GLASS CEILING

This project is my hand sculpture. The purpose of the project was to respond to a social or political issue. The issue I chose address in gender equality. I played off the idea of the "glass ceiling" as well. It is important for men and women to work together to reach equality. True equality is when two people will be treated in the same way. This is why the ladders, representing the two genders, combine.

The first thing I did for my project was make the hands. To do this, I used alginate. This is a special kind of material, that, when mixed with water, becomes very thick. I put my own hands in it, in the position of my choice, and waited a few minutes until it dried. It was very similar gelatin, so i could wiggle my hands out. Then I had negative space. I poured plaster into the mold, and let them dry overnight. The plaster came out extremely detailed and looked exactly like my hand.

The next thing I did was make my ladders. At first I did not know what I wanted the project to look like, but eventually I realized I wanted to do a "glass ceiling theme". This theme often includes the use of ladders. I made the ladders out of sculpy, a colorful clay. I rolled out the colors, blue, pink, and purple, and placed them into ladders. I baked the pieces individually, and then I superglued them together. I liked the way them looked.

Next I painted the hands. It took many different tries to find out how I wanted my hands to look, eventually I decided on black and white. Black representing the males, and white representing females. I also added red fingernails. Originally my idea behind this was to say the gender roles are not as black and white as they are treated. Later, however, I also incorporated the idea of a suit, for the male (by adding a tie), and I added a headband with a flower to add to the feminine hand.

Once my hands were complete I had to make a base. I took a piece of styrofoam board and painted it black. I did not feel comfortable using real glass on the base. but, I wanted the hands to look like they were breaking through the glass. I was already confident with using CDs, because I used them for my relief portrait. I broke the ones I had left into large pieces and laid them out. My original plan was to write "jobs women have never held" on one hand, and "jobs that are stereotypically female on another. however, I thought this would distract from my hands so I decided to keep the idea and put it somewhere else. I wrote in pink on some CDs the stereotypical female jobs, and blue on the CDs jobs that women have never held. I glued the pieces around the now glued on hands, blue on one side pink on the other. Then I glued the ladder onto the hands to look like it was holding them.