The Lies: Death, Sex, and Drugs
Side View of Set
Death
Dimensions: 4'' x 4''
Materials: Paraffin wax, Dead fish, Water with Live fish
Side view (Above)
Detail (Below)
Sex
Dimensions: 6'' x 4''
Materials: Feathers, Hot glue, and Semen
Drugs
Dimensions: 6'' x 4''
Materials: Paraffin wax, Vitamins
Side view (Above)
Detail (Below)
In the Piece "Confessions of an Overprotective Parent by the artist known as Bonny, she turned out to be quite successful in portraying her intentions. When first seeing the piece there was an automatic attraction to presentation, the utilization of the pedestal as a shelf was a great decision, the piece consists of three molded baby heads out of numerous materials, and in my opinion clearly representing the ideas of death, sex, and drugs as was her intent. Her choice to make essentially three different sculptures made the overall piece read as a story line, complimenting with her choice of title.
ReplyDeleteThe movement of this piece is linear, it is read from left to right. The first piece encountered in this sequence is death, the height of the pedestal is finely handled in the sense that you have a slight downward perspective on the piece. The piece is hollow made of a translucent wax, as are all three. This piece in particular included dead fish in the form and a living fish inside of the sculpture. When viewed through the wax the living fish appears to be quite vague, paralleling the idea that parents hide the idea of death by saying the living just went to another place. When in reality as portrayed by bonnie, death is plainly right in the face of the child, hence the dead fish formed in the wax face of the child figure.
Next, Bonnie creates another concept that most parents try to avoid, explaining to their children the idea of sex. I appreciated her material choice in this piece. The down feathers felt to be quite appropriate to the idea of sex, giving thought and connection to the relation of "the bed" and sex. Incorporated with seamen the idea was relatively comprehensible. Unlike the first piece there wasn't anything evidently to be said about how parents might have dodged this question from their children specifically. Such with materials, in the way that maybe using birds and bees, or flowers and trees might have alluded to the what parents might do in that situation.
Finally the last of Bonny's confessions was the concept of drugs. The vitamins in the brain was enough to get the point across legally. However, possibly multiple drug references could have portrayed that more clearly, such as incorporating a pill container, syringe, pipe? With this piece as well, no connection was clear of how parents may have avoided or skewed the idea of drugs to their children. I'm wasn't entirely convinced on how the material choice of wax was related to each individual piece, however overall it gave all forms a sense of unity which came across. None the less the overall piece was successful and comprehensible even without hearing from the artist about the work. There were numerous creative decisions made on her part that made the piece come together clearly, and made viewing the piece intriguing, and brought back some very confused childhood thoughts, connecting this piece to me on a personal level.