Project 3 - Jessie Kim

Original Compositions

Process

First, I realized that in the middle of my cactus panel, there was a big area of blank space that I could use to attach the smaller pieces to. Second, I knew that I had a lot of white blank space and black/dark blue space and wanted to use them to create most of the at least 100 pieces we needed from the compositions. Present in the picture are not all of the pieces from the compositions; they are just most of the black and white pieces. I then cut out the colors that were part of the diptych, like the cacti and the stars.

I wanted to maintain the integrity of the diptych's theme of a "desert night" so I cut the black and white pieces into irregular/random but sharp pieces to represent the cactus' prickly features and decided to use the colors to create petals for a desert or cactus flower. I chose to sew the pieces of the Bristol board along the three edges of the big white triangle piece. I don't know why I particularly wanted to use needle and thread for this part of the composition but I think the idea stuck with me when the project was first introduced (the method of sewing was one of the first examples said to be an acceptable fixative). I'm also into embroidery, and honestly, I like sewing, so I guess that that also influenced why I wanted to use needle and thread. For the flower, I just glued the pieces onto the Bristol board and continued to overlap the pieces.

The bottom and widest edge of the triangle was sewn last. The side edges contain layers of randomly aligned black and white pieces. On the bottom right and left corners, the number of Bristol board pieces layered together is the most and the number decreases as you approach the top vertex of the triangle. I did this in order to create a small effect of rhythm along the back side of the composition.

Results

Reflection

At first, I didn't like the idea of this project because I did not intend to deconstruct and reconstruct my original compositions and ended up kind of liking how they had turned out. However, once I actually started to cut up the piece, I realized that I can just remake these paintings and make it even better so it's not a big deal. It took a lot of time to sew the pieces together and a lot of effort and a little bit of blood but I don't regret my choice of fixative. It was a fun project to do and sort of convenient in the sense that I didn't have to do much thinking or apply as much focus as I had to do with the other projects so I was able to work on this project while watching TV and in between actions/events. During the critique, classmates said that my idea and piece is cool and clever. It was cool to work on something that was more of a 3D composition.