Sustained Investigation #2

As this is the second part of a sustained investigation, I followed my theme of fish. The idea behinds these works is that the trash and pollutants, very commonly trash like straws, are littering our oceans. Fish mistake these materials as food and it kills them. The message I am attempting to deliver is "You are what you eat". I chose to base my projects off of a species of fish that is native to my home state, Maine (the Striper).

Unlike my last investigation piece, I choose to fill in the negative space and have a solid fish, I used cardboard as a backing and hot glued them in place. I decided to make my project dimensional by add layers to the fish by gluing the fins on top of the body. I began by drawing and then cutting my design on a cardboard sheet. I proceed to glue the straws at a slight angle until I reached the tail, then i flipped it over and used the outline on the cardboard to guide me through trimming the excess straw. I then cut the straw pieces to make fins and ended the project by painting it.

I realize that the coloration does not look like a typical striper, but I decided to use them because they reminded me of decay. When a fish or any marine life ingests something unnatural, it is harmful to them and inevitably shortens their life. These colors are dark and look like decay. If I could do something to change this piece, I would have used a different material for the eye, or used the straws in a different way to make it. But overall, I feel that it follows me sustained investigation theme.