Identity through weight

Posted on | December 8, 2009 | Comments Off

I just finished my third class for my Master’s program. As a final project we had to select a big idea to create artworks about. I chose to create art about identity. More specifically I chose to create works based around body image and weight and how people identify others and themselves through those images.

At many points in this process I felt overwhelmed with what I wanted to do. I still had a ton of thoughts in my head when I forced myself to sit down and sketch my final pieces. Because of this I decided to create my works in pieces that I could lay out and rearrange. I made a list of words and images I wanted to have: calorie numbers, overweight, stupid, organic, healthy, a couch, fork and knife, carrots, scales and cupcakes were just some of the things on my list. I started drawing and painting the images I wanted and laying them out in the ways I had them sketched. The more I made the more I saw everything coming together. I started to stencil the words on my background paper and painting a dream like atmosphere. It was at the point that I had my first piece done minus the ultra thin model like figure I intended on placing onto the scale, when I realized the piece seemed complete as is. I decided to make one last change to my ideas. I took out all the figures I wanted to place in my works. That is all except the childlike head popping out over an enormous cupcake. This was for two reasons, 1. you don’t see the body so there is no weight association and 2. this helps show the scale of the cupcake. For all the other pieces intended on having either an extremely thin model like figure, or a terribly obese figure in each piece. I decided that by removing all these figures, I caused the viewer to place themselves into the works (something I had at one point wanted to do with mirrors.) After this last change I felt totally confident and flew through the rest of the works.

I used many media in these works. I drew with sharpies, painted with tempera paint, used oil pastels, stenciled, and decoupaged my pieces into existence. I have never constructed works in pieces before. I have never felt the need to have the ability to rearrange my works. I needed to do this in order to feel comfortable starting, and am so glad I did it this way. Had I have not created in pieces, I would not have come to the realization of how powerful my pieces were minus the figures. Although I have layered works with journal pages and painted on top of them or fabric glued to canvas, I have never truly decoupaged prior to these works. I really enjoyed trying new techniques and am very pleased with the results.