September 24th, 2020

A not so new concept that I have been working on is the relationship between hair, skin, growth, and preservation.

This all started last semester when Covid-19 hit and classes were moved online. My Intro to Low Fire class decided to have small projects where we would create forms and sculptures out of miscellaneous objects we had laying around.

In the beginning, I had trouble finding random objects around my apartment since each object held a sentimental value to myself and I didn’t want to change them or take them apart.

Days went by and I was brushing my cat when something just popped into my head. “My cat’s fur.” I brush it out and throw it away, I don’t have any sentimental value towards it and nor does my cat. The only thing he does with the fur I brush out is to eat it.

So why not use it?

As this idea formed more, the reasons or meanings behind this became more clear and I was able to create a piece.

This was the piece and along with it, I wrote this, “This abstract sculpture was created from a wine cup that my significant other gave me, balls of fur from my cat that I adopted and dead branches of a plant I was gifted when I moved into my apartment. The color palette of this piece is centered around the more neutral colors of the world such as browns, whites, and blacks. Now I chose this color palette because I wanted a gradual change in the color or concept in general. Similar to my inspirational piece with the color slowly changing, I wanted to emanate that with the abstract sculpture. The exercise before this was more colorful and vibrant to match the dusty purple of the flower and now this exercise is more neutral to match the parts of the flower that lost its vibrancy but still has color. This piece is interesting to me because it involves textures that you wouldn’t really see together. The plants growing out of fur is unnatural and strange and the fact that it’s in a wine glass just makes it even more strange. I guess the mood I want to convey in the end is just the beauty of life and how strange it can be.”

Here I am now

Now I’m going to continue this piece with iterations.

But as I created more the concept changed slightly. When you see the wine cup and fur, they don’t belong. Hair and something that is used to eat or drink mixed together gives off a repulsive feeling. They aren’t meant to be together as well as fur or hair being able to produce something after it. Hair is considered “dead” there shouldn’t be anything that grows from it, in fact once something living dies the fur or hair takes significantly longer to decompose. Human hair in fact takes about 2 years to decompose after death.

But there is also the concept that I have realized that I’ve been circling around. It’s the concept of skin, of a covering. I was just recently told of how my work seems to center around perception, layers, outside vs. inside, what is perceived and what is not, etc.