Date of Submission

Spring 2021

Academic Program

Studio Arts

Project Advisor 1

Lisa Sanditz

Abstract/Artist's Statement

What is collected? What is discarded?

When something is described as “mint condition,” it means it has virtually no imperfections. This term is given to pre-owned objects, denoting their value.

Collected and discarded materials absorb something from us, something distinctly human. I think about all of the stuffed animals I’ve owned, how I embedded personality in and formed a relation to those objects. The stuff we collect becomes elevated and reinscribed in that way. This is true for the materials we discard as well. Each plastic takeout container holds nourishment, however temporary it may be.

The materials in my work are a combination of secondhand beanie babies, discarded bits and pieces of plastic, paper and styrofoam, as well as objects that invite a childlike spirit of arts and crafts such as beads, pipe cleaners, cotton balls and string. This element speaks to my personal embeddedness in the work. To this degree the work is an opportunity to gain insight into my own collection habits that fill corners in both my home and memory. Allowing the objects one more incarnation.

This project was born out of a drive to take childhood objects and bring them to a larger scale- to give them more importance and value, as well as an aim to depict the process of growing up, a process which may be deemed as a loss of innocence or value.

The works in Mint Condition are anything but pristine. They are messy, at times grotesque with an element of sickly sweetness. The beanie babies themselves, which are often kept in mint condition by collectors, have been doused in glue, tied up and reconfigured forcing their significance to come from elsewhere.

Open Access Agreement

Open Access

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Download

This work is protected by a Creative Commons license. Any use not permitted under that license is prohibited.

Included in

Fine Arts Commons

Share

COinS