Relief Portrait

Incendiary Sister: An Artist's Reflection

This piece is a relief style portrait of my little sister Moss. The assignment was to construct a portrait out of a material that relates to the subject's personality or interests. My little sister is fragile. My little sister has a temper. My little sister is dangerous. My little sister is bright. My little sister can be warm or fiery. What better material to build a portrait of my little sister out of than matches and match containers?

The border of the portrait is made of burned match box trays glued to the edge of the foam board. The dark values are broken match sticks glued down using superglue. The light values are made of ripped up match box tops attached with a glue stick. The skin tones on the portrait are the cardboard underside of matchboxes attached in the same way as the light values.