Artist Influence - Fabrication of Text Sculpture Part 1

June 02, 2022

Artist Influence - Fabrication of Text Sculpture Part 1

After researching different artists in order to find context, as shown in the previous blog post, I decided to concentrate on themes such as online harassment, and personal autonomy. This post will focus on Crabapple’s influences on the presentation and materiality of my work.

I was drawn to Molly Crabapple’s “Portraits of myself and Lola Montes with things said about us by our contemporaries” which is described as “a powerful, transfixing two-sided sculpture that confronts the dark side of social media—focusing on the pervasive culture of bullying and how hurtful words hurled through a screen can erode confidence and self-esteem2” fits perfectly with what I am trying to say with my work. Additionally “this outsize painted wood cutout has faces from pulp-fiction illustrations covered with enough written comments to prove that little has changed from the 19th century to the 21st in terms of the verbal abuse often heaped upon nonconforming women.”5 While I don’t believe that this type of harassment online affects women, although I found it easier to use to my personal experience to supply my work, rather than use it as a purely research-based project.

For this practise fabrication I decided to image transfer the pixel portrait onto a wood panel using mod podge, I found it to be the quickest and easiest way in order to get examples created so I could see what worked best. I would recommend this video1 if you wanted to transfer images yourself. Material wise, while my work focuses on digital interactions, there is a real-life reaction that happens as a result of them, and therefore making a handmade sculpture to go along with a projection of sorts would go together to make a successful installation. Which can be seen in the images below.

Having said that I do not want to create a carbon copy of the artist so kept the motif of my pixel portraits to play on anonymity. While the comments are from strangers, they don't know me either, and so by using pixel squares, the audience can put themselves into the silhouette of the pixel’s experience. This square-edged silhouette would also separate Crabapple’s sculpture from my own, the messages and person behind the pixels are also from my own collection, so the idea of a wooden sculpture highlighting the vile messages one might get online as someone hides behind their keyboards might be the same, the execution is different. I also intend to add a video atop the sculpture to show the real-life image and online persona, I feel the messages I get, while offensive to some people's sensitivities, I feel these messages do not completely define me, as they are responses to a bunch of pixels on someone's screen. It is more the sheer mass of messages that upset me, more than the contexts themselves.

After a paper version to see how messages would look on a sculpture, I used wood as a stronger base. I decided to keep it simple and use a full rectangle rather than attempt to cut out the shape like on the written plan and picked a selfie. I enjoyed the bright colours and clear cubes so while transferring there would be less of a change of losing detail and a pattern. I felt if too many cubes of one colour were next to each other the slightest mistake in transferring would be seen compared to different colours where it might be more forgiving. I printed off an A4 version of the portrait although I felt it was too small, even for practice, so I made it a little bigger which was stretched over 4 pages. It was easier for me to place the pieces of the image on a separate board so that when I reversed them (colour side down) I could keep track of where the pieces went. However, thinking about this, it would have been a lot easier to try to print the image in a single go, since it was hard to match up exactly, so when i upscale this is something I will need to take into consideration.

I used really cheap mod podge for paper and while drying the colours started to seep through the pape, which was a good sign.

I used this site3 to reverse the text in order to mod podge it onto the canvas so it would be easier to read. For the real version, the text will be printed (or perhaps written) on top of the blocked squares but I wanted to practise in case I changed my mind later on. Writing might be neater and relate to my previous work on scrolls and looking at narratives, although printing, and using text fonts will relate more to the idea of direct messaging and online culture. You can see in the mirror that the words become easier to read, although I dislike how the letters aren't even and create a chunky look. Having said that, it makes the words more ugly, which is the point of showing off such vile messages; they’re not meant to be “pretty”. I know as an artist in 2022 there's not much that can be done to “shock” my audiences as everything, in a way, has already been said, although I feel it's important in a therapeutic way to take power back from my negative experiences online. It is not the shock of the comments I get, but I choose to use copy their messages verbatim, with spelling mistakes and poor grammar included as a form of humour. After all, I cannot let certain messages get to me if they cannot even get “you're and your” correct. In a similar way to Betty Tompkins's “Woman’s Words”6 the number of words and phrases will be the shock rather than the content. Following this idea, in an interview Crabapple stated that “We live at the most photo-saturated, video saturated time in history. While this is an amazing thing, it also means that people often become numb to photography,” she says when asked about how her illustrations contribute to the media landscape. “Drawing, because it is clearly done by hand, gets past this jadedness.”7 I agree with this statement and i want to use my words as my weapon rather than rely on vulgarity for the sake of it. As much as my work looks at sexuality (IRL and Online) I don't want to include breasts and body parts just because they exist, I want them to have meaning and add to the work.

“If there’s a theme in my work, it’s that I like to focus on smart people who are facing oppression and who are fighting back against it. - Molly Crabapple”4