The Smallness of a Life

Concealing/Revealing

While coming up with ideas for this project, I became deeply invested in the notion that a mask, by concealing, can paradoxically reveal certain parts of ourselves. In our desire to get to the "true" essence of a thing, we generally say "peel away the layers" when maybe we really should continue to coat, add, build up. Identity is, after all, formed by the tricky and ridiculously delicate process of deciding what to keep in and what to leave out, what to share and what to keep secret. 

I used this mask as a way to express parts of myself I usually keep hidden; in order to do so, however, I had to obscure my face and part of my body. This makes me wonder: Can we ever really know the whole thing, or everything only in fragment? Physically, the mask impedes one's ability to know my face, my expressions, the features that make me Laura. Nevertheless, it gives form to the interior structure of Laura, the parts that remain obscured by my body and its politics and complicity in facade. It's undeniable: in order to function somewhat normally in society, we have to uphold certain fronts or "un-truths." I do it all the time. We're told to "be yourself," but if that self is ugly and sad and deviant, how quickly the tune changes. Creating this mask gave me the chance to explore how to represent and make tangible those painful secrets that rest quietly inside my body and build throughout the day; how to express those feelings I often feel are inexpressible; and how to depict my struggles with depression and anxiety in such a way that perhaps others can relate. 

We all ache for connection, especially when our worlds seem very, very small. 

Final Picture Series

"I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others - the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad."

Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer

Understanding Place, Creating Space

One More Thing...

I neglected to post this during the Gregor's Room project, however I think that even though it's late, it's still important enough to mention. One of the major goals of Gregor's Room was to interpret literature using text as a guide for the "visual." The Metamorphosis has no actual pictures, but it doesn't need them: its words create the undeniably vivid imagery that has made it into such a well-known piece of literature. Capturing the essence of one medium in another is no easy task; however, it is in this difficulty that the potential for greatness exists.

In an unofficial music video for Lotus Plaza's "Strangers," found footage mostly consisting of clips from "No York City" by Rick Liss is used to construct a piece harmonious with the texture of the song. Although I really love the song, I frequently revisited this video while working on my version of Gregor's Room because it inspired me to create a space equally vibrant and texturally accurate. It seems as if the film and the song were made for one another, even though one came way after the other, and I wanted to achieve the same sort of euphony with my "set design." 

"Strangers" Music Video    

The Results Are In!

The Soap Carving Process

As I mentioned in my previous post about this project, carving soap challenged me greatly because it involved thinking about "mark making" in a very new way. I ended up titling my piece "Animal Testing" not only because my created piece played with materials actually tested on animals then "tested" on my sculpted animal (phew, that's a mouthful), but also because it tested this animal right here. I was frustrated, exhausted, and anxious I'd take off too much and ruin the entire piece during the majority of my carving. I am glad this project tested me, however, because it proved that even though the end result might not be amazing, I can make it through just about any project. The results are in: I can carve soap.(Perhaps not very well, but hey, with practice, who knows - I might create the next David, this time out of soap!)   

Process Pictures

The key is to start by blocking out the general shape of the animal form. We were cautioned not to get too specific too soon. Everything should stay quite chunky in the beginning (even though my tiger never quite lost that "baby fat"). 

For my second carving, I realized I needed to right away cut off a chunk of the soap and then begin my carving. The orientation of the soap was not conducive to the form of the tiger, as I found out in my first carving. The piece I cut off actually served as the material for my tails.  

Making the tail was definitely one of the most challenging parts of the carving process. It was difficult just figuring out how to create the shape!

Final Piece: "From-Life" Carving

Tiger & Tiger

One of the biggest issues I have with my final piece is its chunkiness. I am fairly happy with my proportions (except the head) and general form, but my wariness when it came to cutting down the legs made for a thick cat. I did a tiger in honor of my cat, Tiger, though perhaps I should've done a very stumpy bear, something more on my level.

   
Final Piece: "Created" Transformation Piece

"Animal Testing"

The concept behind my created piece arose from the ethical and pragmatic dilemma surrounding animal testing. In an earlier post I explained the process of subtraction and addition that led to this final piece, however I did not fully describe the "method" behind my madness. (And I'm pretty sure it was madness, as the fumes from the hot toothpaste, soap, and lip gloss burrowed deeply into my brain.) The experimental process through which I put my tiger mirrored the larger, often grossly transformative nature of animal testing. By making my created piece so radically different from its original from-life sculpture, I emphasized the ways in which inhumane testing (and treatment, in general) "thingifies," or commodifies, actual living beings. The end result is both clinical and messy, structured and random, something and nothing.

