Thin = in

Fourth Term Project

Sculpture

Acrylic (Dala), Paper Mache, Cardboard, Newspaper, Texture Paste, Memory Foam, One plastic cup, Liquid Tempara, Gelatin mixture, 100's and 1000's, glitter.

Cari van Niekerk (me)

"If you are not thin, you will never truly be in"

  -Cari van Niekerk.

Planning:

The theme for this project was "the kitchen." Personally, I did not find it easy to think of something to create from that theme. It is not as easy as it may sound, but at the end of this two week struggle with planning this masterpiece, I would say that it was well worth the effort.

To begin with, I just jotted down all of the ideas that popped into my mind from thinking about a kitchen. 

The first idea that popped into my head, was where you take a lot of household items that are normally allocated inside the kitchen, and stack them in a certain formation, that, when a light shone upon it from a certain angle, the shadow formed a certain picture. A picture of a person eating a lot of fast food, yet staying quite thin, or something of the sort.

Rough sketch of shadow art

I did not quite know how to express the feelings that that idea evoked, so I continued with the jotting down of ideas.

The second idea that came to mind, was an idea where I took normal everyday household items that everyone knows how to use and use everyday. Then I take away its purpose.

Tampered kitchen tools

In the picture seen on the right of the screen, it is seen that I thought of a few objects that I use quite often and just made it pointless. The following objects were thought of:

1. A cheese grater

2. A spatula

3. A pot

4. A drinking glass

5. A measuring spoon

These objects signify the life out of a  child's viewpoint. No child will know exactly how to use an object from the kitchen unless someone shows them exactly how to use it. 

Parents sometimes forget how a child thinks and, through the usage of this project, I would've made them feel the same type of confusion a child feels when they want to use a object but just do not know how to. 

The third idea that came to mind, was the fact that when you look into the front side of a spoon, the world as you know it, turned around. It intrigued me, to be honest.

World out of the viewpoint of spoon

I tried to expand this idea a little bit, by thinking of the fact that not everything always is as it seems and trying to create a art project that signifies just that. 

As I rambled through ideas, this one suddenly hit me:

The brain tells you to stop what you are doing when you are experiencing pain. Pain is the thing that keeps you from completely destroying your body. Now, what would happen if you take away that pain? Would you still stop hurting yourself when you do, or would something else happen?

I thought of how to express this idea visually. Here are a few scenario's that I came up with from using that idea as motivation:

Planning page in journal

• When you are busy cutting a piece of celery, you stop as soon as you get to the end. What if you never realize that you are at the end of the celery? Oh, that's right! You would continue cutting into your finger. Just casually chopping it up into little pieces of yummy flesh to finish that finger salad off with.

• When you are busy peeling that potato with your favorite, sharpest knife, you do not stop when you get to the bottom of the potato. No. You continue cutting your own sensitive wrist right through that big, juicy artery of yours.

Planning page in journal

• When you are busy balling out that watermelon, and you just do not have enough to serve a full helping to your guests, you just can't resist continuing into your own hand. That big, puffy part of the inside of your hand just looks so delicious and possible to make a nice meal out of. Who would notice the difference between the watermelon balls and flesh balls anyways? They're both soft, sweet, juicy and blood red anyways. 

After this last idea, I decided that I just went a little bit too far with the gory part of my natural preference when it comes to my art projects, so I stopped jotting down all of these weird ideas and started to string them all together to create a epic project that would be PG friendly.

After a lot of thinking, googling for some inspirational artworks and having a heck of a lot of conversations with the people around me, I finally got inspiration for my final art project.

Inspiration from Cleas Oldenburg and others

Claes Oldenburg Inspirational photos

The idea that I came up with, was to create an extremely over sized measuring spoon, with a lot of sweets that look delicious on a whole new level in the inside of the "head"of the spoon. 

Page of planning in journal

The measuring spoon will say "5g" on its neck and it will have pieces of glass sticking out of the bottom of the head. It will be a very warm, attractive orange-red colour and it will be placed on top of a tray that is completely blackened. 

Planning page in journal

There will be a delicious strawberry milkshake, two doughnuts and a gigantic cupcake placed on top of the head of the spoon. The main colour of these sweets, will be pink and white, as mostly girls are super obsessed with their weight. Most of them bellieve that they are extremely overweight, even though they are not.

Planning page in journal

The final product:

Here are a few pictures of how this project turned out to look like after it was done:

Side view of sculpture

Bottom, from view of spoon (glass at bottom)

Top, front view of sculpture

What everything signifies:

Colour:

The red-orange colour of the spoon signifies that there is danger there as well as entice you to come closer and feel welcome when you look at this sculpture. The black of the tray contrasts heavily with the orange of the spoon, which also causes the artwork to catch your eye. The black of this tray also shows the viewer that there is something sinister going on in this artwork, as the colour black is often associated with something bad that is happening. This oclour is thus not only chosen since it contrasts so much with the spoon, but also since it gives a subtle hint that you should stay away from this spoon and everything in or on it, as it is only going to cause bad things to happen to you.

The pink of the foodstuff shows the viewer that this art project is mainly focused on women. Girls or women are the ones who are mostly concerned about their weight and would go to any extent to try to get it as far down as they possibly can. Males, on the other hand, do normally not worry as much about their weight as the females do. As a result, there is no overwhelmingly blue colour in this sculpture. But, since there are a few males out there that are also concerned about being overweight, blue has been used in a few different places in the food, like in the straw of the milkshake, as well as the blue hundreds and thousands. 

Size:

The gigantic spoon contrasts with the normal sized foodstuff and the normal sized tray. This has been done, since it now emphasizes the fact that the spoon is, in reality, too big to fit in anyone's mouth. 

The foodstuff and tray are both life sized, as it emphasized the fact that that this truly is what happens in real life. It shows that this is a story told that is based upon happenings in real life. 

Other:

The glass pieces stuck on the bottom of the head of this spoon, gives the feeling that if it was possible to fit this gigantic spoon inside your mouth, the moment you bit down to eat the foodstuff, will be the moment when you cut your mouth into a million tiny little pieces. The glass is thus, in a way, a warning on not to eat the foodstuff.

On the spoon, there is a part that says "5g". This shows that, whoever gets the craving for these foodstuff, only allows themselves to eat 5 gram of it at a time. We all know how little amount that is of anything.

All of these components together, sends the feeling that you should not eat fast food, since "if you're not thin, you're not in."

Observation drawings:

I decided to play around a little bit with pen this term. The effect that came from it, was super realistic. The way that I made these observation drawings, was by drawing the actual picture, smudging certain parts of it and then redrawing over the smudges to create highlights in the actual drawings. 

This effect can be seen in these four drawings:

4 Observation drawings of lips

When I begun drawing these drawings, I did not think that there was room for improvement on the manner that I used, drawing these drawings, so I started off by drawing an eye in the same manner than what I previously had done.

Eye in the middle is another observation drawing