The brief for the bridge 3 project told us to first visit the Rockefeller Centre and roughly sketch what we saw there. And having played the role of an illustrator, we visited the society of Illustrators so as to understand concepts of how illustrations and work can be displayed, and so as to be inspired to come up with a form of our own, for displaying the sketches we made at Rockefeller centre.
On going through my illustrations I realized that I had focused a lot on things I had seen people do around me that were either hypocritical, or had the potential to be extremely disturbing and bizarre in an only slightly altered reality. For instance I saw a lot of tourists taking pictures sitting on statues of giant fish, behind statues of naked men and hugging them while their family took pictures. These same people would have reacted to the situation in an entirely different manner, had the fish and the naked men been real. Other disgusting things I encountered were seemingly mundane things like the smell of farts, and the sight of a person stepping on a wad of gum, that were associated with the senses of touch and smell. As I continued to draw people with my friend and talk about them, I realized that I was very much a part of this hypocritical and disgusting category, I had been exploring because I had been sketching people without their knowledge, and encroaching upon their private events, not just documenting them in my journal, but also taking the liberty to comment upon them, which lets admit is a very immoral thing to do, even if I do it in the name of art. I had drawn people kissing, having embarrassing accidents in whilst skating, and laughed at them as they got into uncomfortable positions in their bid to take a selfie.
From all these thoughts, themes, and concepts emerged my character Dot Polka, a very sleazy character with a slimy looking body, clammy acrylic skin, a strange lumpy tilted head, ending in a flip- flop that had just stepped on a wad of gum. I gave the character a wide loud mouth, with his teeth hanging out, covered with plaque, and some turned cardboard brown. I also gave him a gold tooth, because nothing screams sleazy like a gold tooth. I gave him blue tongue and bulbous protruding hollow eyes, covered by drooping lids that you can pull back by the eyelashes, that you can hang on to a mole above his eyes to ensure that they remain open. And I gave him a single partially chewed of year. Dot Polka also had green snot dripping from his exaggerated nostril.
In these highly exaggerated body parts and sense organs I placed illustrations I had drawn, as they were associated with each sense organs. The old man and his granddaughter, taking a selfie ( I had laughed at), sat in the mouth, that was frozen in a laugh so wide, that you could see Dot’s gums. The couple I had seen kissing, went right above Dot’s eyes, and the hollow space inside them was filled with illustrations of the naked statue, and the little girl hugging him for the camera. The sketch of the two graceful skaters helping up a little boy who had taken a humiliating and painful fall on the ice. went inside the disgusting ear, marking the moment when I eavesdropped on their conversation. An upside down girl with an exaggerated butt hanging write next to Dot’s nostril, farting in his face and she bends into an uncomfortable position to take a picture of a flower.
