her medications and turned to illicit substances again; an attempt, I believe, to self-medicate and escape her constant mental distress. I stepped into a demanding caregiver role, feeling an immense responsibility to save her. I monitored her, encouraged her, and tried to hold everything together, not yet understanding that love alone cannot cure these complex issues. Living in that environment completely distorted my sense of normalcy, leading me to briefly turn to substances myself to cope with the trauma. Witnessing my mom, who was also my best friend, slowly slip away was a slow, agonizing grief. But nothing prepared me for her sudden death. That evening, I remember feeling a terrible dread about leaving and wanting to stay with her, but she insisted I go out and enjoy myself. While I was gone, she stayed up drawing; art was always her ultimate sanctuary. The next morning, I returned to find her on the couch, her face resting on a piece of artwork. I thought I was hallucinating until I touched her cold hand. Time stopped, and my world completely caved in. The weight of that discovery broke me in ways that remain incredibly difficult to articulate. My memory is blurred; my head feels like television static when I think of that night. I see flashes of the scene from my perspective, feeling as if my body is underwater, and sometimes from a third-person perspective, as if I am hovering outside my body, watching myself. However, I find solace in knowing I protected my little sister from finding her. Carrying that heavy burden so she would not have to remains a relief. Moving forward, I struggled daily to live with the debilitating grief. As my mental health declined, I enrolled in college to reassure my grandmother and loved ones that I wasn’t entirely stuck in the dark. What began as a facade, a performance of moving forward to comfort others, slowly became a genuine, sense of purpose, as art shifted into my primary vehicle for healing. Today, I am an interdisciplinary mixed-media artist. I create visual tributes to my loved ones, using religious and personal symbols to build complex allegories centered on memory. My work serves as an emotional map of my life's path: feeling powerless against a loved one's decline, navigating painful memories, and processing the vacuum left behind. Layering media to build heavy texture and depth across sculpture, drawing, and painting allows me to construct complex pieces that convey true psychological depth. Naturally, this practice evolved into merging sculptural elements within my two-dimensional mixed-media art, allowing me to focus on creating immersive work that engages both the visual and the visceral. Because trauma and grief are deeply complex, they cannot be accurately communicated on a flat surface; human suffering is layered, fractured, and heavy. Creating dynamic reliefs that hold physical space allows me to translate these complex emotions into a physical reality where pain can be seen, felt, and shared. My trauma has shaped my life, but it also defines my direction. I cannot change what happened, and my purpose isn’t to dwell on the past. Instead, my educational goal is to use my university degree to expand my practice and transform personal pain into a space for connection. To continue managing my recovery and protecting my mental health, my studio practice serves as my daily sanctuary and grounding mechanism. By channeling complex psychological weight into physical textures, I process ongoing grief productively rather than burying it. Beyond the studio, I am dedicated to a structured clinical care plan; I regularly attend therapy to process my trauma and utilize proper medication to manage my daily highs and lows. This support helps regulate my emotions and allows me to regain control over my life. Guided by the safety and stability my grandmother provided, I remain fully committed to emotional boundaries, and mental health accountability, and using my artistic voice to offer a mirror for others navigating the dark spaces of recovery, survival, and memory

I am inspired by reminders of my lost loved ones I see in the world everyday. Even though I will never see my mom in person again, I communicate with her everywhere, and she lives on through these daily traces. Growing up in foster care and spending my teenage years caregiving for her through schizophrenia and addiction, instability had always shaped my life. Witnessing her decline, and discovering her after her passing, broke me. Yet, in her final hours, she stayed up drawing. For her, and now me, art is a sanctuary where her memory stays alive. In my daily life, I pay close attention to how we interact with what is left behind, finding inspiration in the quiet presence of memory within our ordinary routines. Because grief is heavy, fractured, and deeply layered, it cannot be accurately communicated on a flat surface. This realization drives my work as an interdisciplinary mixed-media artist. I merge sculptural elements into two-dimensional art, creating dynamic reliefs that hold physical space. Layering materials allows me to translate complex psychological depth into a physical reality where pain can be seen, felt, and shared. I am inspired by personal symbols, references to my mother, and other loved ones. I look for ways to keep building memories after someone dies, using art to share a moment with them again the only way I can, memories and creation. My work transforms personal tragedies into allegories for grief, suffering, and remembrance. My daily inspiration comes from the desire to create a space with others navigating the dark spaces of recovery and loss, while remaining open to anyone connecting to universal language of loss, survival and memory. By transforming pain into immersive art, I show that even after devastation, there is purpose, survival, and shared human experience.

