😢la Llorona😢
Size: 25.5 cm by 15.25cm
Medium: Polymer clay, acrylic paint, human hair
Date: November 2018
La llorona is a polymer sculpture inspired in part by Frida Kahlo's self portraits. The work is plays on the old Mexican folklore by the same title where a woman drowned her children and spent the rest of her life natural and after mourning and searching for them. In this work I am in a similar matter grieving over the loss of my own childhood.
inspiration
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo's works especially her portraiture have always been something which I found solace in. Although I was lucky enough to not share the same aliments in life as her looking at her work her ache and pain resonated within me as I grew and experienced life. Looking deeply at her work and then mine I had a realization that I could not feel anything other than dread when I looked at my work. Kahlo's work made me want to explore create feeling in my work. I found that the easiest way to do this is to play with expression and symbols so in my work I hoped to emulate so of the same expressions and employ similar symbols to illustrate a feeling.
Planning
In this first sketch I wanted and explored my own emotions towards hazy recollection of my childhood. As I drew out these expressions I asked myself if that really encompassed everything I felt towards that part of my life. Eventually I took the expression which most resonated with what I have come to terms with and began to refine it and move onto greater details.
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In this second sketch I am planning out how I could get across that this piece is meant to convey my childhood. Almost immediately I thought about my hair. As a child I had the curliest, blackest, hair in my family but with time I began to chop at it, dye it, and grow grays. Eventually my hair lost its curl and became straight. In this sketch I am playing with incorporating both straight short and curling long hair to convey time and youthfulness.
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This last sketch is symbols which I hoped would carry the rest of the piece along. I played with adding tears to not only allude to Frida's work but to also illustrate sadness along with the initial despair to create grief . The thorns which moved on into the work from this sketch as well were meant to symbolize the restrictions placed upon me by growing up.
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Process
To begin with I created a armature for the clay. I didn't want to make the whole sculpture out of a solid block of clay because that would be wasteful and very heavy. To produce the armature I used wire and aluminum foil. I crafted a cross with thick wire secured it with thin wire and began to wrap aluminum foil around the part were the horizontal and vertical wires met. I wrapped the aluminum in long strands until it was the size of my head. To shape it into a head shape I would then wack it against the wall. the final form ended up being oblong. After the oblong was ready I could then add foil around the narrowest part to create the neck. Once I deemed the neck thick enough this time by just eyeballing it the armature was done.
sculpting this piece was hard to say the least and there were many mistakes made. First, I thought sculpting on the armature I had created for myself would be challenging and aggravating because of its size. My intentions in also separating the sculpture from the armature were to be able to view the progress I was making from all angles in order to correct any mistakes. Beginning the face away apart from the armature I first needed to create the shape of my face. To create the shape of my face I printed out several pictures of myself from various angles and several of one headshot in a similar size to the armature. Once my references were in front of me I began to knead the clay. Kneading the clay allowed it to become more malleable and thus easier to work. After I had kneaded the clay I began to form the shape of my face using the reference picture to measure both size and correct shape. I then began work on the features the first of which being the nose. The nose was an important part of the sculpt because it is one of my most recognizable features thus I sculpted it first and with the most attention to details. To sculpt the nose and other features I would break them up into the basic shapes they were comprised of. For the nose as well as other features it was merely a different range and ration of cylinders to spheres. When I had checked their size with the reference pictures I had taken I then placed them on the face. Blending the features was a two step process. The first step was blending the shapes together and to the face, this was most effectively done with my warm fingers. The second step was slightly refining the features to a legible state, to do this I used metal sculpting tools in the shape of an offset spatula. Between adding all the features in I checked on my reference pictures to make sure not only the placement was right but so was the depth of the feature of the face. The last step in sculpting was then taking a step back and seeing what needed to be reworked. To remove from an area I would use a loop tool then my hands to smooth the area out, to add I would simply use my hands. Once I was satisfied I used the loop tool to hollow the back of the face replaced that clay with aluminum foil and baked it in the oven. I took out most of the clay that was not visible so the piece would be lighter, there would be less clay wasted, less of a chance it wouldn't bake and so there would be less of a chance it would crack or explode if it bakes too well. When the face was finished I then began working of covering the armature with clay. To cover the armature with clay in an effective manner I rolled out clay in large sheets with a rolling pin and then draped them over the armature. I then attached the face with more clay. Because most of the armature would be covered I knew it would not matter if some of the sculpt was bumpy so I left the neck and back of head roughed in but not completely smooth. When I was satisfied with the outcome I baked once again this time at a lower temperature for longer to monitor the face so it would not crack. When baking was complete I set the sculpture out to dry and it was ready to paint.
