In my search for a project I could sink my teeth into, I began thinking about previous projects I had enjoyed not only creating, but allowing to evolve. This is my senior capstone, and as such, I want it to reflect not only my strengths and what I have learned, but express the most visceral thoughts and feeling I have accumulated through my experiences outside of my college career.
With that in mind, I had two things I knew I needed to include. My fascination with biomedical visualization, and my passion for modeling. But I struggled to figure out how to tie it all together.
When I was in my IDEAS 310 class, my teacher, Jason Pickleman, gave a lecture about Barbara Kruger. Her work struck a particular chord with me. But it didn’t quite click until Jason delivered yet another lecture about the Dadaist movement of art. The releasing of anger and complete rejection of the way the world is. From this lecture we were to create a response, and mine was in a similar way to Barbara Kruger. Taking my repressed feelings of objectification as a model and finding them in a scrambled heap of magnetic words. Thinking about interactions I have had over the years with sleezeball photographers and unsolicited comments from men twice my age and above.
“I want to kiss your sexy body all over”
“AYY SEXY MAMIII, LEMME GET A PIECE OF THAT!!!”
“Fuck you, stupid crazy bitch!”
“Keep posting more for me, babygirl!”
“You send me a$$ pics, I send you $$$”
“Can you put your fingers in your mouth for me, sweetheart?”
My decision to put the words over cutouts of classic Greek sculptures stems from the “ideal beauty” they represent. The perversion of the words slapped over their most intimate parts represents the feeling of wanting to hide that ideal beauty out of shame and fear because the world wants to ridicule and objectify it.
I still have these pieces magnetized to my refrigerator. So the other week, after I felt that I had been wracking my brain for a driving force behind this significant project, it hit me. I stared at the installation on my fridge and the lightbulb suddenly flashed on!
This side project ended up being the catalyst which influenced my final project for Jason’s class. I created a modeling portfolio in a three ring binder. But on every image, I placed words which blocked out certain elements of my features.
Human anatomy has always been a fascination of mine. Specifically, drawing it. This is why I took UIC’s minor in Biomedical Visualization. It offered a beautiful crossover of the science of the body, as well as the aesthetics of it. Art and science, wrapped into one!
I want to implement this passion into my project. So , with that being said, I intend to draw portions of the female body as a portion of this projects’ deliverables.
Solidifying the concept of this project had been a bit of a challenge. That being said, starting to work on the final deliverables made me feel uneasy. But I had to start somewhere, even if I was not entirely sure what the path to the finished product would look like.
I picked out an image from my personal portfolio of figure modeling and got to work. I prefer to do figure drawings on greyscale paper, as it gives me the opportunity to work with a wider range of value. However, I intended to eventually scan the figure drawings into Adobe, so in that case, Bristol board was what I decided to place the final drawing on.
On the greyscale paper, I used graphite pencil to sketch the figure, using my personal reference photo. It felt satisfying to use the knowledge I had gained from my Construction of the Human Anatomy class to ensure proper proportions. I decided not to apply any shadows or value to the greyscale drawing, as it would not get transferred from the tracing paper to the Bristol board. I used a technique I had learned in a previous biomedical visualization class to transfer the sketch on the greyscale page to the Bristol board without the image getting flipped. This was accomplished by tracing the image onto the tracing paper, then flipping the transfer page over and rubbing graphite over the traced lines, flipping the page back over, centering it on the Bristol board, and retracing the figure with a colored pencil, transferring the loose graphite on the back into the Bristol board. Now I could apply shadows and value to the figure.
Putting together my final progress presentation was satisfying. To see the work I’d done leading up to this was very interesting to see all put together. I enjoyed seeing the visual thought process I seemed to follow throughout the art I’ve done. I had gotten a critique in my sculpture class this year that the style of art I create feels “…very divine feminine, but with an aura of intimidation.” With the images of this project all put together, I would say that my capstone stays true to this style.
In the next two months following this presentation, I made one big change to my “Next Steps”, which was that I decided against conducting the interviews. Perhaps, this would be something I could do in the future as a way to extend this project. But for the sake of finishing it in time for the gallery, I decided to focus just of finishing the drawings, getting them into what ended up being Adobe Illustrator, and getting them printed.
The printing process was perhaps the most exciting and nail biting part of the project. I knew I wanted the prints to be big, but that puts them at risk for poor resolution. But I was in good hands with Chris Markin, the director of the printing lab. And just like that, I had the first physical print of this project I had been slaving over for a year.
I was told to sit with this beautiful new print for a couple of days…just to make sure I was happy with it. I sure was! But in the back of my head, there was a voice hollering, “Make it BIGGER!!!”. Well, why the hell not? This project was meant to be big and in your face, so why not add a little more square footage?
I could not have been happier with the result.
In the end, this project was a life goal achieved. To have my original art pieces hung in a gallery to show to the world was one of the greatest experiences of my life, and I will be carrying this accomplishment with me as I move into the future.
Will it end here? I am not quite sure yet. I could certainly see myself extending and adding to this project in the future. Who knows, perhaps the gallery at UIC is not this artwork’s final destination.
