Choice Project Reflection:
I can honestly say that this second part assignment for unit one was easier for me, conceptually as is much easier for me to conceive an art piece in response to a prompt than starting from nothing. When the choice is limitless there is too much to choose from and I am lost as to where to begin. When given a prompt or guideline I have something to work from and a place to bounce off of. Therefore, I believe it was beneficial for me to experiment with each prompt provided for this assignment.
I thought of the idea for the forest of shadows during an exercise with paper in my Creative Process class. At the time I was also participating in an academic class The Philosophy of Art, covering Plato and his theory of mimicry which also inspired my creative thought. The theory that there is only one true object and anything else made in its image is a copy inspired me to ponder the shadow of the image and how far removed it is from the true object itself. I thought then of our rainforests and the devastating effect our human interaction has on them. I kept it in my head for over a year, till now, when the opportunity to let it flow creatively presented itself through this assignment’s process.
My original idea was to cut silhouettes of tree forms from plain white paper and just photograph the images of the tree’s shadows. However, through the process of trying out ideas, I concluded that it would be important to represent the image of the tree as a truer representation in colour and likeness. I drew the trees with graphite pencil then coloured the trunk and branches and leaves with chalk pastels then went over that with oil pastels. I like the representation I rendered.
The most difficult part of creating the trees was the standing frames. I am not a carpenter and have very few skills when it comes to construction. My husband helped me with this, thankfully. We managed to come up with some pretty good frames to fasten four of my trees too. The next hurdle was finding the time to get to the NIC studios to record the art taking place. I say take place because it is more of a performance piece, something I thought I would never do.
I do not like being filmed and recorded doing things. No way No thank you! This artwork is my very first performance piece. Jack was able to go to the college with me to help me set up the work, photograph, and film it. I think I would have preferred that I filmed him rather than have myself in the final piece. Though I find this amusing I am not impressed. I still do not like being part of the artwork. It is a huge risk.
I do like how the completed version turned out. I would like to see it on a broader scale. I am still curious about what it would be like if I filmed the shadow while the paper images burned.