Saturday, December 31, 2011

My first semester of grad school


Well, I have to say that my first semester of grad school went well. I, somewhat foolishly, only took 2 classes as I was unsure what my work load would be like with my TA appointment and schoolwork. I found that I ended up having a lot of free time! So, next semester I will be taking 4 classes. I thought I would share some of the photos I made over the semester though.

Disco Cicada

Masked Cicada

Wrapped Cicada

Candy dots Cicada

Acrobat Cicadas

Bedazzled Cicada

Fortune Cicada

Open Cicada

Painted Cicada


As is to be expected I had a lot of people asking me what my deal was/is with the cicadas. Well, there was plenty going on with these little guys for me... Firstly, I loved collecting them and how the act of looking for them really made me pay attention to my surroundings and notice other things that I probably would have overlooked. I also liked the delicate way in which I had to handle them and all the little things I noticed about them when I was working with them.  I also really liked the idea of challenging the perception that these are just ugly, annoying little creatures.  It's funny how quickly and easily something turns from "oh ick!" to "that's so cool" just by some simple adornment... it's still the same thing, it's just wearing a different shirt/dress/jacket. I also liked the idea of placing the newly adored shells back out in the world, in their new flashy outfits, as a way of saying "hey, look at me! I was nature and I was awesome but you didn't see me until someone made me all shiny... look around, you're missing cool stuff all the time!". Does that come through in the images? Well, you can be the judge, but those were the things I was thinking about when I was working on this project. I will probably end up incorporating a couple of these images into a larger more varied body of work instead of having these images stand alone as a project. There were a few more cicadas, which I've chosen not to show here and I also have more plain/unadorned shells in my studio, but I'm unsure whether I will make any more fancy cicadas.

1 comment:

  1. I like your rationale for working with the cicadas. It is so true that most people do not see the little things in a positive way nor do they realize how important or fun the little things really are. It would be neat to see a collage of the cicadas. I love your concrete abstractedness!

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