Doppelgänger

For my Contemporary Issues in Art Education class, one of our assignments is to create a piece of art that is informed by a contemporary artist.  The first artist that came to mind was Luke Chueh because of the dark overtones of his work.  He deals with growing up as a Chinese-American and all the crap he took as a kid by making paintings about it.  I used that as a stepping stone for my idea of dealing with my fear of the dark.  It's an irrational fear that there's something in the dark and that I'm going to die in my sleep.  I remembered reading about doppelgängers a while ago and decided to create a physical manifestation of these fears that I have as a way of somehow dealing with them.


I really wanted to push myself with this project and use it as a way to learn a new technique or two.  I really wanted to experiment with plaster bandages so I picked some up and went at it.  The following are a few in-progress photographs of the pieces I've made so far.

Here's a shot of the four limbs that I'm going to be using for the piece.  The hands are done but the upper leg portion needs to be repaired and both of the legs need to be a little creepier for me to be happy with it.

A close-up if hand #1 while it was still wet.  I built the entire armature out of aluminum foil since I didn't have any armature wire with me at the time.  It actually worked surprisingly well and I'm really glad I just came off of a quarter of figure-painting where we used the skeleton every day.


As I was making the hands, I couldn't help but think how I was probably subconsciously inspired by the work of Guillermo del Toro (the director of Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth.)  He's got some pretty terrifying monsters that he's designed that I've been inspired by.

Here's a quick shot of the door that the figure is going to be coming out of.  I can't be more thankful for garbage day!!  I was coming home from a friend's house where we had just talked about how I needed a door and I didn't know where I was getting one.  This was out on the curb at my neighbor's house so I snagged it.  It's exactly what I was thinking for the piece :)


Anyway, I've got to make some tendrils for the rest of tonight and hopefully tomorrow, I can start assembling the entire thing and then paint!