Somnus is intended to be an interpersonal revelation between oneself and the reflection of oneself within the liminal dreamscape. To create this union of dream versus reality, I chose common motifs that represent or are represented in sleep. Poppies reflect our knowledge of reality, an association depicted in the Wizard of Oz (1939), when Dorothy falls asleep in a field of red petals. They are often utilized to represent eternal slumber. The flowers populate the world in front of the subject, giving way to the feeling of knowing you are dreaming, but maintaining the inability to wake.
To indulge in the fantastical and surreal aspects of dreaming, I leaned into common dream tropes, such as one’s teeth falling out representing a loss of power. My piece embodies the blurry, faintly disheartening, wonderment of dreams that is both beautiful and tragic, that bends the natural laws of the world for a single being’s experience.