ARTIST STATEMENT:
For this soft sculpture project, I immediately envisioned making something out of place on an exaggerated scale. After doing research and putting together my mood board, I decided to make oversized eye and lips pillows made of felt that would eventually be displayed and photographed on a bed. Originally, I wanted to make the pieces larger, but my access to materials limited that. I chose felt specifically because of its texture, the bright colors that felt comes in, and the fact that I wouldn’t have to hem any edges, therefore resulting in a cleaner finish. Essentially, I wanted to make something colorful made of geometric shapes with clean lines and little detail. To complete this crisp look, I decided to put everything together with a sewing machine therefore eliminating the inconsistency of hand stitching and the mess of hot glue.
At first, I wanted to make these functional pillows and stuff them with pillow stuffing, but since that wasn’t possible, I ended up filling them with fabric scraps and tissue paper, which didn’t turn out quite as soft as I had hoped. Another challenge I faced was that I was stuck with a sewing machine that wasn’t working properly, which ended up causing some bunching of threads and fabric. Still, I managed to finish the two pillows the way I wanted to.
To present the piece, I decided to lay down a piece of tan felt as the mattress, over which a piece of light blue felt will lie with the top folded over to resemble a bedsheet, with two flat felt speech bubbles as pillows, behind which the lips and eyes will rest. I chose this setup because I wanted the eyes and lips to look much bigger than the rest, and the speech bubbles to look too big for the bedsheet. The idea I wanted to portray by doing this was that of how nervous and intimidated I get at times at parsons– a school of fashion majors and artists that I feel the need to compete with. The speech bubbles being empty and flat, though, contrast the much bigger and plumper pillows to show that my intimidation has no basis, and that even if I had reason to be intimidated, I shouldn’t let it affect my work. Or my sleep.
PROCESS:
My mood board….
Making the eye…
FINAL PRODUCT:
