Five words that can describe me: Sensitive, creative, introvert, logical and curiosity
Initials Sketches
Professional Looking Photo
Artist Statement
The form of my avatar aimed at being expressive of the five keywords: Sensitive, creative, introvert, logical, and curiosity. According to Erin Gray, soft sculptures are usually silly and springy. Inspired by her, I went bold with my design to make it funny and abstract; while gathering stretchy knit fabrics that allow the fillers to make it bouncy and puffy.
My design is based on the shape of the stomach, our digesting system. I am sensitive to the way other people perceive me and always overthink. Hence, I use the stomach shape to symbolise how I spend time “digesting” the outside pieces of information. Whereas the eye shape on the stomach indicate my sensitivity and curiosity towards the outside world. It shows how I am always looking and observing. My avatar has a wing and a heart-shaped tail; the wing symbolises for my creativity, and the little heart conveys hope as I wish I could always perceive the world with love and positivity. To make my avatar more personal, I added daisy petals on top to make it look like another version of me in another world.
I enjoyed the process mostly, but parts of it were challenging. The sewing experiences from the last project made me more familiar and confident with sewing. After making the prototypes in muslin, I started by cutting out patterns from my knit fabrics and connecting them with the plain stitch machine. The most challenging part was sewing all the components inside the body and flipping them inside out, because I have many circular shapes and curvy edges, it was extra hard with the overlocking machine. Hence, I started with it and changed back to plain stitch as I processing. I left the opening too small, so I had to open it up again. When I finally flipped my avatar around, another difficulty was closing it up. I try to topstitch the edge at first. but it turns out looking unfinished. Hence, I decided to hand-sew using the invisible stitch taught in class, which worked a lot better than I expected.
Above all, my avatar is an exaggerated visual representation of myself. It was carefully constructed within the limit of time and available materials. It inspired me to give a second life to these unwanted clothes in my wardrobe. I also learned soft sculpture is another powerful and effective artistic way to express and interact with the world. On top of that, my work is quite personal and emotional; it includes my own contemplation of how I exist and interact with this world.