When I was young, my sister and I were taken from my mother’s custody and placed into foster care. My father was not in our lives and struggled with addiction, so we eventually went to live with my grandmother. Even through that instability, I never stopped loving my mom or hoping things could be different. When I was seventeen, I moved back in with her, believing we could finally have a normal life. For a while, it felt possible. But as her struggles with addiction and mental illness returned, everything began to fall apart again. I was eighteen and felt responsible for saving her. I tried to hold everything together, not understanding that love alone cannot fix those kinds of struggles. The night she passed away, she told me she was going to stay up drawing. Art had always been her escape, the place she went when everything else felt overwhelming. I had a bad feeling about leaving and offered to stay with her, but she hugged me, told me she loved me, and insisted I go out and enjoy myself. When I came home the next morning, I found her on the couch, her face resting on a drawing, her phone still in her hand. At first, I thought it was not real. I called her name, walked in and out of the house, waiting for her to respond. When I touched her hand and felt how cold it was, everything changed. Grief like that is difficult to explain. That morning feels distant, almost unreal, like something I am watching instead of something I lived through. What I do know is that in that moment, my life shifted completely. I am grateful every day that my younger sister did not have to experience that. Carrying that memory is heavy, but I accept it as something I hold so she does not have to. After losing my mom, I went back to live with my grandmother. She gave me something I had been missing for most of my life, stability. She did not try to fix everything or make empty promises. She simply showed up, consistently and without conditions. That kind of quiet, steady love meant everything to me. My grandma is my biggest source of strength and role model. Eventually I enrolled in community college just to prove I was okay, but I found a purpose. Through art, I have learned how to turn pain into something meaningful. Art became my way of processing grief and understanding my experiences. When the School of the Art Institute of Chicago reached out to me, I realized that what started as a coping mechanism could become a future. My work focuses on memory, loss, and longing, and it allows me to honor my mom while also finding my own voice. What I have been through has shaped me in difficult ways, but it has also given me direction. It taught me empathy, resilience, and the importance of using my voice. I cannot change what happened, but I can honor my mom through my work and build a future that proves cycles can be broken.

When I was young, my sister and I were taken from my mother’s custody and placed into foster care. My father was not in our lives and struggled with addiction, so we eventually went to live with my grandmother. Even through that instability, I never stopped loving my mom or hoping things could be different. When I was seventeen, I moved back in with her, believing we could finally have a normal life. For a while, it felt possible. But as her struggles with addiction and mental illness returned, everything began to fall apart again. I was eighteen and felt responsible for saving her. I tried to hold everything together, not understanding that love alone cannot fix those kinds of struggles. The night she passed away, she told me she was going to stay up drawing. Art had always been her escape, the place she went when everything else felt overwhelming. I had a bad feeling about leaving and offered to stay with her, but she hugged me, told me she loved me, and insisted I go out and enjoy myself. When I came home the next morning, I found her on the couch, her face resting on a drawing, her phone still in her hand. At first, I thought it was not real. I called her name, walked in and out of the house, waiting for her to respond. When I touched her hand and felt how cold it was, everything changed. Grief like that is difficult to explain. That morning feels distant, almost unreal, like something I am watching instead of something I lived through. What I do know is that in that moment, my life shifted completely. I am grateful every day that my younger sister did not have to experience that. Carrying that memory is heavy, but I accept it as something I hold so she does not have to. After losing my mom, I went back to live with my grandmother. She gave me something I had been missing for most of my life, stability. She did not try to fix everything or make empty promises. She simply showed up, consistently and without conditions. That kind of quiet, steady love meant everything to me. My grandma is my biggest source of strength and role model. Eventually I enrolled in community college just to prove I was okay, but I found a purpose. Through art, I have learned how to turn pain into something meaningful. Art became my way of processing grief and understanding my experiences. When the School of the Art Institute of Chicago reached out to me, I realized that what started as a coping mechanism could become a future. My work focuses on memory, loss, and longing, and it allows me to honor my mom while also finding my own voice. What I have been through has shaped me in difficult ways, but it has also given me direction. It taught me empathy, resilience, and the importance of using my voice. I cannot change what happened, but I can honor my mom through my work and build a future that proves cycles can be broken.