      

What Does Tiger Think?

I think she likes it!

Building Gregor's Room

Unique Perspectives

After finishing Kafka's The Metamorphosis, we had to construct Gregor's Room with only copy paper and ink: the bed, Gregor himself, and one other item of our choosing. In class we discussed how we viewed the bedroom and I loved it because everyone's responses were so different. One person imagined the room having a very large window, the blue sky beyond contrasting powerfully with Gregor's imprisonment. Another person saw the space with sharp angles and slanted walls, like an attic room, rather than the average four-wall square. We debated Gregor's size, the meaning of the boarders in the suits, and the texture of the different characters (maybe Gregor's sister is both prickly and smooth, "like an Egyptian mouse" someone said). I felt like I was in a very artsy version of one of my English literature classes.    

One reason The Metamorphosis is such a classic work is because it lends itself to so many interpretations. While reading, we fill in the details Kafka leaves out with our own; though there are clues in the text about the size of Gregor, for instance, his actual situation remains unknown and unquantified. It's like when someone tells a story featuring a relative or professor or classmate you've never seen, and by the end of it, you have a clear image in your head of what this person must look like even though few details were given. Seeing what everyone came up with for their personal "set designs" opened me up to countless new ways of interpreting the text. 

Process Pictures (or lack thereof)

  

Although I thought I had taken at least a couple w.i.p. pictures, this is the only one I could find from this project. I know I didn't take many because the frustrations of soaking, and baking, and not being able to use adhesives of any sort gave me a one-track mind: GET THIS THING DONE. In this photo, however, you can see the tubes I created to stuff inside the mattress and box spring. I gave them so much detail because my plan was to rip the mattress and box spring to reveal the structure underneath, giving it a "bare bones" feeling. To the far right, you can also see the Tupperware container where I soaked my paper overnight.

Final Pieces

Gregor

Gregor's Bed

The violin

At the beginning of the story, Gregor's room seems to be a neatly structured space; after his transformation, however, I imagine the room speedily denigrating into a dirty, tattered, virtually unlivable place. One reading of Kafka's story is that Gregor is mentally ill, that his world is and will forever be colored by that fateful morning when he "turns" into a bug. I wanted my pieces to reflect Gregor's deteriorating mindscape, so I used bright colors mixed with dull ones to indicate confusion, ties to hold things precariously together, and animalistic elements - blood, feces, and prints - to accent the very real, very dehumanizing aspects of mental illness.

While my first instinct was to create a bug-like creature to represent Gregor, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I saw his character as a lack rather than a tangible form. I constructed Gregor's briefcase, the one he would have taken with him to work had he woken up human, and made it into something grotesque. The edges are sharp, the inside littered with garbage, and the outside marked by black fingerprints and brown stains. A small black ball is, so to speak, Gregor's "essence" - the shrinking of his mind and soul into something so tiny and insignificant it could easily disappear, never to be found again (as it did when my project fell down the stairs at my apartment!). I also held the two compartments of the briefcase together with my homemade "twine," a motif which carried over during my construction of the bed.

As I mentioned earlier, I imagined Gregor's room to be a very disgusting space. On his too-small blanket (whose size represents the comically pathetic distortion of life caused by mental distress) I attached pieces of poo through a careful method of wrapping in wet paper strips and then securing with two paper fasteners on the other side of the blanket. In order to created the box spring and the mattresses, I both folded the paper and secured the forms with my twine. 

The notion of everything falling apart and away from each other guided my project. For the piece of my choosing, I decided to construct Gregor's sister's violin. I found this object to be so significant because it is his sister's music that draws Gregor out of the darkness and into the family room where his mother, father, and boarders listen to her play. Music is an undeniably powerful force - maybe it's what makes us human. Even the violin, however, becomes a source of oppression for Gregor. Although it is beautiful, it is still grotesque. I soaked the strips of paper in tea and stuck an errant string into the top of the violin. Like a body itself, the violin has a long, parched neck and a wound on its bottom. Its curves have become rough, and its backside is similarly coming undone.

Assembling the Bed

A place that can comfort.

Or destroy.

