Tag Archive: Boxes
These are photos I took of a box I made as a gift for a friend, Lexi, as a place to store her ambrotypes. It was a difficult box to make and I had a lot of trouble with it, but it turned out great.
This was made during my first quarter of grad school following the completion of the Bedroom Box. My intention was to make a whole series of these boxes, but I didn’t have the time to devote to the project.
Any similarities with a certain “E.T.” movie were completely unintentional.
These two small works (models? constructions? thingies?) were made with the intent that they’d have a role in a future box (like this box) but those future boxes were never made so they are currently sitting alone on a shelf collecting dust (as opposed to the boxes that actually got made that are sitting on a shelf collecting dust). View full article »
This post is for Tricia, because we talked about this particular work earlier today.
Not too many people have actually seen this. It’s too time-consuming to make a whole series of them, and it doesn’t quite fit with anything else I’ve made.
I literally finished it days before my first year here at RIT in the summer of 2004. I don’t remember where this idea came from. The original concept was to construct a tableau, a little scene made specifically to be photographed.
I had no plans, no forethought about what kind of scene I wanted to create, I constructed the box and just improvised from then on. (For a frame of reference on scale, the face of the box measures 8.5″ by 10″) The large circular hole in the top was originally for lighting purposes, but I later realized that I needed that opening simply for putting the damned thing together.
It can be difficult, after you’ve spent a couple hours making precise measurements and cuts, to go ahead and ruin that perfect, pristine surface by, you know, making art out of it. Like the hesitation before a blank canvas to make that first brushstroke or the author staring at the little blinking cursor on the computer screen. White is a symbol for purity—it’s almost a shame to have to ruin such a slice of perfection. This is why I sometimes resort to chance to make the first moves for me, as I did in this project by gluing so many random bits of yarn and string to the insides of the box.
From there I was able to work on the scene readily and consistently. I still had no particular image in my mind and I worked in no sensible order. Many elements in the background were added after I had already installed the objects before them.
With a few exceptions, the different objects are made of colored thread, pieces of fabric, and plain computer printer paper. And, as you can easily see, everything is held in place by thread. It became a rather fun challenge to install new objects around what was already there. All I had for tools was a pair of needle nose needle-nose pliers, tweezers, and various needles and I had to perform slowly and carefully, as if I was performing surgery.
One of the reasons I make art, one of the biggest, is simply that I enjoy making things with my hands. I enjoy working through the puzzles of how to create something out of raw materials. But I often take this to bizarre extremes. Was it really necessary to give the floating glasses a set of lenses? Or did I actually need to bind that tiny little book the Flower is holding? And then the walking pair of pants is actually strung up by tiny belt loops, the walking shoes are actually laced, and the shirt, while not actually buttoned, was certainly stitched together to make it look so–I even stuffed small bits of cloth between the “buttons” to heighten the effect.
Overall, I’m happy with the end result. There’s so much happening for such a small space and there are a lot of different ways it could be read. But what I find most interesting is the contradiction between the different elements and the very method I chose to use to hold them in their respective places.
There is an overall theme of animation and movement here. The clothes act as if alive and the plant is reading. And all the elements seem frozen in time, as in a photograph–the dresser drawer is halfway through it’s tumble to the floor and the airplane in the corner is definitely not going anywhere. Still other elements defy gravity–the boy flying out the window in particular. But despite all this action, nothing is happening–and nothing can ever happen. The terrible irony is that the only way these objects can come alive is by being tied down, suspended, motionless. The only reason the boy can fly is because of the thread holding him up but at the same time he cannot go anywhere because the thread is holding him back.
Note that this is different from Hollywood special effects where people can fly via a body harness and wire. The boy here is secured with three different threads, one for each arm and one for his foot. Occasionally, while constructing this, I’d give the box a gentle shake to see if something needed an extra support thread or if extra tension was needed in an existing one.
I never did make any photographs out of this, though I did actually bring it to Core class for our first critique where it was suggested that I turn it into a full size installation. (I imagined myself writing grant applications for years to come.)
I did actually create a second box, but it’s not nearly as rich and full–it’s never felt finished to me. Ultimately, though, I forgot about these works while I threw myself into The Amelia Series.