When I was young, my sister and I were taken from my mother’s custody and placed into foster care. My father was not in our lives and struggled with addiction, so we eventually went to live with my grandmother. My childhood was unstable and often confusing, but one thing never changed. I loved my mom deeply, and I always held onto hope that things could be different. When I was seventeen, I moved back in with her, believing we were finally getting a second chance at being a normal family. For a while, it felt real. She was doing better, and I allowed myself to believe that things were finally going to be okay. But slowly, things began to change. Her struggles with addiction were a flawed way for her to cope with schizophrenia. I found myself in a role I was not prepared for. I was eighteen, still trying to figure out my own life, but I felt responsible for saving hers. I tried to support her, encourage her, and hold everything together. At the time, I did not understand that love alone cannot fix addiction or mental illness. Being in that environment changed my sense of what was normal. Things that should have felt alarming started to feel routine. Over time, her condition worsened, and I watched the person I loved begin to slip away. Still, I held onto hope that I could reach her. The night she passed away, she told me she was going to stay up drawing. Art had always been her escape. I had a bad feeling about leaving and offered to stay with her, but she insisted I go out. When I came home the next morning, I found her on the couch, her face resting on a drawing. At first, it did not feel real. I called her name and waited for her to respond, but when I touched her hand and felt how cold it was, everything changed. That moment reshaped how I see the world. I am grateful every day that my younger sister did not have to experience that. Carrying that memory is heavy, but I accept it as something I hold so she does not have to. After losing my mom, I returned to live with my grandmother. She gave me stability when I needed it most. She did not try to fix everything. She simply showed up for me, every day. That kind of steady, unconditional support meant everything and showed me what it really means to be there for someone. My grandma is my biggest source of strength and stability. I enrolled in community college at first just to show her that I was okay, but I found something more. I found purpose. Art became my way of processing grief and making sense of everything I had been through. When the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago reached out to me I realized my passion could become a career. My work focuses on memory, loss, and longing, and it allows me to honor my mom while also finding my own voice. What I have been through has shaped me in difficult ways, but it has also given me direction. It taught me empathy, resilience, and the importance of using my voice. I cannot change what happened, but I can honor my mom through my work and build a future that proves cycles can be broken.

