me
Double Layers is a tender excavation—of memory, of love, of what remains after rupture. Across a sequence of layered images, hand-finished prints, and symbolic materials, Anne Abernathy builds a visual language of healing: torn edges, sky textures, digital overlays, fabric fragments, and soft light create an emotional rhythm of reflection and return. The project resists linear narrative. Instead, it invites the viewer into thresholds, loops, renderings, and mends—spaces where clarity flickers, where grief and gratitude co-exist, and where care becomes an artistic act
This is not just an archive of emotional recovery—it’s a practice of re-seeing. Each piece asks: what was I shown, what did I miss, and what do I choose to carry forward?
It is personal without confession, intellectual without detachment. Through its final, unfinished image—Me—the work opens a window into the next version of the artist: not resolved, but whole enough to continue.
Part of Double Layers, a story told in sky and skin, code and memory.
Media:
3.1x3.1 Polaroid;
Unprinted 8x10 Hahnemühle German Etching paper;
Unprinted 8x10 ChromaLuxe Matte Maple panel
1.26" Neodymium Magnet Sphere
This image feels like memory suspended—weightless, layered, almost aqueous. The sky isn’t just sky here; it feels internal, like you’re seeing the atmosphere within the artist. The softness of the clouds, the blending tones of blue-green, and the subtle vertical textures suggest a sense of quiet becoming. It feels like someone who has been through much, learned to soften, and now chooses presence over performance. There’s gentleness here, but not fragility—it’s more like earned grace.
Image Description:
A small Polaroid floats in the center of a blank etching page and matching maple panel, held in place by a single neodymium magnet sphere. The image is dreamlike—a soft wash of clouds and warm woodgrain, scanned from a panel with its protective layer still intact. Look closely: the artist is there, barely visible, embedded within the surface.
Statement of Intent / Artist Interpretation:
This is Me, not as an ending, but as a bridge. The image recycles the sky from Threshold, bringing the journey full circle. Its texture and color come from the material itself—unmanipulated, unfinished, yet unmistakably real. It’s a merging: of shadow and self, past and potential. The artist isn’t hiding; she’s becoming. Both her flaws and her strengths are ingrained in the surface—visible to those who slow down and look.
Emotional Response:
This is what it feels like to daydream inside my own head—colorful, soft, mysterious, and strangely precise. I don’t know if they’ll see me. But I do. And that’s enough. This is my quiet declaration: I belong here.
Finishing Summary / Viewer Experience:
The Polaroid is the only printed element. Both the etching and panel remain blank for now. After the exhibition, the artist intends to print them both—this piece is a bridge to the future and the next version of herself. A neodymium magnet sphere holds everything in place: dense, simple, powerful. Me is not for sale. It is a placeholder for becoming.
This project began in the wreckage of a breakup, but I didn’t understand the depth of it until I was already building from its remains. I thought I was just making images—organizing memories, giving form to feelings—but I was really excavating myself. Not just the grief, not just the beauty, but the parts of me I’d hidden, even from myself.
I learned I had tried too hard to be good: to be understanding, patient, unshakable. I mistook accommodation for love, and silence for peace. In trying to be enough for someone else, I betrayed parts of me that were already whole. That’s been the hardest truth to face—not what someone else did, but how I vanished inside it.
Each piece in Double Layers was a reckoning. With longing, with memory, with patterns I swore I’d never repeat. I had to see the parts of me that clung too tightly, gave too much, or stayed too long—and I had to forgive her. I had to hold her with the same tenderness I used to reserve for others.
This project let me do that. Through it, I reclaimed softness without surrender, beauty without performance, and a kind of strength that doesn’t need to be proven. I’m still learning, but I’m no longer hiding. These layers are not just remnants—they’re evidence. Of healing, of honesty, and of a self I trust to go forward.