Paper Pull
Halee In The Middle
I did an initial photo session with the model, then bring the images into Photoshop to desaturate and add a Ben-Day Dot filter (i.e., Roy Lichtenstein). I print the images life size for the actual photo shoot of the artwork. In this piece I pinned the life size paper women to the wall (i.e., Yves Klein). A blue light is cast onto the pinned paper women and the real woman to approximate the blue paint on Klein’s female models. I also use the blue light cast onto the real woman as a metaphor for the woman turning into paper, which is another way to desaturate the flesh of its color. I use blue light as Klein used blue paint–because bright blue is not often seen in daily life. We are familiar with white and yellow lights in our houses and work, so the saturated blue suggests fantasy and abstraction.
Society Hungers …For People At Their Worst
We’ve been conditioned by movies, reality TV shows, social media websites, and news programs that people should act in improper ways in order to become famous.
I came up with the idea of this image after watching the 1969 movie “Blow-Up” by Michelangelo Antonioni, and the voyeuristic tendencies presented in the 1954 movie “Rear Window” by Alfred Hitchcock. Today images and live streams of people on social media websites can be viewed as soon as a person clicks the “go live” button; instantly trying to be famous.
Set in a photographers studio paper representations of the woman are hung all over the walls and loiter the floor. The model can not escape her own perfect image literally and figuratively. She struggles mentally with the images of her representation. The encapsulated image from the time she had the photograph taken of her represents the best she will ever look physically. She knows with age she will need to maintain her body’s perfect form and health to stay looking like the day she took these photos. With frustration she takes a knife to one of her paper representation’s on the wall.
Both Sides
Halee see both sides of what she is doing. She has integrity and understands what it means to be a model making good money as opposed to making money with her brain and a job that uses her smarts instead of her body. After ripping up her own paper representation she is peeling the bend-day dots off her own face. She is pulled by each side of the issue on what she should do.
All the Cool Girls are Doing It
The art speaks about consumerism and the newest trends. Magazines, social media, and online internet ads pushing the latest craze in makeup, or outfits for women, and how this leads to pressure on women to look a certain way. She is scrubbing the mask off of her face. The paper pieces scattered around the sink are the remnants of the multiple sessions to get the makeup to look ‘just right’.