maynardgirl Alexandra Buck This piece is a focal point in a larger body of work I created. This is a reimagining of a painting originally made by my mother. For this, I used acrylic paint, paint markers, and charcoal to replicate her image while also making it my own. I wanted to stay true to what she created, but also bring in my own perspective. Through this process, I was able to reconnect with her, not just as my mom, but as an artist. What started as an art exercise became something much deeper. It turned into a way for me to understand her mental state and the reality she was experiencing at the time. It also became a way for me to process my grief and turn her story into something tangible that I can hold onto. Creating this piece allowed me to feel connected to her in a way that words never could. The original image is surreal, shaped by the way she experienced reality through a distorted lens. I chose to keep the composition the same to respect and preserve the structure of her vision. At the same time, I made intentional adjustments to the figures, clarifying certain features to make the image less distorted. By changing the figures while keeping the composition intact, the piece exists in a space between her vision and mine. It becomes a shared visual language where both of our perspectives can exist together. The material holds personal significance for me, becoming part of the narrative rather than a neutral tool. Acrylic paint provides a strong foundation and structure for the piece. I leaned heavily into acrylic marker as an intentional homage to my mom, she would sit and draw with them all day. In this way, both the imagery and the medium carry meaning. The markers also allowed me to add more controlled and precise details, helping define certain elements. In contrast, charcoal brings a raw and unstable quality, it is also one of my favorite mediums to use. It moves more freely and unpredictably across the surface, reflecting the emotional intensity and lack of control associated with psychosis. The combination of these materials represents both her state of mind and my attempt to understand and reinterpret it. As part of a larger body of work, this piece is part of an ongoing exploration of memory, loss, and interpretation. Each recreation helps me better understand her experiences while also allowing me to develop my own voice as an artist. I am preserving parts of her perspective while reshaping them through my own lens. Ultimately, this work is about connection, loss, and understanding. It shows how art can keep parts of someone alive even after they are gone, and how revisiting those parts can become a way of healing. By combining her vision with mine, I am continuing a conversation that goes beyond her life and lives on through my work.

My name is Alexandra Buck, and my life has been shaped by both the damage of substance abuse and the resilience that can grow in its aftermath. When I was eight years old, I was removed from my mother’s custody and placed into foster care before eventually living with my grandmother. My childhood was marked by instability, and by deep love for my mom. When I was seventeen, I moved back in with her. She had struggled with substance abuse for years, which I now understand was her way of coping with untreated schizophrenia and constant mental distress. At first, she was doing well. I believed we were finally getting our chance to be a normal family. But slowly, things changed. She began misusing her prescribed medication. I was eighteen, still a kid in many ways, but suddenly I felt responsible for saving my mother. I tried to monitor her, to encourage her, to hold everything together. I didn’t understand that love alone cannot cure addiction or mental illness. Being in that environment also distorted my sense of normalcy, and I became dependent on substances myself. It was ultimately my choice, but the exposure made it feel ordinary rather than dangerous. Over the following year, my mom’s condition worsened. Someone in her life introduced her to stronger pills, and I watched her slip further away. The woman who had been my best friend began to disappear. Still, I held onto hope that I could reach her. The night she died, she told me she was going to stay up drawing. Art was her sanctuary. I had a bad feeling about leaving and offered to stay with her, but she hugged me, told me she loved me, and insisted I go out and have fun. When I came home the next morning, I found her on the couch, her face resting on a drawing, her phone still in her hand. At first, I thought it was a joke. I called her name, paced in and out of the front door, waiting for her to wake up. Then I touched her hand and felt how cold it was. Grief like that is hard to describe. My memories from that morning feel blurred, like television static. What I do know is that in that moment, everything changed. I am grateful every day that my younger sister did not find her. Carrying that memory is heavy, but I accept that I was meant to protect her from it. From that day forward, I never touched substances again. Loss forced me to confront the reality of addiction, not as something abstract, but as something that steals people you love. I returned to live with my grandmother and enrolled in community college, initially just to reassure her that I was okay. But in the classroom, I found something unexpected: purpose. Art became my way of surviving grief. I create work centered on loss, memory, and longing visual tributes to my mother and to the quiet ache left behind by addiction. Through art, I transform pain into something that can connect with others. When a representative from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago reached out to me, I realized my coping mechanism could become a career, a way to give meaning to what I endured. Substance abuse shaped my life through tragedy, it also shaped my direction. It taught me empathy, resilience, and the urgency of using my voice. I cannot change what happened to my mother, but I can honor her through my work and build a future that proves cycles can be broken.