Paper Sculpture
Altar
Paper, Playing Cards, and Superglue
18 x 15 x 20
I was interested in exploring the fragility of romantic relationships, particularily within the greater context of our culture. I wanted to create a sculpture that conveyed how delicate such relationships can be, especially when they are influenced by outsiders' perspectives and judgements. I was inspired by a photograph that Man Ray took in the 20s, and this photo served as a reference for the figures atop the house of cards. The hand cutouts are supposed to symbolize the influence of outsiders, interlopers, or just the public at large. I was intrigued by the idea of building a literal house of cards because I felt that such a structure would be perfect for portraying my subject.
For my process, I began by preparing the paper components individually. The hands were cut from a book that analyzed literature for young people, and I was deliberate when choosing which sections to cut from. I chose sections that analyzed works of literature that were applicable to the subject of my sculpture (ie. The Bell Jar, Love in the Time of Cholera, The Scarlet Letter). I also cut out the face silhouettes and "treated" some of book pages with colored tissue paper that was designed to bleed. The dancing figures were cut using Cricut software, and were adapted from some of my own drawings. Once I found a deck of cards, I built the house as a structure that I could attach the other elements to. I used superglue to assemble the house of cards, and to attach the figures, photo cutouts, and tissue paper. I was able to balance the two face silhouettes by using a single card to prop up the face on the left, making it appear vertical.
Going into this project, I knew I wanted to play with the symbolism of a house of cards. The profile silhouettes were also an early idea. I did not know what the final structure would be until I had the deck of cards in front of me and started to construct the house—once I started to build, I knew I wanted the final sculpture to resembles an altar of sorts, with the two faces sitting atop this structure. All of the paper components were created before the house of cards was actually in front of me, so I did not know how they would factor into the final work. I played around with the idea of dying the hands with tissue paper, and experimented with how much water the pages of a book could take before they completely lost any sort of structure. I also had to be creative with how I was attaching the different components, since paper is such a fragile material. In the end, the cards provided a strong structure that would support the rest of the sculpture, and I was pleasantly surprised by the result.
