As I enter the dorm room of Sydney Thomashow '11 (Lord 104) she offers me my pick of the Hello Kitty tattoos and a wet washcloth, scattered around German Expressionism art history books and wine glasses on her table. While she and her roommates busy about, I slap a cupcake tattoo on my wrist and have a look at the coloring book pages she's taped up on her wall. "To decompress," she eyes me in the mirror. "CVS, 3 bucks."
Sydney's mirror is propped up on an old taupe suitcase with brass buckles and the letters R.O.C. the initials of her great grandmother, Rose O'Conner, printed in block letters on the side. "Union Something Line. To and From South and East Africa," Sydney reads from a scratched-up label stamped on top the suitcase, holding her long brown hair aside. "My family's always moving."
Sydney's mother's side is from South Africa, where the family moved after boarding up the theaters and milk houses they'd owned in London for decades. To honor her roots, Sydney keeps an ashtray from one of the family's hotels in Margate on her windowsill, along with a collection of animal figurines two elephants her boyfriend brought back from Senegal and a horse that looks just like her own, a gray Percheron named after Boxer from "Animal Farm."
A studio art major and practicing photographer, Sydney has recently set her eyes on visiting an elephant sanctuary in Cambodia. While looking through her uncle's photographs, Sydney became fascinated with the country, particularly its sanctuaries overgrown with trees and vegetation that once yielded a booming rubber industry.
"The fact that a fifth of the population disappeared in the 1970s is interesting to me from the perspective of Buddhism," she said. "Imagine you believe that the dead are always with you. All of a sudden there are just a million more ghosts."
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Sydney relocated with her family at age 11 to Strafford, Vt. for a change of pace. Her mother, once a menswear fashion designer and teacher at the Pratt Institute in New York, now spends most of her time taking care of their horses, sheep, pigs, cows, chicken, three dogs and cat. The provincial setting has shaped Sydney's photography; as animals are often the subjects of her work at Dartmouth.
"I like studio art classes because you get to work independently," she explains, holding a green, button pillow her 12-year-old sister sewed for her on her birthday. "The problems you face in doing your work are all self-generated."
Sydney's walls are full of inspiration: Juergen Teller, Andy Warhol with John Lennon, a painting from Cobble Hill-based artist and family friend Laura Karetsky (who was also taught by Sydney's art teacher at Hanover High School). Of particular interest is a 1930s Tom Collins "Dartmouth Dry" liquor label that one of the vendors at her great aunt's antique warehouse in Richmond, Va. gave her. One postcard, of a Joseph Cornell sculpture, reminds Sydney of her father, a psychiatrist who collects antiques and found objects to create scientific-minded sculptures; his most recent project involving wooden children's toys and glass flasks exhibited at a gallery in Brooklyn this summer.
With a long list of commitments, Sydney is incredibly organized. A post-it note on the wall details her tasks for the weekend, which include studio work, her thesis proposal and administrative duties for AREA, of which she is director. She pulls out a graphic-printed rabbit coat from her closet: a treasure in impeccable condition from her cousin's vintage store in Richmond.
Settling onto her bed, Sydney shows me a Moleskin full of her own sculpture ideas. Flipping through, we land on one page which outlines the "Non-Functional Dreamlike Tree House," an idea which involves attaching a train of lights to branches, corseting the lights with a wire frame and dressing that frame in tracing paper drenched in water and glue.
"I'd make it to look like some sort of growth out of the tree."
