Found Object: Ephemera Piece
Exhibition Text
Title: Waxed Beauty
Size: 30.48cm x 15.24cm
Medium: Found Object
Month of Completion: April 2016
This found-object, ephemeral piece was assembled outdoors and photographed by the artist. All materials were found in nature unless stated otherwise. This assemblage attempts to discuss modern society’s issue and obsession with beauty, specifically the highly revered ‘youthful beauty’. This piece was inspired by both the ephemeral work of Andy Goldsworthy and the silversmiths of the VIctorian era. The plants and flowers are dipped in wax to represent the way modern beauty becomes preserved but yet unnatural by a variety of chemicals and procedures, arranged to echo Victorian hand mirrors that have long been a symbol of beauty.
Size: 30.48cm x 15.24cm
Medium: Found Object
Month of Completion: April 2016
This found-object, ephemeral piece was assembled outdoors and photographed by the artist. All materials were found in nature unless stated otherwise. This assemblage attempts to discuss modern society’s issue and obsession with beauty, specifically the highly revered ‘youthful beauty’. This piece was inspired by both the ephemeral work of Andy Goldsworthy and the silversmiths of the VIctorian era. The plants and flowers are dipped in wax to represent the way modern beauty becomes preserved but yet unnatural by a variety of chemicals and procedures, arranged to echo Victorian hand mirrors that have long been a symbol of beauty.
Inspirations
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This piece was inspired both by the ephemeral work of Andy Goldsworthy, and of the intricate metalworks of the Victorian era. I thought Goldsworthy’s pieces lent themselves particularly well to the found object aspect of this project, and I brought in the Victorian work out of my own interest. The juxtaposition of natural and man-made, ephemeral and antique, really attracted my interest and better communicated my intended meaning for this piece. I used his ideas of creating shape and color out of natural materials, but while his work is often just simple shapes, mine reflects an actual object that people can recognize.
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Meaning
The message I wanted to communicate with this artwork is about beauty and humanity’s obsession with it. I used wilted and dried plants dipped in wax to echo the way people will constantly attempt to preserve their ‘youthful beauty’, often with unsuccessful results. Furthermore, this aspect also tries to convey the way living things are not meant to be preserved for so long, flowers and humans alike are meant to wilt and eventually die, and preserving them forever in this way strips them of their natural purpose. I also placed the flowers to mimic a Victorian hand mirror, something that has long been a symbol of beauty and vanity. Using an antique form also shows how old this obsession goes back into human history.
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Process
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At first I had no idea what to do with this project, but I’d seen roses dipped in wax on the internet a while back, so I began experimenting with that idea because I found it interesting. I gathered flowers and dead leaves, plants, from around my house and backyard, then dipped them into melted beeswax in my kitchen. They didn’t look like much at first, but slowly as the wax solidified and I added more layers, they built up this sort of dripping, candy-coated texture. I started bringing in more things to preserve, even food items like lemons and asparagus. Eventually I decided to use mostly non-food plants like flowers and leaves because I didn’t want the meaning of the piece to be confused with issues about the food industry or hunger epidemic.
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I used any kind of fallen or dead plants I could gather outside in my backyard or the park near my house, which was the easiest to find as the snow had recently melted to expose all the plants left behind from last fall. The overall process for this project was actually relatively quick because after I covered everything in wax, all I had to do was go out and arrange them the way I wanted.
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Before I actually did this step outside, I did a test run in my house to experiment with arranging the pieces and determine how large a piece I could create. I learned quickly that the ‘frame’ of the mirror needed to be thicker than I thought to solidify the image I wanted. Also, arranging worked best when I placed the flower or leaf towards the outside and bare stems toward the middle, as this helped hide the stems and let the flowers become the focus.
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I then took my supplies outside to find a good size pool of water on the ground after it had rained, and repeated the arranging process in the environment. I thought this arrangement looked good, but still not totally what I wanted. Surrounding the dried plants with fresh ones only confused the viewer as it was difficult to distinguish the actual piece from it's surroundings. Taking that into consideration, I found more pools of water in the crumbling bricks of my alleyway. The holes where stones had crumbled away made a perfect water container for my piece. I arranged the flowers and plants in the exact same way on the bricks, filling in more water as I needed throughout the process. This new background offered not only a better contrast to the piece, but could be used to heighten the meaning behind it. Using brick as a background could describe the kind of commercial, industrialized world that the obsession with beauty becomes so prevalent.
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Reflection
Ultimately I was pleased with the way this project turned out, although I had a few setbacks along the way. The process itself wasn't very difficult or time-consuming, the majority of the work was coming up with an idea. Originally I was going to make a face out of the materials, but at the last minute I decided the mirror could offer more metaphor and meaning to it, and would be easier to recreate; I was worried that by trying to make a face I would either take too much time to construct it or it would come out unrecognizable due to the medium I worked with. I thought the shape and aesthetic of the piece came out very nicely, but to change one thing I would have added more layers of wax to the plants; as they are it's a bit difficult to recognize that they even have wax on them.