Meta Art-Practice

THESIS VI

I sculpted a snail shell out of paper maché months ago. It sat unfinished and snail-less until I was finally stricken down by covid and had nothing better to do than stare at unfinished projects all day. While it was tempting to let my brain continue to atrophy watching 90 day fiancé on autoplay, I figured I’d draw some sketches of sculptures as a low commitment brainstorm.

You can see the resulting sketches above. I was most captivated by the top drawing. It would be a worthwhile challenge to sculpt a figure that was so expressive in its body language. I did my high school capstone project on body language and the fascination never waned. However, I had sculpted and drawn so many bodies that were passive, focusing on the beauty of the figure rather than letting the body narrate its story. I started building my armature right away. Lesson learned: I don’t need to have a fully developed idea to initiate working on a project. If I start sketching, the ideas might flow.

The armature. Lots of things I did wrong here, starting with using painter’s tape and tinfoil. More lessons learned.

The original snail shell I sculpted. It was living rent-free on my tv stand for 8 months.

Steps of creating the snail

You may be wondering what any of this has to do with my thesis. Same.

Ok if you insist, I’ll speculate wildly until something sticks.

First, there’s the literal relationship- I was looking at bodies before and this is a body. It is a deviation from the 3D printing I have done so far for a few reasons. I got bored looking at a photo realistic depiction of my body. I know I’ve accepted that I’m a human, a sack of meat with feelings, but is my body the actual, factual, form that is captured in this 3D scan? Or does a representation of my body, invented by my mind more relevant?

Secondly, there’s the figurative relationship- the act of making this was a meta practice. It not only depicts my struggle with disconnect between my mind and body but also, the creation of it was an experiment in overcoming that struggle. Starting as a sculpture I made a year before but never finished, I picked it back up when in a moment of executive function lucidity I thought about how much my executive function disorder was holding me back from completing projects I was passionate about. I locked myself away for at least a week, working on this sculpture and watching myself carefully as though I was a scientist observing from the outside. What barriers and thought processes made me want to stop working on it. How could I trick myself into pushing through those ways in which dysfunction tried to sabotage me? ADHD is a disability of contradictions. How can my mind so definitively want to do something, but not be capable of convincing my body to do it? If I am both my mind and body, why do they act in defiance of each other? Because getting myself to do things is my greatest challenge and takes every drop of energy I have, this sculpture represents trying to pull myself out of dysfunction and get my body to do what my mind wants it to do. In other words, the work that has to be done to get myself to do anything at all.