My guilty pleasure is “The Bachelor”, which is a reality show where there is a single bachelor and thirty-ish women from around the country competing to marry him. They cultivate drama, travel the world, and do fun challenges and I am thoroughly entertained by it. I think my interest in the show is that I am watching it from a queer point of view. It feels like observing heterosexuality as entertainment separate from myself rather than a reflection of my own world. When I watch the show, I constantly think, “That could never be me.” or “I would never do that.” It has made me feel more confident in not being straight, which I think is a funny effect but has also been valuable to me. I also just generally love drama so I consume trash television from time to time.

I started my piece by doing a symbolic illustration for the show in watercolor and ink. I drew influence from folk art and religious objects in the design and emphasized the important parts of the show with a ring, roses, and very male/female symbols.

I knew I wanted to translate this drawing into another medium, so I decided to play with felt.

I cut out all the pieces I wanted and arranged them in different ways. Once I was happy with the placement, I took them all off and started again to push myself to better my composition.

I added the border and attached all the pieces with glue, then hung it on my wall. I was going to include text with the title but I am so satisfied by the simplicity of the piece as a whole. Lately, in my artwork, I have been trying to push myself to stop one step before I think I’m done because I’m realizing that less is more. As a form of fan art, this aligns more with a wall art take on it. When I had my first communion as a child we made banners out of felt that had symbols representing all of the things we liked. My mom hung mine in our dining room for a while as a decoration. For that reason, I felt it would be fitting to hang my “Bachelor” piece in my kitchen (I don’t have a real dining room).