Name: The Raven
Materials: Cardboard, hot glue Size: 275 cm (length) x 14 cm (width) x 46 cm (height) Date: February 2022 |
Exhibition Text:My cardboard creation, "The Raven" is inspired by Picasso's 'Woman with a Crow" and the various literary and cultural significance of crows/ravens throughout the world. I use the symbolic nature of Pablo Picasso's work and the ancient tales surrounding ravens. This includes icons such as "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe (from which I used for the name of my piece) and Celtic lore. My goal was to transform myself into a raven using only cardboard and glue to represent the historic portrayal of these beautiful creatures.
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Inspiration
My inspiration comes from two things; Woman with a Crow (1904) by Pablo Picasso and the various tales and cultural lore surrounding ravens/crows throughout the ages. Picasso created this piece near the end of his “Blue Period”, as shown by the rich blue of the background and undertones. It creates a somewhat eerie and depressed mood. The figure of the woman has more natural colors, which Picasso made with gouache and pastel (the work is on paper, along with charcoal and is mounted on a pressboard). This gives her skin a translucent quality, making her ghost-like. Her linear, sketchy form is another aspect that makes her almost disappear into the background. The whole piece is very mysterious in nature, alluding to death as the pale, skeletal woman kisses her pet crow. Some analysts guess that it could also be referring to the mysterious works of Edgar Allen Poe. The figure depicted is a portrait of “Margot” Luc, the stepdaughter of the owner of a shop Picasso often went to in Paris. Her crow, though a beloved pet, is shown as a morose portrayal of impending death as Margot’s pale, gaunt face strengthen this conclusion, as she herself seems to be on death’s door. Upon first seeing the drawing, I was immediately drawn to its tender, yet somber nature and unique appearance. Much of the art I tend to lean towards is more realistic, while Pablo Picasso’s use of form, color, and shape are used to make symbols. I was drawn to her pale face, then the fuzzy, dark figure of the crow. The difference in color, from blue, to faded orange, white, and black make the figures simulataneously blend into the background and stand out against each other. While my medium was entirely different from Picasso’s, and my task left little room for the storytelling found in this inspiration, I decided to draw from the themes and symbols presented in “Woman with a Crow''. This ties into another section of my reasoning for creating a raven and how I used historical significance to inspire me. One of the first pieces of poetry I heard outside of Shell Silverstein was “The Raven”. My dad and I both enjoyed this poem and many other of Edgar Allen Poe’s dark literature. They are one of his favorite animals, and he always likes telling me facts about these beautiful birds and the stories around them. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been an avid reader. I remember reading books where ravens were messengers or omens of death. Also, since we both enjoy the grim and macabre, the raven fits right into our interests. I’ve always found them to be very interesting in their appearance and personalities. Overall, I just thought that they were cool animals. This, along with their cultural significance and the myths and lore surrounding them, I decided that I wanted to transform myself into a raven for this project.
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Planning
After the demonstration and explanative presentation by a UWM professor, I began brainstorming about an ideal version of myself. I thought about my interests and how I felt my persionality manifested. Upon some reflection, I decided on a raven. I began to look for raven artworks I could develop as an inspiration for my costume. I found "Woman with a Crow" by Pablo Picasso. After the research on Pablo Picasso and other raven mythology, was to make planning sketches. I searched up pictures of ravens on the internet, sketching them out to get familiar with their physical traits. This helped me to brainstorm how I could combine that with my body and human traits. Making a basic human figure, I added on specific parts of a raven that I felt were characteristics of their species. This included a beak, tail, wings, and feathered chest. I figured it would be difficult to transform my legs, as the structures of bird feet/legs are very different from ours. However, the structure of the arms/wings are very similar in the shoulders and elbows. Birds even have a “thumb”, which resembles a human's, though bats are even closer.
