For this assignment, I decided to make a piece in response to the “what pisses you off” theme.
So I wondered, what really pisses me off? What aggravates me?
And then I remember all those lovely elementary and high school memories of when I used to get comfortable leaning back on my chair or even rocking it… Only to find a lovely wet slimy surprise for me, underneath.
That was when I had an idea to recreate my nightmare into a completely ridiculously exaggerated, blown up version.
I was sure that I wanted to use a classic school classroom chair. I was lucky enough to find a used one on eBay that was the perfect colour I had in mind! I thought that the colour of the chair would complement the colourful gum pieces very well. The whole piece would look very unified, and it would give off a very strong childlike appearance. When thinking about how I wanted the massive gum piece to look like, I decided that I wanted it to go straight up. It was completely outrageous and silly, reminding me of a TV show I watched as a child. The show was called MegaBabies, and it was about three ‘mega’ babies with super human strength. Whenever their diapers were full, they would fly straight up. Ridiculous, and outrageous indeed.
Unlike the previous assignment, my initial idea wasn’t so far off from the final product. For the most part.
The process pretty much went how I expected it. However, there were some miscalculations.
I never imagined my jaw to give out so quickly. In fact, during the process, a piece of my cavity filling that I had done during the beginning of the school year fell out. I was afraid that all my teeth would rot by the time I was finished.
I am absolutely in love with the texture of the compact pieces of gum!
It was also very difficult to fill up the space. It looked much nicer when the gum was compact and not spread out. Unfortunately I had to spread out some pieces because of time. And the fact that I felt as if my jaw was betraying me. After many long hard days of chewing gum, I was finally able to fill ‘most’ of the area.
Since the sculpture was so high up, I couldn’t actually put the two pieces together until I was in class. I tried to mix in a few pieces of play-doh to help me fill the game. If I knew beforehand that the play-doh was so vibrant, I probably wouldn’t have decided to do that.
After I hearing some second opinions, I realized that there were many ways I could have approached the assignment without going through the obstacle of chewing the gum.
The sculpture leaves room for a lot of different paths. I could have made it into somewhat of a performance piece. Something that calls for viewer participation. I definitely would not use anything else but gum so that the concept of a huge dense mass of gum pieces really comes out to the viewer. I would also make the base of the gum wider, so that the negative space between the chair legs and the gum wasn’t so obvious.
Overall, I am quite happy with my product. There were obviously some things I would’ve done differently, but it wasn’t so far off from what I initially imagined. Given the opportunity, I would like to take this sculpture further by turning it into something that is more interactive. I really loved the idea of making a large gum sculpture, but the gum-chewing part wasn’t exactly my favourite thing to do.
Here is a sketch of how I imagine my ‘improved’ version of my sculpture to look like.
I imagine the art piece to be in an empty classroom, with two ‘regular-looking’ chairs to the side of it. On the wall (or desk) there would be a sign encouraging the viewer to have a gum ball and stick it under the chair.
It could even be one of those stress relieving activities…
Or probably not. It’s really gross.