MIXED MEDIA
Research and Critique
For my mixed media piece, I want to create a 3D collage mirrored in the style of Joseph Cornell. I’m planning on using an old wooden humidifier box I found at Goodwill as a display case for my collage. It has a small window opening on the lid that enables an individual to look inside the contents of the box. This small window opening gave me the inspiration for the title of my mixed media piece. I decided to title it, “Window of Opportunity,” because essentially, the United States of America is the land of opportunity. The title serves as a metaphor. The view inside the box is of what many immigrants wish to obtain but can never truly have. Inside the box is a shrunken version of the U.S. Citizenship application forms. It is commonly known that all legal documents must always be signed with a pen in blue or black ink. For my project, I decided to go against that rule as a form of rebellion and will instead sign the papers with a gold glitter pen. This provides a hidden meaning. The writing is in gold because the signing of citizenship papers and having them approved is deeply valued by many illegal immigrants. Apart from that, I want to convey that sometimes it is right and just to go against the government’s expectations when it comes to equality and happiness. The background of the collage inside the box is a pattern of golden cages. The meaning behind the golden cages is that immigrants, upon arriving in the U.S., find themselves to be trapped overtime. The golden cage represents the golden opportunities in America. However, a cage’s purpose is to contain something. In this case, illegal immigrants are being contained in the U.S., or at least it feels like it. Illegal immigrants can't go back to Mexico because they've established a good life here but they can't also stay because they're illegal.Many illegal immigrants often find it suffocating to sit and wait for the immigration police to come and take them away from a life they’ve worked so hard to establish in America. Surrounding the wooden box will be barbed wire to represent the Mexican border and to also add on to the feeling that what’s inside the box is well protected and difficult to obtain.
Window of Opportunity
Mixed Media Piece (22cm x 26cm)
February 2017
Mixed Media Piece (22cm x 26cm)
February 2017
Exhibition Text:
This mixed media piece has an overall theme of immigration, home, and belonging. In this piece, I wanted to express the fears and struggles of immigrants upon entering the United States. Lately, our U.S. President has brought up fear and discrimination among immigrants, especially for illegal Mexicans. As a child of Mexican parents, I understand that fear. There isn’t a day where I don’t mind myself worrying that my mom won’t be home to embrace me when I return from school. This piece was inspired by the works of Joseph Cornell.
PLANNING
Artistic Inspiration
For my artistic inspiration, I chose to mirror Joseph Cornell's style for my mixed media piece. As a boy, Cornell saw Houdini perform in New York City, escaping from locked cabinets, wreathed in chains. Cornell incorporated Houdini’s feats into his own artwork by making obsessive, ingenious versions of the same story. Cornell discovered that a multitude of found objects could represent many things. Ballet dancers, birds, maps, aviators, stars of screen and sky, were at once cherished and imprisoned. The same tension between freedom and constriction ran right through Cornell’s own life. Cornell roved freely through the fields of the mind while inhabiting a personal life of extraordinarily narrow limits. Joseph Cornell came up with this idea that art was not necessarily a matter of applying paint to canvas, but could also be made from real objects, strategically combined. The whole collage in a box thing that Joseph Cornell did was aesthetically pleasing to me and inspired me to base my mixed media project on his style.
Planning Sketches
In this sketch, the background would be of stone bricks splattered with red paint to symbolize the blood from those killed in World War II. I planned on printing out a picture of Hitler and painting the top half of his skull over his face to give them this appearance of the Grim Reaper because he killed many innocent people. The box I would keep the collage in would be covered in barbed wire and half of the box would be covered by an wire mesh to give the appearance of an enclosure of where the Jews were kept during the Holocaust. |
This sketch would have a plain black background to help contrast against the pictures I planned on using. I wanted to print out a picture of an American astronaut and paint flowers over his helmet. I also could've opted for using three dimensional stickers of flowers. I also planned on having a toy model of a spaceship in the corner of the collage and have a map of constellations behind the astronaut. The overall theme of this collage would be space exploration and of finding life in a foreign place. |
This piece would feature a U.S. citizenship application form signed with a gold glitter pen to symbolize anarchy because legal documents must be signed with blue or black ink. I wanted to incorporate the new crayon set created by the Crayola company that features crayons in various skin tones. I wanted to use this as an explanation that the United States is full of diversity. |
PROCESS
I went online and printed out the U.S. Citizenship application papers on a small scale in order to fit them into my box. Both sheets took up the whole space and I didn't want to shrink it more because then they would be unreadable so I decided to only use the basic information and signature part of the forms. |
In the end, I glued the plastic barbed wire fences on the inside of the box and included an actual Mexican passport (It's expired) and a common Mexican religious bracelet. The Mexican passport is what immigrants trade in for an american passport once they become citizens of the U.S. The religious bracelet is to represent an immigrants faith in God when they cross the border illegally. It's sort of like a lucky charm. Many immigrants find themselves praying intensely to God that they may survive the dangerous crossing.
