For this
project, the first idea that came to mind was bringing objects to life by
giving them body parts. I thought of personifying food which probably stemmed
from the fact that I am vegan. I’ve heard the jokes about fruit and vegetables
being alive before I “murdered” them to eat them and how killing plants is the
same as killing animals for food. I wanted to illustrate this joke in a playful
way. I began researching surrealist pieces involving bringing fruit to life and
found the pieces below. The first image shows what I thought I wanted my fruits
to look like with eyes and mouths drawn onto them. Then, I thought of making
them features out of paper clay, which is why I looked at the second image,
which is a paper clay cat. The next three images were interesting to me because
they illustrate fruits as human by giving them bones, drawing a fetus inside,
and literally constructing a human face out of produce. The last five images
show fruit as animals. The image showing the radish cut up inspired me the most
to make my produce look “dead.”
At the same time that I started
thinking about this project, I ate some really good berries from the restaurant
that I work in and had been craving them. But, you can only buy berries in
plastic clamshell containers if you shop at a grocery store. The only place I
could find berries in cardboard containers is a farmer’s market, which I am
never able to go to because of school and work. I thought of ways to
incorporate my frustration into my piece by adding plastic to the image and
bringing it to life in as “the villain.” Instead of buying plastic, which I do
not want to support, I used the plastic bags that my roommates use when grocery
shopping. I refuse to use plastic produce bags, and do not want to support the
purchase of products that come packaged in plastic, so reusing my roommate’s
bags seemed like the best way to compose the image while sticking true to my
morals. I chose not to use paper clay and instead chose to draw on a printed
image of a photo I took while cooking dinner one night. While I was setting up
the still life for the picture, I thought of how to show that plastic lasts
forever and the produce does not. This is why I chose to include a speech bubble
conversation between two heads of broccoli, implying that they would live
forever if they lived in plastic. While researching, I came across an article
that shows works of art related to plastic pollution and have included the link
below. I enjoy creating pieces that “plea” to the viewer to change the way that
they live or think to better the environment, and I think that the images shown
in the link below accomplish this really well.
I wanted to branch out from my
usual choice in media and use color. I wanted to challenge myself to let the
piece look imperfect by resisting the urge to draw out the objects before
adding color. Instead, I only used water color and allowed the piece to not be
perfectly photo-realistic.
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