Sustained Investigation #1

Artist's Statement:

The idea behind this project was showing the human impact on coral reefs. I wanted to show how humans were causing coral bleaching and causing all the beaitful corals to lose their color and fishes. I also wanted to synthesize the matierals with the project. I chose to represent how sunscreen was causing coral bleaching. Suncreen causes coral bleaching because it has chemicals that are bad for the corals, and cause bleaching.

I chose to have my surface be a suncreen bottle, to synthesize my materials with the message I was trying to send. I chose to make the label be the surface, and chose a slightly cartoonish style and color scheme to go along with the idea of the label. I used sharpie for the colors, which also greated some overlapping patterns in the water which gives it some movement. For the label, I gessoed it first, and then was able to draw on it with a micron pen. I chose to only color some of the coral, because I wanted to show the progressive bleaching as sunscreen was introduced to the environment.

My process started by researching ways that corals were being bleach to try to find a way to synthesize that into my materials. I ended finding out about sunscreen causing bleaching, so I decided to focus on that. Before this I thought that I might gesso a glass bottle or plastic bottle to show pollution, but the suncreen was a better idea. I had made an initial sketch with the syle of coral that i wanted to use, so I went off of that when drawing. Finally, for the colors, I wans't sure which type of material would stick, so I used sharpie, which ended looking cartoonish, which added to the style.