SI #3

Artist Statement:

My goal for this piece was to create a representation of what most do to browntail moths, and to answer the question, why do most people decide to harm these moths instead of leave them be?

I used a branch, fake spiderwebs, paper, disposable smocks, and fire to create this.

To begin my project I had to decide what to do, like all things start. I thought that since this was going to be my last project for a while that I should use a medium that I have never used before. I had previously seen an artist use fire to slightly burn the surface of paper and sketch off of that, but I was not sure how I would add paper cutouts to that, and I was worried that I would start a bigger fire inside. I came to the decision to create a fake browntail moth web, and then light it on fire. I used paper to create smaller moths to attach to the branch with wire but as I suspected, they also lit on fire. It took a lot of tries to get the photo right. I began with help from my sister to hold the branch while I lit the fire and took a picture. With only the fake web, there were no flames only melted stuff. We added pine needles but they were all wet so we had to wait for the entire thing to dry enough. I decided to take the picture in the dark along with sove a bunch of paper in the web and that definitally helped a lot. Overall this was a very fun project.