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Experimentation
The plastic barbed wire fence was initially meant to be glued in the outside of the box to convey the meaning that what was in the box couldn't ever be obtained and that it was heavily protected. The placement changed when I did my critique. Someone suggested to me that I glue the barbed wire fences on the inside of the box. Having barbed wires around the outside of the box could've scared off the audience, giving them the idea that they shouldn't look into the box. I also installed the Mexican passport and a wooden religious bracelet to add more meaning to my work. I had not intended to include those materials when I first started my mixed media piece.
REFLECTION
Meaning
I used an old wooden humidifier box I found at Goodwill as a display case for my collage. It has a small window opening on the lid that enables an individual to look inside the contents of the box. This small window opening gave me the inspiration for the title of my mixed media piece. I decided to title it, “Window of Opportunity,” because essentially, the United States of America is the land of opportunity. The title serves as a metaphor. The view inside the box is of what many immigrants wish to obtain but can never truly have because citizenship is often hard to obtain. Inside the box is a shrunken version of the U.S. Citizenship application forms. It is commonly known that all legal documents must always be signed with a pen in blue or black ink. For my project, I decided to go against that rule as a form of rebellion and instead signed the papers with a gold glitter pen. This provides a hidden meaning. The writing is in gold because the signing of citizenship papers and having them approved is deeply valued by many illegal immigrants. Apart from that, I want to convey that sometimes it is right and just to go against the government’s expectations when it comes to equality and happiness. The fact that I'm signing citizenship registration forms when I'm already a U.S. citizen is pretty ironic.The background of the collage inside the box is a pattern of golden cages. The meaning behind the golden cages is that immigrants, upon arriving in the U.S., find themselves to be trapped overtime. The golden cage represents the golden opportunities in America. However, a cage’s purpose is to contain something. In this case, illegal immigrants are being contained in the U.S., or at least it feels like it. Illegal immigrants can't go back to Mexico because they've established a good life here but they can't also stay because they're illegal.Many illegal immigrants often find it suffocating to sit and wait for the immigration police to come and take them away unexpectedly from a life they’ve worked so hard to establish in America. Surrounding the wooden box will be barbed wire to represent the Mexican border and to also add on to the feeling that what’s inside the box is well protected and difficult to obtain. I added Crayola's Multicultural crayon set to symbolize diversity within the United States.
Cultural diversity is important because our country, workplaces, and schools increasingly consist of various cultural, racial, and ethnic groups. We can learn from one another, but first we must have a level of understanding about each other in order to facilitate collaboration and cooperation. The Mexican passport symbolizes roots and heritage. Once you become a U.S. citizen, immigrants trade in their Mexican passport for an american one. Despite this being a good thing, I find it rather sad. It's as if you're giving up your heritage and traditions for another one.
Cultural diversity is important because our country, workplaces, and schools increasingly consist of various cultural, racial, and ethnic groups. We can learn from one another, but first we must have a level of understanding about each other in order to facilitate collaboration and cooperation. The Mexican passport symbolizes roots and heritage. Once you become a U.S. citizen, immigrants trade in their Mexican passport for an american one. Despite this being a good thing, I find it rather sad. It's as if you're giving up your heritage and traditions for another one.
ACT RESPONSES
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your artwork:
When I first started my mixed media piece, I had very few things in mind that I wanted to put inside my wooden box. Upon closer inspection of Joseph Cornell's works,I realized that he usually had more than 3 things in his collages. This motivated me to incorporate more symbolic items into my collage.
