FHS Diploma

Kintsugi Diploma

Diploma, paint sticks, gold leaf, sharpie, hot glue

We were given an old Freeport High School diploma and told to create artwork out of it the "represented our high school experience". So the main idea that guided this artwork would be my high school experience, this piece was meant to voice all the ups and downs and personally I think this piece captures it perfectly. The outside of the piece is very bubbly and bright if not just a bit tacky and over the top with the colorful dots and gold flakes. I think this is what we want highschool to be like, maybe a bit overwhelming but fun and good nonetheless. It's everything that I presented openly outwards, everything tried to be. The inside of the diploma looks very different, but the viewer can barely see whats in there. Mabey on the edges on can see a few eyeballs looking back and the start of a paragraph of text. This is all I struggled with internally, all I worked through and don't want to share with anyone. It's all held together by "melted gold" like in the Japanese art style called kintsugi because over time I did manage to work through my travels, and I do feel "fixed" even if its messy. 

As a basis for this artwork we were given an old FHS diploma to modify and create a piece of art. First I tore out the layer of image on the inside, then I taped of the words "Freeport High School" and the bottom of the diploma with painters tape. I covered the entire outside with multiple layers of white gesso paint until it was fairly even. I drew eyeballs and wrought text on the inside with black sharpie pen. Then I hot glue the whole thing shut and realized gold leaf sticks to hot glue even when it is dry, so I covered both sides. I took large paint markers (maney chalke markers?) to create the dots across the surface, I also tried to create golden dots but the leaf flaked to much. Finally I removed the tape to reveal the intaked FHS logo.    

Originally this piece was going to be less abstract, the first thing I did while making this was going through my camera roll and skeching out images of a lot of funny and good memories I had saved their. The reason I did this is because I was going to draw my good memories on the outside cover, but turned out the diploma material is a bit difficult to paint on and I did not get my hand on posko markers like I thought I would to draw that out. Instead I just used the matirial that I had at my disosel to make more of a reprisentation of the "vibe" my highschool expirence was.