When Chloe Wyruch ’25 lost her home to the Los Angeles wildfires, she also lost much of her artwork and personal photographs. Now, through a collage, she is exploring ways to preserve the memories tied to lost belongings.
Wyruch is currently in her fourth year of Draw and Paint at Marlborough and the second year of her sustained investigation for AP Draw and Paint, in which students choose a central theme to develop. For Wyruch, home has been the central theme in her creative journey since the beginning of her junior year. However, out of the 10 pieces she’s created, only one survived.
“I have kind of looked at it through a lot of different lenses,” Wyruch said, explaining how her approach has shifted. “I’m trying to avoid clichés.”
Rather than depicting the loss, she has focused on her intangible memories, many of which feel fragile in the absence of the physical spaces and objects that previously anchored them.
“I have decided to focus on certain memories that I am scared of losing because I won’t have that association,” Wyruch said.
One of the most significant losses was her family’s collection of physical photos. To reconstruct those memories, Wyruch began utilizing magazines and photography books by cutting out images with an X-Acto knife to assemble a collage. Instead of using glue to piece together the images, Wyruch has used materials including wire and string to represent the correlation between her memories. Her process also includes making the photos black and white as well as cutting them to be the same size.
“There’s a lot of things I keep in mind that maybe subconsciously affect my process,” Wyruch said.
The experience has not only changed her current work but has also altered how she views her earlier pieces in her sustained investigation. She began thinking about creating art again when she came back to school and stepped into the art studio. The collage is the first piece she has worked on since the fires.
Despite the emotional weight of this project, Wyruch has found solace in the process.
“It’s good to have a space where I’m forced to kind of think about it in a healthier way,” Wyruch said.
Without art as an outlet, she believes the impact of the fire would have hit her all at once.
“That’s my way of processing things, not only the action of making the art, but also just having a space where I can think about it and how it’s affected me,” Wyruch said.
