Image from http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/587760885.html
Image from http://theatrebeijing.com/history/
Inspiration
The word Avatar in my understanding is an object or figure that describe or shows
identities of a persons. In my project I want to show one of the most distinguish identities of
mine, the traditional art Peking Opera. I was born in China, I have a privilege of get to know a
different culture. I fell in love with the beautiful headdress and costumes of Peking Opera the
first time I watched a performance in Beijing. I started leaning Peking Opera as a class in my
elementary school, not only saw the different costumes for varieties of characters, but also
learning the special singing skills and tones to fully engage with it. The gorgeous design and
color or Peking Art inspired me in creating art, and make me proud of my origin and culture.
However, in my generation, teenagers and young adults get less influence and experiences of
these traditional types of art, instead, the people in my country get more education in western
arts. As time flows, will people gradually lost the sense of importance of culture and origin? With
this question in mind, I decided to do something related to Peking Opera.
First Experiment:
Collage
During the development of my ideas, I have a image in my head that combines not only the identity of myself, but also the connection of eastern and western culture that shows the tradition and modernism at the same time. In this collage I drew a unicorn to describe myself. I believe that millennials are familiar with this creature, it dose not exist. However, I see myself in it since I am always kind of a imaginative person who loves weird and fancy stuff. I used the fragments of space collage for the back ground to show the concept as well. And it comes to the important part, the Peking Opera headdress on the unicorn’s head, it connects the traditional Chinese art with the western unicorn and fancy space. I used the purple paper, because I think purple is the most mysterious color that looks interesting with the element in this piece.
(media: 18*24 Collage and charcoal)
Second Experiment:
However during the discussion in class, considering others’ advice and recommendations of how to make my piece better. I changed my mind, and decided to make an actual headdress. First, the unicorn and the space is too distracting, they make the headdress far less eye-catching and the main concept of my piece will not be shown that well. Secondly, it could be more interesting if I could make something other than just draw and stick on a piece of paper.
Sketches of the headdress
Since I’m not good at sewing, I came up an idea that to make this piece with other materials. Instead of using cloth, delicate jewelries and colorful flowers, I will use different kinds of fruits, such as banana peels, starfruit, kiwis, little tomatoes, blueberries, raspberries and use black wires to create the shape to support all the stuff on it. After I finished the whole look, I will record its change(the fruits) from fresh to rot. The idea of this is to reflect the change of viewing the traditional art of people’s origin by showing the rotten process of this headdress.
Making Progress
- Wires
-Shaping the wires
-Making the supporting bottom
–Trying on/ connecting the two parts
First, I’m using black colored wire to create the shape of the head dress. As the photos showing, I used a few layers to make it stable and hard so that it can support enough weight of the fruits.
Then I added the tooth-pickers (three in a set) on the top to let the fruits stand on.
After these, I went go to the grocery store to get the fruits I need.
For testing the weighing quality, I found that the base I made was not strong enough to support that many fruits, so I changed the base to a milk box, covered with white tissue paper.
The combination of the varies colors came out pretty good. And the last step is to put the cut kiwi fruit on. The kiwis are really soft and fragile, they are really hard to hang and stick in the front, so I freezes them a little while in the fridge.
As I planned at the beginning that set this out side for recording could not really working, since I live in K-town, where has lots of stores and public places with busy passengers on the street. I didn’t want to bother the homeless people and also the people walking by, I knew it would smell terrible and ugly after a while. I searched for days and thought maybe I could just set the headdress at home and see the color change. Although it would be kind of sad I couldn’t see the flies and stuff around this piece.
Finally, the last thing is to wait and see what would happened!
