Grapevine teen uses art to portray passion for exploring multiple personality disorder
An angry face stares hauntingly into the camera, daring anyone to mess with her. Next to her there’s the stoic face of someone dressed in business attire ready to take on any challenge. In the corner, a scared girl hides half her face from the world.
All three faces belong to 13-year-old Chloe Marcum, a Grapevine artist who blended the photos together to create a graphic representation of dissociative identity disorder, more commonly known as multiple personality disorder.
The student at Fusion Academy Southlake has taken an interest in psychology and was inspired by the films “Sybil” and “3 Faces of Eve,” which highlight the disorder.
“I wanted to attempt to portray what an inside world may look like from an alter’s perspective,” Chloe said. “It was a pretty fun experience because I’ve always wanted to portray this interest of mine.”
Art teacher John Worley assigned the project for the end of the semester and was so impressed with the results that he entered her into Southlake’s Art in the Square in May. The eighth-grader was the youngest artist in the youth show (technically, participants have to be in ninth grade).
“She was taking some ninth-grade classes,” her mother, Rachel Marcum, points out. “I think that’s pretty neat that first of all that John submitted something because it’s really good and the fact that she was chosen is a big deal.”
Worley said Chloe took to the camera immediately and ran with it.
“I just throw them into a big project and help them figure out how the camera works,” Worley said. “I helped her out with how to light things, the functions of the camera and worked through the technical difficulties. I can teach somebody how to draw and work a camera. For them to use it well is the tricky part. You can’t fake that. The talent and the craftsmanship.”
The Fusion Academy in Southlake Town Square offers one-on-one classes for middle and high school students where it’s one student and one teacher.
“We get kids of all types, really,” Worley said. “All of them don’t thrive as well in a traditional public school setting. Their parents try to bring them to us.”
Chloe has taken what she learned about photography and editing and ran with it, creating more photos that show various personalities.
She’s got one where there are different versions of herself talking in her ear on her shoulders. There’s another where she has four versions of herself in the car all wearing different outfits with different expressions. She took it a step further, creating six versions of herself all sitting in a room.
Chloe said she wants her artwork to raise awareness of dissociative identity disorder, which frequently comes under scrutiny.
Typically, the disorder manifests after a serious traumatic event from someone’s childhood. The alternate personalities are a coping mechanism and they can be strong, scared, weak or even other genders and ages.
“There’s plenty of misconceptions in mental disorders,” Chloe said. “There’s still people who deny it and say it doesn’t exist, that people are just over exaggerating. It’s called life.”
This story was originally published July 20, 2018 at 11:00 AM.