My Capstone project revolves around the theme that calls attention to relieving personal and internal burdens that inevitably hold people back from being fully happy with themselves. My project also introduces subtopic of how people perceive the American dream.

Most of the time, the dream refers to being a homeowner of a beautiful house with a white picket fence. On the other hand, once most people achieve the American dream they still feel unhappy and rather dissatisfied with themselves. Often times, the true American dream isn’t fulfilled until a person is able to shed the burden off and move on.

In turn, for my capstone project I have decided to physically design and build an installation that reflects and portrays the aspects of the American dream house. This structure will invite participants to walk through a door way and into a room of self-reflection. The 8 by 8 foot room of self-reflection portrays the interior of a classic yet passé style of home.

Before the viewer walks in to the house I want them to understand what the project is meant to do. Since the project surrounds it self on the relief of burden I decided to collaborate to design a movie titled “Close to Home”, which is a series of 5 short stories mentioning certain types of burdens that remain unspoken to this day such as rape, homosexuality, human disabilities, gays in the military, and HIV. The movie is mainly narrated through the voice of Megan Mojica, and during certain parts is narrated through me. Visually the movie will be projected onto the window of the house. The video is a series of 35 images that adds color to the movie.

After viewing the movie, the participant will have his or her choice to walk into the house. In side the house is where the participant will ad his or her artistic touch to the installation. Since there will be pens and dangling from the wall and conveniently located through out the room the participant will be able to shed burden on to the wall of my installation. Sometimes the first step to shedding off burden is to admitting that that there is something holding you back from reaching your dream.