Assignment 2: Comfort
After over twelve hours straight of tying knots, I was glad the prompt was comfort.
After over twelve hours straight of tying knots, I was glad the prompt was comfort.
The series of photographs are meant to blend the object with the two dimensional stains on the page. The photos show the object gradually become more abstracted into a stain.
The two photographs are meant to describe two types of comfort. One is cramped and wrapped up in oneself and the other is more open and represents release.
For this piece, I was inspired by Shinkichi Tajiri’s Friendship Knot. To turn something we trivialize into something so grand and big instantly grabbed my attention. We tend to do things, wear things, get things without paying attention to where they came from and why they were created. It makes us sit still and think for awhile of the things we trivialize. That’s what I got from Tajiri’s Friendship Knot. Similar to that piece, I wanted to display something we trivialize in public in its unconventional size to make people perceive something that has very small presence in our lives differently.
This Red Ball of Yarn has a deeper conceptual meaning. There is a single knot made in the center and the threads are just wrapped around that knot. This continuous ravel of the threads represents both connection and complication in relationships. And for people to interact with this piece in public in playful manner lets people forget about all the small complications in life.
For this assignment I drew inspiration from a fable I remember fondly from my youth, Aesop’s ‘The Lion and the Mouse’. In this fable, a mouse proves he is more worthy than he appears by chewing a lion free from a rope trap.
http://vimeo.com/52825999
Jon Cuba:
(you should look at all his work though)
http://cargocollective.com/joncuba/787484
Louise Bourgeois used knotting in both her two dimensional and three dimensional work