What is the overall approach (pov) the author (from research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The overall approach from the author of my research is that of fascination with Cornell's work.
The author claims that In the winter of 1940, Cornell took the bold step of resigning from his current job to set up a studio in his basement in order to concentrate on boxes, a project that would occupy him for the next 15 years. Cornell's early versions used ready made cases, but he soon began to build the frames himself, learning by trial and error to make miter joints and used a power saw. The author describes Cornell's box processes as"Next, he’d age the box with multiple layers of paint and varnish, sometimes leaving them in the yard or baking them in the oven. Prosaic work that was followed by the poetry of assemblage, of finding the right objects or images to convey the subtle, transient feelings – nostalgia, say, or joy – that Cornell experienced on his voyages through the city and which he logged in his voluminous and ardent diary." The author clearly appreciates the works of Cornell.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
While I was researching more about immigrants, and came to the conclusion that immigrants are often misunderstood, especially by very influential people such as Donald Trump, who kicked off his campaign on June 16, 2015 with a speech in which he labeled immigrants from Mexico "rapists" and criminals. He specifically claims that "When Mexico sends it people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." A few weeks later, he accuses Mexican immigrants of being "killers," as well. "You have people come in and I'm not just saying Mexicans, I'm talking about people that are from all over, that are killers and rapists and they're coming to this country," he told CNN in June 2015. What people need to understand is that Mexican immigrants only wish to establish a better life for themselves in the U.S. They are not here to bring about chaos and crime.
What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The central theme around my inspirational research was of Mexican immigration, home, and belonging. In this piece, I wanted to express the fears and struggles of immigrants upon entering the United States.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
While reading my research, I inferred that the Mexican population in America has increased by 50% in each decade since 1970 , with unauthorized migrants accounting for a majority of the growth, followed by legal, family based immigration. Through my research, I learned that having a visa does not even guarantee entry to the United States. A U.S. visa allows an individual to travel to a land border crossing, and request permission of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP) inspector to enter the United States.
When I first started my mixed media piece, I had very few things in mind that I wanted to put inside my wooden box. Upon closer inspection of Joseph Cornell's works,I realized that he usually had more than 3 things in his collages. This motivated me to incorporate more symbolic items into my collage.
What is the overall approach (pov) the author (from research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The overall approach from the author of my research is that of fascination with Cornell's work.
The author claims that In the winter of 1940, Cornell took the bold step of resigning from his current job to set up a studio in his basement in order to concentrate on boxes, a project that would occupy him for the next 15 years. Cornell's early versions used ready made cases, but he soon began to build the frames himself, learning by trial and error to make miter joints and used a power saw. The author describes Cornell's box processes as"Next, he’d age the box with multiple layers of paint and varnish, sometimes leaving them in the yard or baking them in the oven. Prosaic work that was followed by the poetry of assemblage, of finding the right objects or images to convey the subtle, transient feelings – nostalgia, say, or joy – that Cornell experienced on his voyages through the city and which he logged in his voluminous and ardent diary." The author clearly appreciates the works of Cornell.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
While I was researching more about immigrants, and came to the conclusion that immigrants are often misunderstood, especially by very influential people such as Donald Trump, who kicked off his campaign on June 16, 2015 with a speech in which he labeled immigrants from Mexico "rapists" and criminals. He specifically claims that "When Mexico sends it people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." A few weeks later, he accuses Mexican immigrants of being "killers," as well. "You have people come in and I'm not just saying Mexicans, I'm talking about people that are from all over, that are killers and rapists and they're coming to this country," he told CNN in June 2015. What people need to understand is that Mexican immigrants only wish to establish a better life for themselves in the U.S. They are not here to bring about chaos and crime.
What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The central theme around my inspirational research was of Mexican immigration, home, and belonging. In this piece, I wanted to express the fears and struggles of immigrants upon entering the United States.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
While reading my research, I inferred that the Mexican population in America has increased by 50% in each decade since 1970 , with unauthorized migrants accounting for a majority of the growth, followed by legal, family based immigration. Through my research, I learned that having a visa does not even guarantee entry to the United States. A U.S. visa allows an individual to travel to a land border crossing, and request permission of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP) inspector to enter the United States.
Bibliography
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/jul/25/joseph-cornell-wanderlust-royal-academy-exhibition-london