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I briefly debated changing my project after thinking about bats vs. ravens, but decided it would be too much work to do everything over again. I tend to needlessly complicate things for no reason other than my brain likes to come up with a million different versions of things. So I continued to brainstorm ideas about combining my body with a raven’s, and what that would look like if the two species became a hybrid. I came up with a few more sketches, playing around more than anything, and letting my imagination take me wherever it willed. Originally, I wanted to combine the warrior aspect of raven mythology with the wisdom side, making the cardboard outfit reminiscent of armor. I thought it would be cool to make it look like a samurai suit, as I am passionate about karate, and that the armor could fit into a project I did in elementary school. I turned myself into Joan de Arc, a medival warrior in France who was burned at the stake as a heretic. I wanted to incorporate myself as much as possible into this project, which turned my character into a raven warrior who was wise, a symbol of death, and an icon for fighting for social justice. After critique with my classmates and a professor from UWM in charge of the project, it was quite evident I was doing too much. Saying it out loud and having people discuss it really helped me to narrow down my subject matter and create a more specific project.
The next step in my planning stage was to create a blueprint/plan for what my creation was going to look like. The pictures above show my first sketches of my costume, which included a head and shoulder piece, arm and chest pieces, and wings. Much of it was conceptual and more of an ideal rather than a realistic goal. I always go above in my planning, letting my imagination run a bit wild. However, I did narrow it down quite a lot by the end. I decided to just start with the most basic aspects, like the helmet and chest section first. If I had time, materials, and room left, I could add more.
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Experimentation/Process
The experimentation process of my project was somewhat glossed over. This was largely due to the fact that I had a limited amount of cardboard to work with and I had less time to figure out how to make a large project such as this. Additionally, the scraps of carboard I had to work with were mismatched, so I did want to create something as an experiment only for there to be not enough carboard to recreate it with the same textures, etc. Furthermore, my father spends a lot of time creating cardboard art as a hobby and a source of income. Therefore, I am more familiar with the different ways that I could manipulate the cardboard to make it more decorative.
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The other aspect that made me more comfortable with not doing a large amount of experimentation was that I had made a cosplay in the fall. For it, I had to create a series of section out of EVA foam, manipulate it, then glue them together in intersecting pieces to recreate a three-dimensional shape. This gave me some experience in how I could cut and glue the cardboard together to create a form-fitting piece around my head and body.
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The next portion was to actually begin to cut out pieces of carboard and begin putting it together. I decided to start with the headpiece. I cut out strips that were roughly four-to-six inches wide, then wrapped them around my head in different areas to see if they would fit. If not, I would make adjustments. Next, I began to glue them together, altering as needed and continually checking to make sure that it was still easy to get on and off.
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The next step in my process was to begin making a beak to place onto the front of the mask. To do this, I first had to make a base to build around. I used a firm piece of carboard to make an "I" shape. I thought that this would give it structural support and help shape it how I wanted. I had a bit of trouble getting it to curve (as this is one of the distinctive traits of a raven), so I realized that straight pieces weren't going to cut it. I tried bending and cutting curved lines.
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To the left are progressing images of the head and chest piece. I used a mannequin in the art room at my school to use as a model I could easily look at and and make changes to. For example. I began to cover all open areas on the helmet, such as wrapping around the sides and crossing strips across the top of the head. I thought that this could be a good base for the eventual feathers I was going to put on. I also made a strap around my chin that could be threaded through a section next to my ear.
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The next parts of my process were really to just add on more and more layers. This can be shown below, where I used staggered sections of cardboard glued to the front straps and a curved strip down the middle. For all the sections that needed to be rounded, I repeatedly bent, folded, and rubbed against the edge of a table or counter to break down the structure. This helped me to alter it to the shape I needed (i.e., my chest). So, by having a stacked section, I could round it and have it be less stiff when I wore it. I carved out the edge on the bottom corners as well to make it less boxy as well.
At this point in my project, I had a meeting with the UWM professor in charge of the project. We had a discussion about the changes I had made to my plans and how I planned to move forward, my biggest challenges, etc. It was after this conversation that I decided to abandon the idea of the helmet, as the beak ended up looking terrible and the execution just wasn't there.
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For what I considered the artistic side of this project, I decided to create patterns and designs on the feathers that would cover the chest area. By lightly cutting into the surface of the cardboard with a blade, then using a pair of tweezers, I was able to pull back the first layer of material. This revealed the corrugation within the cardboard. I used two separate boxes for this, as they had different corrugation within them. I thought it would help my work be less stale by adding some variation over a large area of space. I also kept a few of the feathers (which I used a traced template to create multiple of the same size) un-edited because I didn't want too much to be going on. It is my opinion that anything artistic should have something boring to make the exiting parts all the more interesting. I thought that the three feathers added enough contrast to make it visually appealing. Beginning with the bottom, I hot-glued them on one by one, starting off with rows and then adding some random feathers to make it more chaotic, as a real raven's feathers aren't completely even patterns.
