porcupine cheerio

This past semester I took an art class at W&M called 3D Foundations—and LOVED it. This is one of the projects we did. I call it my “porcupine cheerio.”

On the inside my lovely little spiky oversized breakfast cereal is made of horizontal layers of pink foam insulation board stacked and cemented together with Gorilla Glue. The outside is then covered in a layer of finely sanded plaster. Lastly, the dowels are, well, dowels. Self-explanatory.

The assignment was to create two forms: a volume and a mass. The plaster body formed the solid mass, while the dowels were supposed to be an “empty” volume. My dowels, however, actually formed a kind of texture that more suggested a volume.

These are the original sketches:

Part of the project was to find an area for it to reside in the environment where it mimicked, contrasted with, responded to, or in some way interacted with the textures and shapes present there, which is why there are so many pictures of this thing in so many different locations. (Are you picturing me carrying this incredibly difficult-to-maneuver and surprisingly heavy thing all over campus? Because that’s exactly what happened. Are you picturing me accidently poking myself in the eye with one of those dowels while picking it up? Because that happened too. And, by the way, it hurt like hell and my eye watered for the rest of the day. “Oh, no, don’t worry about me! I’m just crying because I speared my eyeball with my art project! NBD!” Embarrassing.) I eventually chose the gray slate patio below as the final resting place—morbid, much?—below because I liked the shadows there and also the way that the organic shape of the cheerio contrasted with the geometric lines of the stones.

The sculpture, including its wooden mohawk, is maybe somewhere between three and four feet tall. (“That’s just about as tall as you, Rhiannon!” No. It’s not. I am a full five-foot-four thank-you-very-much.) Obviously I couldn’t get it home with me on the train over winter break, so my choices were: (1) toss it, or (2) give up precious dorm space and force the roomies to live in an even more cramped square-footage. Obviously I picked the latter (I’m such a considerate roommate!) and Porky currently resides wedged in the corner of the room between the top of my desk and the ceiling. It scares visitors, but then I really don’t have that many friends, so no worries.

What do you think? You like it? (My professor did, so I guess that’s all that really matters…! Just kidding. You know I crave—no, LIVE FOR—your approval also. Oh, my darling readers. I am nothing without you.)