SYNERGY BOX

Enter “The World of the Chicken.” In this project, I turned my minimalist tendencies on their head and embraced the disorder of color, pattern, and material. I was inspired by my found object—the plastic orange chicken—and wanted to create an immersive world not only for the chicken but also for the viewer. The three defining words for the sculpture were psychedelic, intuitive, and seeing. I found inspiration from my early panel creations, made from materials and melded together using a heat gun. I chose to construct an asymmetric plywood box with stain purposefully applied in a haphazard way. These choices were all part of emphasizing the distinction between the unassuming outside and the frenzied and lawless inside. At first, the only light sources were two spotlights, one emitting orange light from under the chicken and the other emitting purple light. In the final editing stages, however, I removed much of the original sheet metal ceiling and drilled holes so that light could seep in. In the context of the scale of the box, the light seeping in through these drilled holes become scaled spotlights of sorts. Ultimately, I wanted the piece to feel complete with the viewer inside.

I brought in a plastic chicken toy as my found object, hoping to challenge my tendency to veer towards minimalism (particularly with regards to color). In the beginning stages of the project, I struggled to find a scale that would provide the kind of all-encapsulating and immersive experience that I sought to create. However, after my classmate suggested scaling up the box so that the viewer could comfortably put their head in the box, something clicked. From that moment on, I leaned into the distinction between the internal and external environments. 

Creating the box proved more challenging than expected due to the compound angles inherent in an asymmetrical structure. The material experimentation proved crucial to this project. Whereas the first two projects did not explicitly demonstrate the evolution of my learning in the final product, this third project was the product of two weeks’ worth of material experimentation. In the first week of the course during the mini gallery exploration project, I applied serious heat to colored plastic wrap. I developed this technique, but on sheet metal and wood stain instead of on chicken wire, for the third project. The panels I created for the inside of the crate varied, and it was in this variance that the experimentation-focused process and evolution of my technique were retained in the final sculpture.