EPHEMERA
DECAY
Flowers on wood pannel
November 2016
November 2016
Exhibition text:
Before this project was introduced, I had never heard of Ephmeral art. Once I did some research I was very intruiged. Throught the process of creating piece I kept in mind my inspiration. Not only did I want to create a piece that had a strong meaning behind it but also that stayed true to my inspiration. I also wanted it to stay true to my theme that death is a thing of beauty hence my use of flowers.
Before this project was introduced, I had never heard of Ephmeral art. Once I did some research I was very intruiged. Throught the process of creating piece I kept in mind my inspiration. Not only did I want to create a piece that had a strong meaning behind it but also that stayed true to my inspiration. I also wanted it to stay true to my theme that death is a thing of beauty hence my use of flowers.
Artistic Inspiration / Meaning
Justina Blakeney is the artist that I chose to inspire my piece. Blakeney is a designer and artist responsible for the start of the “face the foliage” movement. The movement consists of creating portraits out of foliage. (or in other words, plants and flowers) That was what immediately appealed to me. I love the idea of creating portraits that are made from flowers and plants. Once the flowers dried out, that is a perfect metaphor for death. Then I got an idea, I could take the idea of death very literal and create a skull in the style of Dia de los muertos since it was around the time I was working on the project.
Each aspect of the piece has a deeper meaning. The overall meaning was to represent life and death and how close they are to each other.Death was represented by the sugar skull. I decided to use flowers because my last name is Flores (spanish for flowers). The flowers were not meant to represent me but to represent life and how beautiful it can be. The idea behind dia de los muertos is celebrating the beauty in death and I felt flowers were the best way to express that. The wood on which the flowers are glued onto represent purpose. The reason the wood was used in the first place was just a place to hold the flowers. That was it’s purpose. Just like in life, we all have a purpose. I decided to use glue to hold the flowers down to prevent the petals from moving or falling off completely. The glue is also a representation of our hold on people. No matter how much we hold on to others, they will shrivel into oblivion.
Process
1.) Sketch Ideas
I had many ideas going into this project. My final product is actually pretty far off compared to my other ideas.
I had many ideas going into this project. My final product is actually pretty far off compared to my other ideas.
2.) Pick the petals off the flowers
At first I did want to just leave the flowers whole and create an image like that, but the panel that I was working with was rather small so I had to pick the petals off and create the shapes with that.
3.) Glue the flower petals down.
During my brainstorming I did not want to glue the petals down because I felt that defeated the idea of ephemera. However it made for a better metaphor.
Reflection
After completing this project I am super happy with my final piece. There are some improvements I could have made such as dping something with the wood in the background. I think painting the back ground could have added a little more to the piece. I also think using hot glue wasn't the best option. The hot glue kind of burned throush some of the petals causing them to obviouly burn and turn slightly brown. I think that could futher connect to the meaning of the piece. I said that the glue represented the hold we have in people and if you get too atached to a person you could get really hurt or in this example, burned. After completing this project I was happy with my final piece. Since this was my first ephemeral piece I think that it still went well. Next time I do an ephemeral piece I know that it needs to be done quickly. When i had completed the project, the pictures I took were in very bad lighting. The following dayI believed it rained so I could not take pictures in natural lighting. And by the time the sn came out the flowers had actually dried up and died.