Identity Post-Critique Response
Coming up with the idea of a full sized silhouette of myself was the easy part. The hard part was tying in themes and ideas that I wanted to express about myself. At first they were very literal, but after some discussions the direction to go more abstract became the focus. I’ve never delved into abstract artwork before, so I was very excited to create this piece about myself.
I knew I wanted it life size, or close to it. Eventually the idea to create this art as a three piece vertical triptych came to me. Breaking the artwork into three sections would help create an interesting visual experience as the artboards would be separated, but at the same time joined by the art. This also had the benefit of making this large piece much more portable.
Starting off I had many ideas of objects and visuals I wanted to include. Finding out what was needed, and what could be dropped was quite the exercise in cutting down excess concepts and ideas. Changing all my ideas and concepts into abstract forms was challenging, but once I stopped overthinking it it became a rewarding exercise and I enjoyed creating interesting colors, shapes, and creatures for this piece.
To create this artwork I needed an idea of what I would be building it on. I knew I wanted to use foam core board, and to create a sense of depth. I went to the store and found what I needed, and this helped me set up and create my artboards in illustrator. Each foam core board is 30” wide x 20” high. I bought nine of them, but ultimately only used six. The original idea was to create a deeper depth with the use of three layers. However with time constraints I opted to only do two layers of depth which in the end I am happy with the results.
I set up an illustrator file with three artboards stacked on top of eachother, so I could see how the art would look in the real world. I even made sure to create a 1” gap between the artboards to mimic the 1” gap the foam core boards would have in real life.
Finding the correct image of myself to alter took a long time, but once I settled on one I was able to start creating my layout, and design. The image I chose I had a shirt on, but I edited myself to be shirtless to add a sense of vulnerability. I built one panel at a time, starting with the top, then the middle, and then the bottom. My concept was to depict myself and how the outside world has a large influence in shaping, not only me, but who we are.
The external forces of the outside world bombard my senses in this piece. They enter my mouth, and my eyes. My eyes are covered by literal coke bottles. Poking fun at the idea of coke bottle glasses - thick lensed glasses that one would wear when they can not see well. I myself wear glasses, so putting these on my face in the art was to both be humorous, but also tell a story of how we don’t always see the outside world clearly. It is distorted by many outside factors.
The exposed bones of the jaw and the arm represent past events. The arm I broke with a compound fracture when I was a young child; it’s oddly a happy memory I have with my father, and not the traumatic experience of falling off the monkey bars that I remember most from that ordeal. The jaw is a surgery I had to correct my under-bite. It was an eight hour surgery, and took months to recover from, and I lived off of liquid food for most of that recovery. I really wanted to include these as parts of my identity, that only myself or people really close to me know about.
The artwork was done in black and white because I wanted the bits of color that show in this piece to really stand out. The idea behind the black and white is that the world really is pretty awful out there. On a global scale we have wars, diseases, deaths; and on a personal level we have our own wars we deal with everyday, and our own losses. However, despite all this there is still beauty in the world, and a reason to love, and live. That is where the color is coming from. The light enters the coke bottle glasses and diffuses out like a light prism, showing all the beautiful colors. These were represented with the squares and circles of color spilling out of the coke bottle glasses. I carried these throughout all three panels. Sprinkling the beauty into every panel.
Finally, I put in little creatures that were inspired by mythological creatures like fairies, goblins, and spirits. The idea behind these is that the creatures are not necessarily evil, but they are mischievous -- it’s in their nature. In my artwork the little creatures I created are hindering my path through the world, ripping my skin open to expose past injuries -- that they most likely caused themselves. Now, I’m not saying these creatures are real or that they caused these injuries in real life, but they are an abstract idea of outside forces in the world that we can not control.
After printing the artwork. I placed the art on the foam core boards, and cut out the top layer, and then glued the images to the board with rubber cement. Then I glued the background images to the uncut foam core boards. After these were assembled I glued the background foam core to the foreground foam core with a hot glue gun. I then poked tiny holes into the artwork and bound them together with a thin wire.
I will be replacing the wire that holds the panels together with clear fishing line, and the paper that the creatures are pulling back will be replaced with a colorful velum, and I’ll make it more stretched out looking like the creatures are really pulling on it.
It was exciting to hear everyone’s interpretations of my artwork in class as it is mostly abstract. The meanings everyone came up with are both relatable, and enjoyable, and I accept them as alternative truths to this artwork.
I really enjoyed working with abstract concepts and imagery, I plan on taking this further in the future.
