Project 5: Independent Research

For this last project, I would like to continue what I am doing in the previous project. I will continue to style and setting of the previous while incorporating a different sculpture artist to base for the figure's appearance. Justin de Caines Taylor is an artist who produces concrete sculptures and place them in the ocean to act as coral reefs. The materials used to make his special recipe of concrete support sea growth and allow for coral to grow easily, helping the ocean naturally reproduce it's plants and animals that are being negatively affected by human interference. Here, the human hand is helping the ocean while the ocean his covering and ruining the sculptures. However, half the sculpture become the infliction of the sea growth. The result, is a beautiful combination of color, texture, and pattern that enrich and give life, literally, to the concrete sculptures.

I am trying to think about other locations besides the one used in my previous image for a background. I think that a change in setting would allow for a more complete change in concept in response to the original image and sculpture. This image would have a dynamic of beauty in growth and destruction verse the other image being a pull between restoration and injury.  Because of this, the domestic setting might not be as fitting since the previous has a quite home-like quality to it. The sea growth version would call for a more open atmosphere, possibly in a more open, but still natural setting. Allowing the setting a change would open avenues for comparison. Also the nude being bare and open will contrast the concealment of the sea growth over the body. The first being a recovery, everything has been broken down. The second being a struggle, everything being built up and around the figure to protect and thrive off of it which in turn hinders and destroys. 

The setting should be much more simplified to highlight the sea growth making that the focus. The corner of a wall with plain molding and background might advantageous in order to draw the focus away from the image as a whole and into the figure. Corners and mirrors seem to be situations that come up often in Franesca's Woodman's work, the photographer that I based my previous project on for background and will continue to explore. In continuing with this, the blank but afflicted wall with mirror for reflection will be a part of my piece as well. 

An additional idea revolves around the figure sculpture artist Christyl Boger. She sculpts mainly women sitting, often ornamented in traditional blue and white ceramics decoration and lustre. Her works talks about vulnerability and fragility and the impulsiveness vs. control that sometimes is attained through human action. She is strongly influenced by the history of ceramics, hence the decorative references to ornamentation. This adds a certain reference to class and ornamentation to her work.

For me, this can be cross-referenced with ornamentation that women wear as jewelry, highlighting the gold and old patterning. Old victorian jewelry seems to resinate an interest with me since it is often gaudy and over done yet so revered as being beautiful and precious. Utilizing the jewelry as the reference to lustre is interesting comparison. Having an over adornment of vintage jewelry may be another beautiful yet masking way of concealing oneself, in line with how sea growth can take over and cover. However, this is done by the person themselves to represent this idea of beauty while covering up other thing with something more appealing. Impulsivity has a relation to the emotional concepts linked with Justin Novak's work that what can be inferred from Francesca Woodman's overall impression. Referencing pain and sensuality in the same realm is an idea that can be discussed through ornamentation of the woman. There is a certain emotional association with ornamentation that is discussed with a conscious need to present oneself as one's best, initiating the need for jewelry or other adornments as well as a overly-concsious awareness of physical being.