In terms of the concept of this piece, I utilized a lot of the exercises I did in Mark’s class to come up with the idea of my alter ego: a workaholic, power and money hungry, high power corporate CEO of a magazine company. In a way, this character that I created is an extended and exaggerated version of myself. I consider myself somewhat of a perfectionist and workaholic to an extent, but I made my alter ego the negative and more extreme version of this.
“Eastern Barn” | Romare Bearden | Mixed Media collage | 1968
Visually, I was very inspired by the artist Romare Bearden (whose work I saw at the Whitney) and his cut paper collage pieces. I wanted to do this kind of art except digitally on Photoshop. Another somewhat random inspiration was the old TV show “Little Bill” that also uses the same cut paper style as Romare Bearden.
The idea was to capture a certain level of vulnerability and loneliness woven into the generally powerful and bitchy vibe of the work. The piece with the two phones was successful and capturing that. The Blackberry work phone has many notifications versus the personal phone that has none, indicating that by working so much and focusing all her efforts on work, Danielle spends no time cultivating personal relationships.
The red lipstick and black coffee are both symbols of corporate feminine power that I wanted to make sure were included in this set of images to represent my alter ego. The text piece that says “Bo$$ Bitch” references the title of a magazine and the fact that Danielle works in the publication industry at a magazine company.
This concept could easily be turned into a whole series that delves deeper into the different facets of my alter ego’s personality. This smaller four piece series is just one iteration of what a larger series could accomplish. If I were to expand on this concept, I would definitely include more work done in the same style.
