Back in 2024, I made an art project as my final piece for high school at COLOMAplus | Talent in Huis. It was about my grandpa—Charles, or Charlie—and about grief, memory, and the strange ways love keeps shaping things even after someone is gone.
The centre of the work was a sculpture of a heart wearing a jacket. The jacket was tied down with string to the floor, pulling it downward—showing how grief can feel like weight, like something that anchors you in place and makes moving forward difficult, even when time keeps going.
Around it were smaller pieces that held different parts of him and us. Two linocut prints: one of Crocs, because he always wore them and used to dance in them without caring how it looked. Another of mandarins, because we used to share them, with the text: “even the oranges I peeled for you are turning green.”
There was also a poem I wrote for him, displayed as a poster, and another piece titled 1+1, connected to the same poem and its meaning. Alongside that was a vinyl cover called God’s Rival—because I don’t believe in God, but I do know my grandpa came close to something like that. Music was part of how I connected to him, and he is the reason I started collecting vinyl in the first place.
The work was held together with quotes that I used as inspiration, fragments of language that felt like they could carry what I couldn’t fully say.
Looking back, it wasn’t just a project about loss.
It was a way of keeping him present in everything I made.
I miss my Charlie
