PS don’t forget to breathe

Project Description

The concept for PS don’t forget to breathe began in 2021 and evolved into the final thesis project for Kevin Kirkwood’s Master of Fine Arts at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Since its inception, the installation has continued to grow in impact and reach, exhibited at several museums and galleries across the southeastern United States, including the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (Atlanta), ArtFields (Lake City, South Carolina), and Savannah Repertory (Savannah, Georgia).

Each presentation of the work is site-specific, responding directly to the architecture and atmosphere of its environment. Kirkwood adapts the arrangement of foam core panels and the scale of the video projection to create a unique, immersive experience in every location—ensuring that the fragmented visual field and layered soundscape resonate with the spatial context and with each new audience.

The heart of the installation remains the same: a video projection of waves crashing on the same beach where Kirkwood’s brother, Jon, died by suicide. Projected across fractured foam core panels, the image becomes disjointed and incomplete—mirroring the emotional and psychological disorientation that follows traumatic loss. As viewers move through the space, they are invited to engage not just with the visual elements, but with the act of remembering, breathing, and navigating the intangible landscape of grief.

Artist Statement

This work began as a way to process what I could never fully understand: the death of my brother, Jon, by suicide. One thousand, eight hundred and twenty-seven days after his first attempt to stop breathing, Jon drove his late model sedan to a white sandy beach.  After writing me a letter and placing one shell in the magazine loading port, he rested his warm chin on top of the cold metal barrel.  While facing the transparent waves of the Gulf of Mexico, he released his final exhale.  - PS don't forget to breathe

PS don’t forget to breathe is my attempt to hold space for that moment—and everything that has echoed from it. The installation features foam core panels suspended and arranged to fragment the visual field. A video projection of waves crashing on the same beach where Jon died plays across those surfaces, breaking the image into pieces. It’s never seen whole, much like memory, much like trauma. The ocean is both setting and metaphor—something persistent, disorienting, and beyond control.

I chose these materials and this structure intentionally. Grief rarely arrives in clean lines or clear images. It disorients, isolates, and demands to be navigated slowly. The foam core panels obstruct sightlines and movement; the sound of surf fills the space like a breath you can’t quite catch. Viewers are invited to move through the installation in fragments, as I have moved through this loss.

The title, P.S. Don't Forget to Breathe, is not something Jon wrote. It’s something I tell myself—on days when remembering hurts and forgetting feels impossible. It’s a reminder to stay here. To keep going. To breathe.

This work is not about finding closure. It’s about making space: for pain, for memory, for what cannot be said. And in that space, I hope others might find a moment of recognition or reflection. Because the truth is, grief never really ends—it just changes shape. This is one of its forms.

Materials

foam, paper, strands of nylon, metal, light.