Midterm project

Below are the guidelines I gave you in class this week for your midterm project. Please take some time to read them over thoroughly.

NOTE: The exact deadline is yet to be determined. Projects will be due some time after spring break.

WRITING ON THE BODY:

This assignment is about exploring the formal possibilities and conceptual implications of a mode of self-expression that can be considered the most primal form of mark-making: writing on the body. While there are many different ways to approach this project, a good place to begin is a consideration of today’s tattoo culture, in which people have highly personalized words and images inked indelibly onto their skin—with results that can be both astonishingly beautiful and thoroughly grotesque. A less familiar but equally fascinating phenomenon is the practice of scarification that occurs in many African and Pacific cultures, in which deep scars are “etched” onto the face to form symbolic marks. These marks can indicate anything from status in the community to ancestral connections to personal achievements such as having undergone a certain rite of passage.

While we won’t be doing any real tattooing or scarifying for this assignment, the idea is to make a large-scale drawing that depicts some kind of personal text “written” on either your body or that of a surrogate (both male and female models will be available). We will be working with projected images, and in the past many students have incorporated aspects of the projections into their drawings, with very intriguing results.

The project breaks down into roughly seven steps, but obviously you should be considering all of them simultaneously as you go along.

1. Choosing a text: The first step is to select a piece of writing that holds some personal significance for you. It can be anything from a poem by Emily Dickinson to a passage from the Koran to the lyrics of a Pink Floyd song to something you wrote yourself. The length, style, and content of the text are entirely up to you.

2. Converting your text into an image: After selecting your text, you will need to convert the letters and words into an “image” from which you’ll make your drawing. This can be as simple as typing your text in a Word document and making a print of it. If this is what you do, be sure to give great consideration to your font, as it will clearly affect the meaning of your final image. You should experiment with a variety of different fonts, font sizes, and text configurations in the initial stages of your project. When you arrive at a final text composition, print it out on a regular 11” x 8.5” piece of paper to turn in to me. I will convert these images into slides for projection.

3. Choosing a body part: After selecting a text and considering various formats for it, the next step will be to choose a site on your body (or the model’s) to bear the text. This decision should be made with the utmost care, since both the formal particularities of the site (i.e., the texture of the skin, the angles and contours of the bones and muscles, etc.) and its psychological associations will contribute greatly to the meaning of your piece. In making your decision about body site, you might want to take some photographs of various body parts (e.g., the palms of your hands, the soles of your feet, a kneecap, your face, your back, etc.) to work with in your preparations. Remember: the idea is not to entertain the prospect of a real tattoo but rather to make a really interesting work of art. The most intriguing image might result from placing your text in the least likely place!

4. Considering your composition: Once you’ve decided on both text and body site, begin to make some preliminary sketches that explore various alternatives for a basic composition. Feel free to abstract as much as you need to (for example, zooming in on body parts can create very beautiful and ambiguous compositions).

5. Approaching your final drawing: There are several ways of approaching the construction of your final image, but in any case you should have numerous sketches, photos, etc. to work from. One of the key drawing challenges in this project will be in depicting your text as it “wraps around” the contours of your body. To help you visualize this, we will be working with a slide projector and two models (male and female) during our designated studio day (we will discuss this in class).

6. Choosing a paper: As with last semester’s final project, you should give great consideration to your choice of paper. The dimensions of your paper should be approximately 30” x 40”, but other than that, the choice is yours. New York Central Art Supply has a wonderful selection of papers. The store is located at 62 3rd Ave. (just south of 11th St.); the paper department is upstairs.

7. Choosing your drawing materials: For this project you may use whatever drawing materials you feel are appropriate. Restraint is advised, however. (Please keep the “less is more” mantra in mind, and add colors and extraneous materials only when necessary! A simple Ebony pencil can produce wondrous results.)