Painting was an important part of the piece because it would be in this step where the resemblance to myself and to Frida's work would really show through. I thought about painting this piece like I thought about applying my makeup so I started out with a primer for the sculpture and that was gesso. I used gesso to provide a blank slate for the rest of my paints. The next step was foundation, to do this I actually tried to color match my foundation with the paint I was mixing. Since this would be the base of everything else I made sure I got a good coverage by using a wide flat brush and doing multiple coats of this color. Once this was done I painted on the rest of the features that I enhance with my makeup or needed to be painted. Painting the eyebrows and eyes was the most challenging part of the paint because they needed to curve with the expression I was making and virtually carry the whole emotion of the piece. Usually when I do my own makeup I have to clean up my eyebrows with concealer but in order to avoid having to go back in with paint I first sketched the browns in a light colored pencil I would somewhat erase. Painting the eyes was a bit easier because I would easily fix my mistakes with white. I then painted the lips with a by also attempting to color match my favorite lipstick and the acrylic paint. When the paint was dry I moved on to adding depth into the painting. To add depth to my makeup I use bronzer and eyeshadow so, thinking along those lines I used pigment from pastels to the natural but subtle color variations in my work that I have. This step would also help me emulate the expression and style in Kahlo's work. Often in her work Kahlo intensifies and exaggerates not her facial features but the symbols around or on them to covey meaning and importance but since I wanted to convey a feeling I chose to emulate how she exaggerates those symbols in the way I depict my features. I wanted to add this resemblance and depth gradually so I shaved the pastels to power I could mix to get the colors I wanted and applied them to the face in layers with a small fluffy makeup brush. In between every layer and at the end I added a layer of matte finishing spray to save my progress.
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The very last step was adding the hair.The hair was something I was originally planning on sculpting but then altered at the last minute. Before starting on sculpting the hair I was presented with actual human hair I could use. The hair came in a bundle that when unraveled and untangled became a long strand of small thin hair strands. To apply the hair to the sculpture I used hot glue. Hot gluing the hair involved me cutting the very long strand into smaller more manageable pieces. These pieces would then be glued in a zigzag formation from the top of the scalp. I made sure the formation of the zigzag was tight so the hair didn't look like it was haphazardly placed everywhere. When most of the head was covered I decided where I would create the part in the hair and placed the hair particularly careful in that area to create a neat clean part. The last step to the hair was painting on baby hairs to creates a more seamless transition between hair and clay.
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Experimentation
In this project I experimented with a variety of materials to various degrees of successes and failures. Although I had used clay and polymer clay before I had never completed a project of this size. Knowing the basics of working with polymer clay I knew this would mean that a project this big would have to be thin since baking thicker layers of clay would result in more cracks. In order to try and keep my layers thin I attempted to sculpt an armature and hollow out pieces that were beginning to get too thick. This worked to some extent as the piece survived baking with minimal cracking because there was a somewhat consistently thick layer of clay throughout the piece.
Reflection
Overall I am disappointed and dissatisfied with the outcome of this project. Although the I feel I did a good job in sculpting my likeness into clay thats the only department where it is impressive. There is nothing very special about the piece and the symbolism gets lost in the magnitude of the whole work. Furthermore, because the symbols are so small and hard to see and the painting was carried out to resemble my appearance more than Kahlo's work it reads much more as a craft project to me than an actual work of art.
ACT Responses
1) Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect upon your work?
The cause of my inspiration was my cultural familiarity with Frida Kahlo's work and because I was already somewhat familiar with her work and how she depicted her struggles and pain I was inspired to also showcase my own struggles.
2) What is the overall approach(point of view) the author (from your research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The research I read was very focused on the overall message of the piece and the creators perspective on said pieces rather than the aspects I was interest in.
3) What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
From my research I was able to generalize the how significant symbols were in Kahlo's work and how her work was an important part in dealing with her ailments.
4) What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The central Idea of my work was representing struggle and turmoil so must of my research involved looking into work where Kahlo most potently and clearly depicted struggle.
The cause of my inspiration was my cultural familiarity with Frida Kahlo's work and because I was already somewhat familiar with her work and how she depicted her struggles and pain I was inspired to also showcase my own struggles.
2) What is the overall approach(point of view) the author (from your research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The research I read was very focused on the overall message of the piece and the creators perspective on said pieces rather than the aspects I was interest in.
3) What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
From my research I was able to generalize the how significant symbols were in Kahlo's work and how her work was an important part in dealing with her ailments.
4) What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The central Idea of my work was representing struggle and turmoil so must of my research involved looking into work where Kahlo most potently and clearly depicted struggle.
Citations
Allman, Ginger Davis. “Polymer Clay Tips for Beginners.” The Blue Bottle Tree, 21 Jan. 2018, thebluebottletree.com/polymer-clay-tips-beginners/.
“Frida Kahlo Biography.” Frida Kahlo: 100 Famous Paintings, Complete Works, & Biography, www.fridakahlo.org/frida-kahlo-biography.jsp.
Kahlo, Frida. “The Broken Column .” Frida Kahlo, 1944, Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City, Mexico, www.fridakahlo.org/the-broken-column.jsp.
Kahlo, Frida. Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird . 1940.
www.fridakahlo.org/the-broken-column.jsp.
“Frida Kahlo Biography.” Frida Kahlo: 100 Famous Paintings, Complete Works, & Biography, www.fridakahlo.org/frida-kahlo-biography.jsp.
Kahlo, Frida. “The Broken Column .” Frida Kahlo, 1944, Museo Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City, Mexico, www.fridakahlo.org/the-broken-column.jsp.
Kahlo, Frida. Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird . 1940.
www.fridakahlo.org/the-broken-column.jsp.