Our Bridge 3 assignment was to make a book concerning our topics from our Integrative Seminar class. My topic is the relationship of repressed homosexuality and violence through the lens of the case of Jeffrey Dahmer. Anyway, here’s a dump of pictures, and one video as a bonus.
 
 
 
My partner was Will. The process which led to this sculpture and pedestal involves Will’s seemingly organized nature, coupled with his chronicling of his time spent searching for inspiration in the streets of New York near his apartment. I wanted the pedestal to reflect an organized person who sort of has everything together. I had fun with this project.
Here’s a WHOLE bunch of art that I have been asked to upload to the ol’ LP. I think what it really exhibits is my fleeting sanity in the depths of my new college life. This includes physical sketchbook stuff, computer sketchbook stuff, and some stuff done in class. Here we go!
Class Stuff (WILL ADD FIGURE DRAWINGS MOMENTARILY):
“Computer” Sketchbook:
“Regular” Sketchbook:
In this exercise, we were not told what the final product was going to be, but rather we were just handed a block of foam and sent on our way. The instructions were precise yet vague. Somehow.
After we had gotten our blocks, we chopped away at them, first creating an odd cross shape.
I have very shakey hands, which did not help the foam be more smooth. On the phone with my father, I joked that the smoothness of the foam represented your current state of sanity. I then cracked mine open to find that it was a mess. So there’s that.
The jagged-ness eventually led to me just starting over.
I got a cut on my finger, which really bummed me out, so I consulted my Scary Spice doll.
She gave me the courage to continue, and finally I was greeted with THE CHAINS!!!!!
Overall, this chain was significantly easier to make than the wire head selfies. It was hard to make them loose and realistic like actually chains, but you can’t expect that much from foam. On my second attempt, I finished it in about 20 minutes flat, while my first try took about 2 days.
A Word on the Majesty of Satanic Pig:
When the idea of transforming our childhoods into a homemade object was brought up as an assignment, I knew that this had the potential to get ugly. And I was correct.
Continuing with my theme of being very open and honest and sort of terrifying, I decided to use formular and a rubber pig to create a nightmare-ish figurine. There are two main ideas packed into this seemingly stuffed creature: The Lord of the Flies and an eating disorder that began when I was very young.
The former idea is very obvious. I have distinct memories of watching the VCR copy of the Lord of the Flies in the basement with my sister when my parents were fighting. While this memory is obviously very troubling, there was also a sense of great comfort in this hideaway. The pig’s head is found on a stake in the forest by Simon, who represents a Jesus-like figure. The pig’s head, on the other hand, represents true evil and chaos.
As a child, I often felt as though I needed some sort of escape from reality, because reality would get difficult sometimes. I still get that sense today, but, when mixed with a child’s imagination, I would get more creative with my distractors. Looking back, I could easily transform this idea of an escape as a savior of some sort. Thus the pig arrives. In Lord of the Flies, the pig represents evil. And while my childhood definitely was not evil, it was still kind of ugly. Therefore, I would reason that, even if the solution was ugly, I would have gone for it back then.
The second not-so-hidden meaning is the motif of food. Dum-dums and forks play a role in the figure’s makeup, and not without reason. As a child, I began to feel the onset of an eating disorder that would nearly destroy my body by the time I was 15. However, when I was a child, it didn’t seem all deadly, just some weird quirk I had. I was obsessed with food. Then, at the same time, there is a pig’s head, which is typically a gluttonous creature, and illustrations of a little girl on the sides of the body. The girls represent how I saw myself.
Overall, this project was sort of difficult for me in terms of actually getting the supplies I wanted. I would have definitely preferred some different legs.