Artwork: UWM Mixed Media
Title: Closer
Size: 45 cm x 22cm x 47 cm Medium: Mixed media Completion: December 3rd, 2018 Closer is a mixed media piece using materials from my house, Goodwill, and Meijer that depicts the pursuit of innocence and my fear of growing up and facing the responsibilities of adulthood. This piece was inspired by Christian Boltanski's Le Théâtre d’ombres and Dominic Fera's short film, Cover.
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Inspiration
Fera, Dominic. “Cover.” Youtube.com, May 19,2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v33Y-EYw7-E.
In Cover, Dom Fera puts spin on every child's idea about using the covers on their bed to help protect them from the monsters that lurk in their rooms
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The inspiration for my piece was a two minute horror film written and directed by Dominic (Dom) Fera, a writer, director, actor, and composer who posts songs, and short-films on his Youtube Channel. His work is known for being thought-provoking and captivating.
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My other inspiration for my piece was Shadow Theater work by Christian Boltanski. His use of shadows to create a spooky, nightmarish feel to his work inspired the use of shadows to create a looming, spooky feel to my piece also. He also believed that we all "have a dead child inside of us," which agrees with the meaning behind my piece that everyone has their inner child and never really wants to grow up.
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Planning
In my planning sketches I played with the idea behind where the monster in the piece would be positioned before I came up with the final shadow sketch. I also planned the positions of the sheet in the box. At first I wanted to depict the scene from the video Cover, in which the girl is hiding from the monster, standing up, but later on I decided to make the blanket/sheet as more of a fort instead to allow the viewers to see the child and her room more. I also tried to decide the overall look of the monster. I thought about using wire, but instead I decided on using old receipts and zip-ties to make the shadow spookier.
The chains represent the connection and draw back to childhood that the adult has, especially when they are drowning in work and responsibilities. The child is a Precious Moments figurine because the moments of our childhood are what we should hold precious to us, because we do not have those days forever. The clocks represent the time that is closing in on our childhoods as teenagers in high school and how we feel as though deadlines and time is closing in on us constantly. The shadow represents how mysterious our adulthood is to us and how we don't really know if it is going to be good or bad. |
Experimentation
In these images I was playing with the idea of incorporating color into the meaning behind my piece. In the end I decided not to use color because I felt that it took away from some of the meanings I was trying to convey in my piece such as the shadow aspect.
Process
While figuring out the overall look of my piece, I went to Goodwill and tried to find items that reminded me of childhood, adulthood, and a box to use as the room for the piece. I ended up buying the cloth that I used for the sheets, the woman's head, the child figurine, the box, and the little basket for the bed.
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Using the same hammer and chisel, I took the base that came with the figurine of the Precious Moments child and chipped it off to have an easier figure to work with. Then, I took Zip-ties and created a chain out of them to represent the connection and draw back to our childhoods that we face because we don't want to grow up. I was going to use a significant number in the chains, but decided against it because I needed a certain amount to help make the shadow work.
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Using an old set of outdoor Christmas lights, I cut the cords off of the light itself and hot-glued it to the ceiling of the box to make it look like a lamp inside the room. I wanted the light to reflect through the bulb, but it didn't as much as I wanted to. It represents the hop that we have over us even in the darkest times of our childhood, because childhoods are filled with being hopeful. I also cut a triangle and a small strip of cloth off of the bigger piece I bought from Goodwill and stapled it using a staple gun. To secure the staples, I hammered them in a little farther.
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Next, I took old receipts from Meijer that my family have had for a little while. Using a Faber-Castell Pitt artist pen in the color Deep Red (223), I wrote on the top of the receipts some of the words that come to mind as a teenager when I think of the things that I will have to deal with during adulthood and that I wouldn't necessarily need to worry about in my childhood.
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Taking the receipts, I tried to use the hot-glue to make the receipts look as though they are drowning the woman. I wanted this to show with the chains how we are still tied back to our childhood and how the childhood us is stuck in fate and cannot change what we have to deal with in our futures in general. I also wanted to show how the responsibility in adulthood tend to drown you and that there is a struggle involved in growing up.
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Finally, I added the extra pieces of the zip-ties that I had and attached them to the "monster" in my piece. I did this because while experimenting, the shadow of the woman/monster was not as scary and threatening as I wanted it to seem. I also set up the little studio that I took pictures in using white cloth and a baby gate to help it stay up.
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The last things I did were use the hot glue gun to attach the chain trail to to box so that it would still show up in the shadow of the piece. I also played a lot with the positioning of the lighting and tried to make the shadows prominent without taking away from the overall composition of my piece.
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Reflection
Compare & Contrast
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CritiqueI should have tried using a dark background on the piece instead to see if the light would be impacted by the different color background. I also think that this is not necessarily the best angle for the final picture of my piece, but I also believe that it will look better in a gallery setting like if it was set up at gallery night. The overall composition of the piece was fairly good, but I still feel like there is not a complete sense of unity and that some parts are empty. If I redid the project I would definitely continue to play with the idea of shadows and light, but create a more interesting display on the inside to maintain a natural sense of unity that it may lack.
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ACT
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
The use of shadows and the motif of childhood is prevalent in my inspiration pieces, Le Théâtre d’ombres and Cover and inspired m to put my own twist on childhood using shadows and light. What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration? The article by Jupiter Artland takes the approach of evaluating the emotional reasoning for the shadow works that Christian Boltanski created. It also explains the background of the artist which helps you to understand the overall meaning of his art more. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration? A generalization that I discovered is that artists focus a lot on their own lives and especially their lives when they were children. Many artists use their childhood or other people's childhoods as inspiration for the meaning behind their pieces. What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?. The central theme surrounding my research was the importance of a childhood to people and what the childhood memories meant to them, especially if they are adults. I also tried to research a part of it that meant a lot to me, which ended up being the fear of growing up. What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research? I inferred that many artists take sub-conscience ideas such as the pursuit of innocence and childhood and turn it into the ideas behind their work. I also inferred that most inspiration for successful artists is their own lives and the memories they have. |
Bibliography“Christian Boltanski : Le Théâtre D'ombres (1984-1997).” Musée D'Art Et D'Histoire Du Judaïsme, 8 Dec. 2015, www.mahj.org/en/node/15984.
Fera, Dom. “Cover (2018).” YouTube, YouTube, 19 May 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=v33Y-EYw7-E. “THEATRE D'OMBRES.” Jupiter Artland, www.jupiterartland.org/artwork/theatre-dombres. |