FA Portfolio: Cardboard Toilet Saga

This week we were challenged to create the work of one of our classmates. I was given Madi, and I was excited to work on this as I had never woven before. I like to crochet and knit, so I am familiar and comfortable working in this medium, and I had always wanted to pick up this skill. I started by creating a cardboard loom, and selecting my palette, since Madi has shown us abstracted landscapes, I went along with this creating a wheat or corn field depiction. I decided to make it at nighttime, as something I would like to see in Madi's work is a grounding in space or time. I connected two panels via crochet, as I like the seamless continuation. lastly, I left some warp strings as tassels to allude to the traditional history of weaving, and added a white border and abstract half circle design to signify a modern twist.

For my own work this week, I was very focused on continuing to form my cardboard toilet. I created the hardest part of the structure-the bowl-using a series of curved arches and a mosaic like process with smaller pieces arranged onto them to create a curving bowl. I think that I will likely leave the raw cardboard on the toilet at least because it is nice to see the material manipulated in this way, that is out of the norm for it, and perhaps off-putting. The gritty disposable and fake nature of it also speak to what I want the rabbit character to represent (his personality and on being an unreliable narrator).

I also worked on one of the panels, inking some of the lines and beginning to add color. however, here I made a mistake in putting the black ink down before the color, and profuse bleeding of the black ensued. I plan to restart this one as I am also not totally pleased with the way the various elements are arranged on the paper. I also am considering adding more black and making the panels more graphic.

The reading this week was about how artists establish and project themselves as artists and the necessity to form one's own standards to achieve this. The narrator went on to describe the issue of confidence in an artist's own status and identity. In the past I have thought of this, in the form of feeling doubts and hesitation before creating something, as I almost felt I was not entitled to create what I want because I was not sure it was really "me" as I am not very interesting. Lately as with the story panels that I am making now and some other recent projects, I have begun to try and just make what I want to make and then examine and polish after the fact.

This week I am inspired by the work of Marcel Janco, with his cardboard masks. I like that the material itself is manipulated but not to such a degree that it is hidden what it is made of. There is also a playful tone and much personality carried into such a regularly nondescript material; this is something I am striving for with my own cardboard piece.

Portrait of Tzara, 1919. Image via dada-companion.com; Mask. Image via judaica-europeanea.eu