Small Gestures Installation

With limited resources and limited 2 days time, I and my two collaborators devised an installation on campus that we hoped would serve as a playful poke at ethics for any observers. But the idea for the installation arose by a series of associative leaps.

Googly eyes got us started. How fun would it be to animate the lemons on the lemon tree with eyes!? But lemons watching student passer-bys turns the table of who the audience is. They seem to silently judge too, watching when no one else is watching. 

Reminds me of the quote "Character is who you are when no one else is watching". 

These lemons become analogues of God's omnipresence. How do we combine character and the lemon's watching presence? 

. . .

An honor-system lemonade stand! 

The mute lemon onlookers oversee the stand, a reminder that "no one watching" is in fact never the case. We are always accountable for our actions.

The lemonade stand was built in front of the lemons, equipped with a jar for collecting the requested 50 cents per glass. The lemons were surprisingly inconspicuous. All the better. Those who noticed the surreptitious lemons were thrown off kilter. 

The jar accrued some bills and coins in seeming proportion to the reduced volume of lemonade. A display of integrity? Or intimidation by lemons? I'm optimistic in thinking the first. Observation of the stand leads me to think the lemons served as a startlingly, rather comical gimmick for those who noticed them. Also, rather morbid.. As they silently observe as drinking their juice.

The stand alone functioned as an integrity stratagem. The lemons drove it home with a laugh.

Assemblage

Visiting a thrift shop with a mindset that turned all objects to inspiration-fodder, our chosen things launched us into an exercise in connection-building. Take on object, let it form an association or pair it with the other idea that pops into mind, see what that combination yields, modify it, add another element, tailor it in a direction. . .  all these things make me feel like a curator of associations.

It started with a plate, a square sushi plate. Asian cuisine influences my cooking so I imagined I could plate something inedible and dress it up to look like a noodles or sushi. I went with noodles. Then "hair" came to mind. Earlier that day, I made a Venn diagram of materials/things that I'm attracted to, repelled by, or a bit of both. Hair was the item that fell in the overlap. Fascination and revulsion all in one, the response is contextual. On the head, beautiful. On my bathroom floor, plastered to the shower, between my toes.... nasty.

So, a noodle nest made of hair was the natural conclusion. As I was collecting hair (unbeknownst to my roommates) I felt like a scavenging bird. And rolling the noodles together with clay made it apparent my materials were more inclined towards a muddy mess. So the "noodles" was dropped and the "nest" took over. 

Looking to my bathroom floor for more inspiration, floss presented itself to my imagination. So did a couple stray fingernail clippings with remnants of nail polish. Ceramic eggs glazed with my nail polish quickly adorned the hair nest.

Assembled together, it became like "hair" in my Venn diagram: revolting and appealing simultaneously. Somehow it gave a sense of fragility. Perhaps due to the brittle loops of clay, or the airy suspension of floss between fuzzy strands. The connotations of eggs in a nest lend a vulnerability. Especially when suspended on a wobbly welded pole outside, gently swaying with the breeze. 

The associations were tenuous. But their interplay worked towards "fragility". I can hardly take credit, I let the materials have their way. I crafted the thing, but the thing's associations controlled the process. I tried to make this an exercise in release for me. Release of control and release of self-consciousness as I was preparing to present my nastiest-to-date project as "art".