Sophie Soloway: Self Portrait, Material Alchemy, and Imitation

I know this is quite a lot to be posting at once, but I've been a bit lax on posting my own work due to photographic limitations. As such, I apologize for the cellphone quality of these images, it's the best I can do! PLEASE CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO SEE IT FULLY.

For Material Alchemy, I did two projects.
First of all, here is the Newsprint Raincloud from two angles.




And my #2 Material Alchemy project was a small folding chair/cot made from 6 pieces of scrap wood and 6 screws, plus some fabric, staples, red paint, and blood. Tockwotton Studios was such a fun place to build things.




Here is my self portrait. The piece is called "Facade." It is made of plaster on a perforated sheet metal background, and the black lines are kitchen string coated in shoe polish. I used industrial materials in order to convery the sense of building the mask that you show to the world each day - how our public persona, like the front of a building, is a thoughtfully constructed piece of work and can hide pretty much anything. Although the contour lines mimic window panes, there is no way to see through the mask. Before you get to know someone, you have to infer everything about them by how they choose to appear.







Lastly, I am posting (very belatedly) my imitation piece. I've had a good quality image of this one for quite some time, but never thought to post it to the blog. Here you go! It is an imitation of Gustave Courbet's "self-portrait" or "the desperate man."