Anatomy and Autonomy

For my fifth and final concentration I did something much more emotionally charged than I've done in the past. I took the proportion work from my previous concentration and used it to make a project that voiced my opinion on an issue that I cared about. I do a fair amount of volunteering with Planned Parenthood and I am an adamant supporter of reproductive rights, and I had wanted to do something related to that for the political response project in 2D design but never had an idea that I liked. My project started as just a practice reduction project for me to do further work with proportions but in a more fluid way, but it quickly became a very strong piece and I decided to make it into my final.

I started by sketching different versions of contrapposto poses that I could put my sculpture in, and after making about five sketches, I settled on one and got to work. I started with a big block of foam and sketched the sculpture on all four sides so that I would have a guide to work with. I got started by carving away just the big chunks of foam that I knew I wouldn't need, and then just tried to spend equal amounts of time on each side reducing the foam to where it needed to be. Sometimes I would go a bit too far, for example when I forgot that the arm was going to be by her side and then carved that space away, so I had to put it up above her head; or when I carved to much of the shoulders away and now her back is very flat at the top. After the shape was done, I sealed my sculpture with mod podge and waited for it to dry. After I realized that I was going to paint her, I didn't just want her to be a single color wash or a bunch of patterns, and I had been thinking about doing something with reproductive rights ever since the bills in Alabama and Ohio were signed. I decided to do a monochromatic red to white color scheme and work from there. I started with white paint, and then added splotches of pink paint over the body. This created a sense of unity within the work. I then painted a face on (since I didn't carve any facial features out of fear that I would mess it up. Then I had to come up with some sort of message. I thought about painting her a uterus, but the message seemed very vague so I decided to skip that. I settled on "My Body, My Choice" because the phrase has been used in reproductive rights protests for years, and it would be strong and recognizable as a statement.

I'm very proud of this project, and it is by far the most meaningful and the highest quality project I've done in this class. The carving is clean, the painting is smooth and blended, the colors are meaningful (Planned Parenthood pink). I would only change a couple of things: I would make the shoulders more present, and I would do a second coat of mod podge since there are still small holes in the final product. Other than that, I think the form and composition are strong.