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‘Still Life in a Paper Bowl’ is a modern rendition of an artistic tradition that has prevailed for centuries. The sculpture has two versions, ‘Scallions’ and ‘Assortment’ - in the difference between these two works, I wanted to explore the use of colour and lighting.

There is a visible contrast between the roundness of the bowl, the scrunched texture of the receipts, and the green onions. In ‘Scallions’, I wanted to focus on the bowl and blending it into the environment, creating a work where the onions clearly don’t belong. In ‘Assortment’, the scallions are not alone; a pear, apple, tomato, orange, and avocado accompany the vegetable and overwhelm the bowl. In this order, it appears as if the fruit has replaced the receipts.

The bowl was created with steel wire, PVA glue and thermal paper. The technique used to attach the thermal paper to the wire frame was synonymous to handling paper mache, just with the added technique of heating the thermal paper to release the darkening chemicals in the paper. I used a hair straightener on a roll of thermal paper to start with a blackened surface, since I knew from my experiments that the PVA glue would strip the ink from the paper upon application. By creating the bowl this way, the ‘ink’ would peak through, emulating an organic pattern on the sculpture, similar to Cindy Yuen-Zhe Chen’s ‘Fluvial Dynamics: Rain and Foraging Birds’. One thing I noticed about the thermal paper and glue is that once dried, the material was quite sturdy. If I were to continue working with this material, I would attempt a larger piece to truly grasp the limitations of thermal paper.

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