Memento

The body is the primary mode of perceiving scale.

This is a photo of Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland Park, located in Anaheim, California. In photos, the castle looks grand and awe-inspiring. However, in person, the castle is quite small, especially compared to Walt Disney World's Cinderella Castle. You can't properly judge the scale of an object unless you see it in person.

The capacity of objects to serve as traces of authentic experience.

Objects have the ability to trigger memories of the past. For me, this stuffed animal brings back memories of the end of my senior year of high school.

The souvenir reduces the public, the monumental, and the 3D into the miniature, that which can be enveloped by the body. 

This small charm is representative of a nearly 1000ft structure.

Nostalgia cannot be sustained without loss.

This ornament was given to me by my late grandfather, and it serves as a reminder of him and the memories we shared together. 

To have a souvenir of the exotic is to possess both a specimen and a trophy

This shrunken head is representative of a culture that is very different from that of contemporary Western culture , and acts as a specimen from said culture. The shrunken heads were used as victory trophies by the Jivaro tribe of Ecuador.

Soap Changes

"Jessica"- Hippo soap carving, pre-changes

I began by removing the front limbs of my hippo, which was not difficult since they had already begun to fall off (Subtractive)

I then placed the limbs, in addition to leftover soap shavings from the original carving, into a mason jar and liquified it using boiling water. I had originally attempted to melt the soap via a double-boiler setup, but it turns out that my particular soap does not melt very easily. (Additive and Subtractive)

After liquifying the soap, I poured the soap into two smaller containers and dyed the soap purple and pink using ink (Additive)

I then proceeded to carefully pour the soap onto a sheet of wax paper, marbling the two colors together using a toothpick (Additive)

While the soap was hardening, I returned to my hippo figure and decapitated it using a utility knife. The head broke into multiple pieces while I was cutting (Subtractive)

I then used a loop tool to shave down one of the sides of the torso (Subtractive).

Next, I inserted toothpicks into the sculpture (Additive)

I then burned the toothpicks down, hoping to char the soap. However, the flame extinguished itself once it hit the soap (Subtractive)

Next, I broke the torso into uneven pieces using a utility knife (Subtractive)

                        I then peeled the hardened soap from the wax paper and trimmed off some of the edges (Subtractive). In order to create an adhesive for the soap, I melted down some beeswax pellets.

    I covered up the beeswax with gold acrylic paint and attached the sculpture to a base that I created using balsa wood and acrylic paint.

The final result reminded me of something that might belong on a distant planet. It no longer resembles the soap hippo it was crafted from.

Final Result

Response to Janine Antoni

Janine Antoni has an unorthodox, introspective, and innovative approach to her artwork. I really appreciated the community aspect of her "Moor" piece, as the interwoven materials all held a special meaning to the person who contributed them. Unifying the objects in the form of a rope was a smart aesthetic and symbolic choice, since a rope could represent the bonds we form with one another. As a cosmetologist, I cringed when I saw Janine mopping the floor with her hair and hair dye in her "Loving Care" performance, especially since at first I thought she was using paint or ink and couldn't imagine how difficult that would be to get out of her hair.

First Touches

The section of Touch titled First Touches detailed the benefits of touch on premature and ailing infants, including weight gain and responsiveness. In response, I decided to draw the infant described within the section. 

Hair

Unlike your typical college student, I have a special relationship with hair. During my two years of community college in my home state of New Jersey, I concurrently attended cosmetology school, from which I graduated with my professional license in May of 2015. The bulk of the material taught in cosmetology school curriculum relates to hair, whether it be cutting, washing, coloring, styling, or chemically changing the texture of it. In addition, I also learned about the structure and composition of hair and disorders and diseases related to it. The section in Touch titled Hair brought back memories of cosmetology school, so in response, I staged a photo shoot with items from my kit.