Feminine Body #2

Reflection

The main idea behind Flower Woman is to play with using natural materials to explore the investigation of the feminine body in nature. In my first investigation, I didn’t use many materials that related directly to my investigation, so I used flowers and leaves in my second investigation. There is an active flame in the piece, which symbolizes the “aliveness” that there is in the relationship between the feminine body and nature. This connection has been cut very harshly, and continues to be separated. The hope is that the piece makes people smile, or feel some sort of connection to the vibrancy of the colors. There is a lot more texture in this piece because of the flowers and leaves, which I am glad came through. In this piece, I am learning how to use more negative space, which is a skill I hope to improve more in my SI. 3.

For materials, I used a clay base. When this broke, I used superglue to glue it back together and experimented with hot glue to glue leaves directly to the figure. When this proved very challenging –with the glue burning the leaves as it hardened– I switched to a new method. However, I had to cover up the hot glue, which wouldn’t come off. So I used sculpting clay to cover that, and after baking it, I painted it black with acrylic paint. The paint didn’t dry fully for some reason ad remained sticky. I then added leaves and flowers from outside.

I started by sketching out what I planned to do. This involved some research, which was primarily focused on how other people had portrayed the feminine body, to see if I could take inspiration from the different ways other artists were working with the form. However, my search mostly resulted in a very similar image, which is a woman's figure that has a very small waist, very skinny belly, and larger breasts. This is unpropotional, so it really helped me see what I didn’t want to make. Then I made my clay form, which ended up breaking after I had carved it out. I experimented with different techniques from here. First, making wings covered in leaves, and then gluing the leaves directly to the surface. From there it was a process of improvising as these experiments didn’t quite work as planned. In the end, I am actually quite happy with the way the piece turned out, the boldness of the color being what I enjoy the most.