My lab TA just sent me images from my favorite project I did in foundations this semester.

Statement:

I can’t talk about jello without talking about my religious upbringing as a Mormon. Jello is served at nearly every Mormon function including funerals, weddings, picnics, and potlucks. There were usually a variety of jello dishes available at these events and they came in all flavors, usually involving some kind of fruit or multiple fruits suspended within. Jello is so common at church functions that Mormons will even joke about it themselves.

Personally, I dreaded jello.

Jello meant having to endure countless church meetings where I felt alienated and out of place. Although I did find the appeal of Mormonism, I never wanted to be apart of it. I found most of their beliefs to be ridiculous or destructive. Most of my Mormon friends and family acknowledge that parts of the religion are silly, but they simply tell those that are 'struggling' with it to continue practicing the religion and “have faith.” This contradiction is baffling to me. You have to have faith to be apart of the religion but you have to be apart of the religion to have faith. The spoons suspended in jello represent this difficult conundrum.
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In the beginnings of this project I was just working with silverware (I definitely didn’t think I would use it to represent faith). I started with a metal set, but I decided to use plastic when I drew the connection to my religious beginnings, and this idea progressed to suspending them in jello.

This transformation revealed some interesting relationships between the red jello and white plastic spoons. The convex surface of the jello mold is echoed in the curvature of the spoons. More importantly, the random dispersion of the spoons produces a chaotic element contrasting the pristine jello mold which speaks to the confusion I am trying to convey.