Showed Isabel my object:
I was very surprised she saw so much more than I did in my work. She liked my thought about the red flashlight as heartbeat because it made the object alive or animated. She shared Annette Messager’s work at Hayward Gallery and how her body parts objects seemed breathing. She suggested me to think about other parts of body as well. She found the material I used was nylon rather than wool. She said it could be transformative if I used wool from a body. My understanding of this so far is that the object I created looked like an eye ball somehow and it’s about humans’ desire, so material from a body may relate more, also like getting close to skin. Would try wool tomorrow.
After looking through my portfolio, she found color was a big element in my work, which I realized as well, so she shared John Gage’s Color and Culture: Practice and Meaning from Antiquity to Abstraction. She also said my object looked like an enlarged eye and shared Alexis Rockman’s Wonderful World about stylish human bodies.
There’s so much information to take in. It’s interesting that I made this object without many specific intentions while it conveyed many meanings than I expected or thought of. I’m very happy I did this experiment and appreciate Isabel encouraging me to develop my work.
Eva Wang 