Aritst Statement

I, Kaylene J. Herb, am twenty-three years old. 

I was born on September 15th, 1999, the day after my mother turned 31. When my mother was my age, the year was 1991. At this point she had recently graduated from Northern Arizona University, much like I have recently graduated from Arizona State University. I moved across town for school, she moved two and a half hours away to Flagstaff. Smuggled away somewhere deep in our family home is the photograph of her father dropping her off at her dorm.

I, Kaylene J. Herb, I am twenty-three years old. 

When my father was twenty-three the year was 1989. He had also gone to Arizona State University, however his degree was in Mechanical Engineering. While helping me move out to Scottsdale to begin my life at university, my parents took me on a tour of my dad’s old apartments. We didn’t go inside but when we pulled up to those now distant homes of his I saw those moments of recollection flash through his memory. His apartment had a view of the pool, he shared this view with his brother Jeff. We were riding in the same blue truck they had bought when I was born.

I, Kaylene J. Herb, am turning twenty-four years old.

I see my likeness in the people I hold dearest and I know I’m an amalgamation of every person I’ve known and every conversation I’ve ever held. Their mannerisms are performance pieces I’ve long committed to muscle memory. For fifteen years I learned choreography to perform for others from the stage, and at the same time I learned you can’t perform for someone who isn’t looking at you. They will always look toward their own reflection, or whoever they see themselves reflected in. 

I’ve left memories with people I don’t know anymore. They don’t know what I’m like now and I don’t know if they would like me. I can only hope that I left a mark; be it painful or sweet. A mark is proof that I was here, that I felt things, and that others felt things because of me. Do lovers remember me holding their hand with both of mine or me stabbing them in the back after I felt abandoned? I made art to make them feel pain. I was selfish, but I left a mark. I often wonder if friends enjoy the photographs I’ve taken of them, or if all they remember is the flash in their face. All I’ve ever wanted was to be remembered.

I started working on ‘Prologue’ as an attempt to grapple with the passage of time. Sometime after seventeen years old it all started to blur, and I needed to slow it down. To be coming of age is to face head on what it means to be alive: establishing identity, discovering personality, and experiencing interpersonal relationships. When we look back on our late teenage years and early twenties we often overlook the softer moments for the ones that feel like they’ve been burned into our skin. I want to know: what does it mean to live in the moment? And how can you have nostalgia for a moment that has yet to pass?

'Prologue' was on display at Arizona State University from March 21st-25th 2022 as a part of the group exhibition 'In Loving Memory.'