#69 Senior Seminar

Assignment #2 - Description and Themes. Describe one or two of your better pieces, and then write a bit on the themes that your work encompasses.

Here's what I am turning in tonight:

Description and Themes of my work:

“The Fall of Our Youth” is a digital collage that was assembled from scanning autumn leaves and metal pieces from my son’s erector set and combining them with vintage fashion images of models clad in torture-chamberesque corsets. The headless model in the foreground sports a full metal jacket that asked the viewer to consider the lengths women have gone and will go to for the sake of “beauty”. The border of leaves refers to the seasonal aspect of a woman’s desirability in American culture. The work was created using a soft, inviting, purple palette to underscore the deception involved in the subset matter. In another digital collage, “Instruments of Change”, a child receives instruction from the essence of woman, portrayed by a juvenile hand plucking a fistful of red-matter from the exposed cranium of a woman’s head in the foreground. In the background, amidst the shadows, another woman pauses by an open door, afraid to exit. The viewer is asked to ponder the contradiction. This work was composited from an onion, dried moss, text and photography. In future composite works, I intend to experiment more with found objects, self portraits, 3D collage and experimental video collages.

American cultural ambivalence, gender stereotypes and social roles inform my work. Each piece is assembled from fragments of the everyday, the objectification of women and culture in general, African-American women and culture in particular. They are meant to encourage the deconstruction of media images and the development of social consciousness through discussion and analysis. These works, as they continue to evolve and take shape, create one possible pathway for following a belief or behavior back to its origin. Themes include poetry, religion, myth, music and daily human ritual.