However, I needed another element to add to this project to help transform myself into a raven. I thought back to my original plans, which included a set of wings. I had discarded it early on, as I thought it would be too big of a bite to chew. Without the helmet now, I decided to revisit the idea. For this (as mentioned earlier) I turned to an old costume I had made with dragon wings. I vaguely remember looking at inspirations and how I had crafter the pieces together to make them move (using an old tent frame and fabric), so I applied it to the medium of cardboard. Also, by integrating the anatomical structures of a real bird's wings, then combining it with my own body, I came up with an idea of how to carve and glue the elements together. I figured that I could make something similar to a paper round fastener. This came from when I was thinking about pre and elementary school projects, where I had sometimes created little figures that could move their arms and legs because of the fasteners. Following this, I thought about how I could transfer this to cardboard. I knew it would be a little bit of an experiment, but I was confident I could make it work. There was a particularly firm and sturdy section of cardboard that I thought might be a good support for something as large as the wings. Though it was difficult, I managed to saw through and cut it into sections that correlated with the length of my arms (should to shoulder, shoulder to elbow, elbow to wrist). I measured the length of these, then added some to give room for the joint itself. I also took some free carboard from my art classroom, as there was a large enough box that I felt would suit my needs for the bottom parts of the wings. After some contemplation and drawing it out on paper, I cut out large pieces so that they could overlap each other. Then, I glued on the thick strips to the upper edge, letting it hand over slightly. For the joints themselves, I cut 1 inch strips, then repeatedly bent and rubbed them against the edge of a table. This made them more flexible until I was able to roll them tightly. I glued them so they would keep the small shape, then cut 2 circular sections for each of the 6 rolls. With a hole carved into the thick strips, I put the roll through, then glued one of the circular sections to the back side. Next, I fitted the second section of wing onto the same joint, then sealed the two of them together. This allowed them to move independently of one another and have room to move forward and backwards without jeopardizing the security of the joint. I repeated this process for each of the joints until I had mobile wings that extended easily.
Critique
Similarities:
Both Picasso and I have some similarities in how we wanted to represent the lore and stereotypes about crows/ravens. Our subject matter is similar in how we both involve birds. He uses limited colors, sticking to shades of white, blue, black, and orange, while I also kept the colors monotone. The lack of color in my piece allows it to blend together and feel like a single entity, while also standing out against the black of my outfit to highlight and emphasize the art.
Differences:
Picasso uses pastel and charcoal on a canvas board, while I used cardboard and hot glue to create my work. His art also pictured two figures, the woman and the crow, while I myself was the subject matter. I feel as though conceptually, we had similar ideas, but the execution came out completely different. his use of color and texture come out as pale and translucent, almost fading into the background while representing the sickliness of Margot. Therefore, the intention of why we created the pieces and how we transformed those thoughts physically have a large difference. My work is also three-dimensional, while Picasso's lies on a flat surface. Based on technical observations, his art retains his stylistic elements, in which his forms are slightly distorted and not proportional. I tried to make my form as realistic as possible, fitting to my body size as realistically as I could with the materials that I had on hand. Finally, he was telling a story through his artwork while I was not.
Both Picasso and I have some similarities in how we wanted to represent the lore and stereotypes about crows/ravens. Our subject matter is similar in how we both involve birds. He uses limited colors, sticking to shades of white, blue, black, and orange, while I also kept the colors monotone. The lack of color in my piece allows it to blend together and feel like a single entity, while also standing out against the black of my outfit to highlight and emphasize the art.
