For potential concepts, I considered some topics that I’m passionate about or that have been more recently on my mind, such as mental health issues, climate change, and my hatred of the 40-hour work week. I came up with several potential concepts using these themes and have two concept proposals I’d like to share with all of you.
Both titles are not finalized and were thought up while writing this post. If you have a better title for either concept, let me know!
Colors of Support
For my first idea, I thought about the overwhelming feeling of darkness and brain fog that often comes with mental illness, such as depression. I thought of a curled up figure lit up by dark blue lights but I didn’t want my final project to be so negative, especially when I’m no longer in such a headspace. I considered what elements often help lift people out of these dark places. Some are a bit too abstract and hard to convey, such as therapy and medication. One factor that other people can actually see help these struggling individuals is by showing them love, patience, and support.
This brought me to my final concept. The struggling figure glows blue by themselves but will glow yellow when the supportive figure hugs them.
My biggest concern is making the figures anatomically correct. I can barely draw them, so I worry about forming them three-dimensionally and having them fit together.
Shadows Behind Climate Change
For my second idea, I wanted to focus on environmentalism and considered using waste to create distinct shadows, like Diet Wegman. I considered several ideas, such as creating fish to represent plastic’s effect on marine wildlife or a figure holding a rifle towards a doe for a very on-the-nose metaphor of our impact on the environment. I decided that I wanted to create two distinct shadows using the same sculpture to create a story and was eventually brought to my final concept idea.
One shadow depicts a mother polar bear on a piece of ice, separated from her cub in the second shadow. Polar bears are often used as the face of climate change due to the melting ice caps and their increasingly limited ability to survive. The sculpture creating these shadows will be composed of Coca-Cola cans and bottles. Ironically, polar bears are often depicted on Coca-Cola products yet Coca-Cola has been named the top global polluter multiple years in a row.
I worry this will be incredibly difficult to execute and I may have to adjust to creating only one shadow instead of two.
Artist’s Questions
- For “Colors of Support,” do you have any recommendations on how I could make the entire body light up? Any suggestions for materials or methods?
- For “Shadows Behind Climate Change,” would it even be possible to get both a small shadow and a big shadow from the same sculpture? Any suggestions or pictures of how past light artists accomplished this?
- Any other suggestions or thoughts on any of the pieces? Which one is your favorite and why?
I appreciate any feedback or recommendations people have!
I like the concept for both of these! At the moment I’m leaning toward the second one, as it seems a little more fleshed out in terms of how you plan to do it. I think the first one has potential, but I’m not sure what materials/scale you have in mind for the figures, and how you’d light them up.
For the second idea – while it’d be tricky to to have the trash pile look smaller from one direction than it does from the other (since both views have the same vertical dimension somewhere), you can scale up the shadows by just placing one light closer to the pile. The farther light will cast a smaller shadow, and the closer light will cast a larger shadow.
This would be even more difficult, but you could even try having one shadow use negative space – namely, one light projects a filled-in shadow, while the other light projects a shadow *surrounding* the image you actually want to show.
Oh, I didn’t even think about positioning the lights differently. That’s a great idea and I might have to use that! Thanks!
Darius, those are great! I’m thinking if the bodies were inflatable or hollow or a translucent plastic, you could put bulbs inside of them. It seems to me that this would probably be difficult to pull off overall compared to the other one.
Regarding the bear shadows, two shadows seems doable to me, but again, I haven’t done artwork like this before. Also, you can use more brands than just coca-cola!
If you go with the person feeling blue, you could make it simpler by having it be one sculpture, and whenever a person comes near and touches it (heat or touch sensor or something), it becomes less blue. 2 sculptures that interlock seem challenging (but I can’t draw let alone sculpt a human personally, so maybe that’s just me)
Thanks, Tarang! I was definitely worried about the interlocking figures but having to make only one figure feels a lot more feasible. I really like the sensor idea. And I appreciate the material suggestions! I’ll have to look into those…
I really like the Shadows behind Climate change piece and believe that a similar method for using one piece can be used to showcase another concept using light and shadow. You could even use this method you have here to demonstrate the climate change for the mental health topics you also are trying to convey. For the color portion of the Colors of Support, you could encorporate multiple different light sources to play around with the addition of colors to make other colors and effects.
I like both of these a lot, though I think I would lean towards Colors of Support! I think using light and the absence thereof would do a good job of conveying feelings of darkness and solitude, and then the warm feelings of having someone’s support. Your drawings look great! I don’t know what thoughts you had for materials or construction, but I think it could be cool to have them be 3D. You could either model them yourself or maybe try using a 3D scanner, and then 3D print them out of a translucent material. Alternatively, you could 3D print a mold and use that to make a hollow shell from another material, maybe some kind of resin? Then different colored lights could go inside. Maybe you could have a motion sensor so when someone is detected nearby, the lights transition from blue to yellow and the second person appears.
I really like both of these ideas. I think the second option would definitely be more difficult since there are so many variables when trying to cast a shadow. That being said, I feel like it’s definitely possible to have 2 separate shadows.
For the first one, you mentioned the ability to draw the figures. I’d say your initial sketches are really good! They look like bodies with a small amount of an artistic style applied. Have you thought about how you could make these? Seeing the thought about something glowing made me think of engraved or frosted acrylic sheets.
I like the shadows behind climate change, I like how there is a message behind it. It would be cool if there were different color lights that could be worked into the light or the piece.
I love that you were inspired by Diet Wiegman for the second concept, I get to pretend like I was a tiny part of your inspiration for presenting on him. Shoving the irony in our faces with the polar bears and coca cola is a fantastic concept. I agree it could prove to be a challenge, but it is good you can adjust the idea if creating one shadow takes longer than expected.
For the first concept, it might be difficult to have the two people fit together if you want the hugger’s arms wrapped more than halfway around the lit up one. Either its arms can’t be closer together than the widest part on the lit up figure, or you’d need to make the hugger malleable in some way. I thought at first that it would be interactive, and the viewer would be the one hugging the figure to make it light up, which could also be a cool idea.
I was thinking for “colors of support” you could 3D print a hollow figure and leave a small hole in the bottom to insert a light that you could control somehow. I think the first concept is a little more feasible than the second, though I’m sure it’s possible somehow.
You can vary the shadows you get based on the placement and distance of the lights you are using. I really like the climate change piece that you are looking into making. Its a really poignant piece.
I like both of these ideas! For the first if you’re worried about getting the shapes right, you could try modeling them at a small scale using clay or something, you could even use a photogrammetry program to scan it into a digital 3D model. I feel like the second concept needs something extra to set it apart, maybe add some color to the lights?
I think both of these concepts have good potential.
For Colors of Support, perhaps it could be a flat light box with frosted acrylic cut into the silhouettes that you drew. The 2nd person could be on another layer that is initially hidden but fades into visibility as the color changes on the first figure.
For Shadows Behind Climate Change, one idea is that maybe the scene is constructed in miniature, like with dollhouse Coca Cola cans, so that the piece is easier to transport and setup.