     

Like Father, Like Daughter: A Memento

An Introduction

I have been very negligent in my blog duties, so I have a lot of catching up to do. The first project I will tackle is "Memento" from early October. Our assignment was to create a small item representative of a certain memory using only three materials. As I thought about what to do, memories of all shapes and sizes came flooding back to me: reading dinosaur books on the plush beanbags of the tiny library's children's section; listening to "Head Over Heels" by Tears for Fears on the long car trip to Washington D.C.; tornado sirens at Grandma and Grandpa's house during the summer; the sweet, sick, wavy feeling of breaking my arm on the wood floor at dance; making houses in the backyard out of cardboard leftover from the packaging of large appliances. One after another, they surfaced and vanished like carbonation in a freshly-poured glass of pop. After much consideration, I finally latched on to one specific memory: spending time at Howell Airport with my dad.

Aviation has always been a huge part of my life. My dad is a freight pilot and a flight instructor. He was also an aerobatic champion, competing for a spot on the world team, until my sister and I were born. An advocate of "do what you love, love what you do," my dad always says he would fly for free, that "getting paid is just a bonus." I remember wearing his captain's hat and regulation UPS tie as he pulled me around the living room on his flight bag before leaving for another week of work. Because he is gone for about half of the year, our relationship sometimes seems slightly out of touch. Nevertheless, my dad has tried very hard to make sure our father/daughter bond remains strong. One such way he has accomplished this has been through (what else?) airplanes.

My dad holds me in the Decathlon while Uncle Karl poses in his aviators

Howell Airport was a small place in New Lenox, southwest of Chicago. My dad used to spend a lot of time there, and he would often take me (and my sister, when she was old enough) with him, especially during the late spring and summer. I distinctly recall the smell of aviation fuel, purple and white cloves that grew on the grass medians between the taxiways, and the mustiness of the hangars. But more than anything, I remember the little office where Cathy, the receptionist, would greet me and take me into Bill Howell's den with the huge, cushy "boss" chair. I would be given a stack of copy paper and the Christmas cookies tin of crayons, left alone to color while my dad talked airplanes and flew with other adults. I loved flying with my dad, but even back then I understood that some parts of his life were his - that it was okay if some things went over my head. And so, I drew pictures of people with hoop earring-adorned cat ears and sucked happily on Runts from the 25-cent candy machine in the lobby.

Process Pictures

I started out by building a structure of balsa wood reminiscent of my dad's aerobatic trophies.

I knew crayons has to be a central component of my memento. I decided to tear the paper off crayons and rip them into small bits.

I glued the crayon paper to the wooden structure with wood glue.

I then added distorted paperclips to the sculpture by piercing the wood and securing them with glue.  

Final Memento

"Like Father, Like Daughter" 

My final solution consisted of a sculpture made of balsa wood, crayon paper, and paperclips. (Glue was also used in its creation, however because it is not visible, it does not count as a material.) I decided to use wood because it reminded me of the unfinished, exposed ceilings of the hangars and the smell of busy buzz saws in Curly's busy workshop. Its vertical orientation alluded to the memory not only being bigger than me, but also it being about the sky, and airplanes, and looking at the world from a distance. The office/art supplies ground the memento, however, and describe the duality I felt between isolation/participation while at the airport. Though I often sat in Mr. Howell's office and colored, my dad also took time to introduce me to the amazing world of aviation. We would go up in the Decathlon, or my uncle's Luscombe, and sometimes he would pretend to fall asleep at the stick and make me fly the plane for a while as I frantically yelled, "Dad! DAD! WAKE UP!" The bent paperclips represent the pathways we carved through the sky, and visually break up the rhythm of the wooden posts. As I mentioned before, the structure resembles my dad's aerobatic trophies, which he now keeps in his office - the "Captain's Den" - next to model airplanes and his retired captain's hats. In this way, my memento is a monument commemorating things lost: my dad gave up competitive aerobatics when he saw one of his friends crash at a competition, leaving behind a wife and two little girls. Howell Airport has also been shut down, demolished, the site now waiting to be developed into a shopping center. 

We are different, my dad and I, but tied together by so many small moments. Wearing his hat and tie, riding on his flight bag, putting the fruit-patterned cushion in the backseat of the Decathlon so my sister and I could see out the window, eating grilled cheese sandwiches at DeLand and watching the skydivers come in, going to Saturday morning Gaggle Flight breakfasts, camping out at Oshkosh, and, most importantly, taking off down the runway at Howell, watching as the buildings and cornfields got smaller and smaller and smaller. And the place where it all began became but a speck below us as we burst through the clouds.