Differences:
Picasso uses pastel and charcoal on a canvas board, while I used cardboard and hot glue to create my work. His art also pictured two figures, the woman and the crow, while I myself was the subject matter. I feel as though conceptually, we had similar ideas, but the execution came out completely different. his use of color and texture come out as pale and translucent, almost fading into the background while representing the sickliness of Margot. Therefore, the intention of why we created the pieces and how we transformed those thoughts physically have a large difference. My work is also three-dimensional, while Picasso's lies on a flat surface. Based on technical observations, his art retains his stylistic elements, in which his forms are slightly distorted and not proportional. I tried to make my form as realistic as possible, fitting to my body size as realistically as I could with the materials that I had on hand. Finally, he was telling a story through his artwork while I was not.
Reflection
Overall, I thought that I did an "okay" job with this project. Nothing really stood out to me visibly or conceptually, mostly because I thought that this was great opportunity to express something about myself. Speaking on technical matters, I fell as though there wasn't much skill-wise that I had to refine or work on for this project. There was a lot of working with my hands, which I do often. This made it easier to adjust to this kind of work I needed for this project. It required a lot of planning and a multitude of parts that came together, which got frustrating at times. My inspiration, a combination of Picasso's "Woman with a Crow" and multicultural lore about the raven as an animal, was not well-represented in my work. I feel like conceptually, this project fell short on the execution. My final product did not portray the symbolic elements of my inspirations and my intentions. This can be seen through the visual aspects. by only looking at it, is is impossible tell that I wanted the specificity of a raven as compared to a general bird. Without saying what I wanted to demonstrate with this project, it lacks meaning and significance. The largest challenge for me was timing. I put the project off because I was daunted by its size and the fact that it would be publicly revealed and critiqued. Furthermore, there were many separate parts that I would have to make function together as opposed to a singular painting or drawing. Also, this project required a large amount of space. Since I could only work on it for small increments, the space I was using quickly became messy, The clutter (and my already small house) made it so I got very anxious and fidgety when I was working. My least favorite part was having to present it. I was disappointed in the work I had produced and therefore had negative feelings about sharing it. Some of the biggest visual issues I had with it was that the chest piece remained boxy and chaotic looking (due to the feathers-they seemed slapped on and unorganized) and that the wings should have had longer sections so that they remained overlapping at all times. I also think they should have been longer (both horizontally and vertically). Finally, I feel like the headpiece would have tied it together and given the piece more depth as a whole. At the end of the day, I can only hope that people can at least find the exposed corrugation and moving sections interesting.
Connecting to the ACT
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
The inspiration in my project (lore and Picasso) gave me a narrative to surround my piece with. It gave building blocks and conceptual reasons to create the final product that I did. The inspiration helped to keep my ideas rotating around a certain theme.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The approach I had in this work was the negative and positive portrays of ravens in media, culture, and history that has extended through time, as well as how I view myself.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
The generalizations and conclusions I discovered came from more in-depth research about the history of ravens. It was interesting to find how there were both positive and negative ideas about ravens throughout various cultures. I wasn't aware of some of the figures, such as Irish goddesses, that also revolved around ravens and how revered and feared ravens are in different areas of the world.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
I looked for themes of historical significance and literary/artistic themes of ravens and the symbolic power they hold. I was looking for the differences separate cultures had around these beautiful birds and the impact they have on the mood and messages of stories, art, etc.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
I was inferring a lot about the ways I could illustrate and interpret my research and transfer it into a physical, artistic form.
The inspiration in my project (lore and Picasso) gave me a narrative to surround my piece with. It gave building blocks and conceptual reasons to create the final product that I did. The inspiration helped to keep my ideas rotating around a certain theme.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The approach I had in this work was the negative and positive portrays of ravens in media, culture, and history that has extended through time, as well as how I view myself.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
The generalizations and conclusions I discovered came from more in-depth research about the history of ravens. It was interesting to find how there were both positive and negative ideas about ravens throughout various cultures. I wasn't aware of some of the figures, such as Irish goddesses, that also revolved around ravens and how revered and feared ravens are in different areas of the world.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
I looked for themes of historical significance and literary/artistic themes of ravens and the symbolic power they hold. I was looking for the differences separate cultures had around these beautiful birds and the impact they have on the mood and messages of stories, art, etc.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
I was inferring a lot about the ways I could illustrate and interpret my research and transfer it into a physical, artistic form.
Bibliography
"Woman with a Crow", Pablo Picasso, https://www.pablopicasso.org/woman-with-a-crow.jsp