Part of the Story
There are actually a lot of personal meanings to this piece but one of the stranger ideas that I had was that this was a tangible expression of the Heart of Eve. Not necessarily a biblical Eve, but one whom I relate to. One who feels such great despair in her Sin. One whom is so afraid that it was all her fault. One whom desperately tries to make it right. One whom feels both guilt and betrayal. One whom tends to the weed of despair in her mind and hopelessly watches it destroy the things she tried so hard to protect.
I think in my mind, the text that was written in relation to the piece is a letter from Eve to Adam as the man who was supposed to love her, who fell with her in Sin, and who blamed her when the time of judgement came.To whom she feels constantly inferior to, to whom she feels both guilt, love, and betrayal.
The hands could be the hands of Adam, they could be her own, they could be those of some other deceitful and destructive thing.
I don't really feel compelled to share this with all who see the piece, as I hope they relate to it in their own conglomeration of ways. But this is just one of the stories I have for those who might be interested.
Process
In truth, I didn't know exactly how this piece was going to turn out. I just knew there was a feeling I was trying to get out, to express, but I didn't understand exactly what it was yet.
I had this idea of Apple Hearts in my head, for some reason I was enamored with the idea. Hands and food have been a common thread in my work, for a lot of reasons. And I knew they went together in this piece, I kept whizzing through different permutations of what the combination might be, and none of them were what actually came out.
I knew the apple was broken, and that I wanted to do stitches, but not in the ways I did stitches before (red thread). I loved the look of the clear hot glue, almost like tears. My original cast was actually a pretty perfect apple with a crack in it, but my plaster started to deteriorate, and so my future casts did as well. And I thought, how apt, that mimesis after mimesis is inferior to the original just as in the creation stories, we humans inferior are inferior to the creator whom we were created to be like.
The hands are made out of soap, and are small and incredibly detailed thanks to a well created original piece I found at a trinket shop. I had the idea of soap hands a loong time ago. But the idea didn't work out the first time. It was one of those lines that was just stuck in my head
"Do hands made of soap stay clean?"
To me it refers to hypocrisy or a false sense of self-righteousness and I knew that the hands couldn't stay clean.
I actually presented my piece with the title "Tiny hands touch Big apples" because I felt like it left a lot more room for people to grow their own ideas. There's a playful, childlike quality to the sound of the title, like the title of a children's book but there's also a strange sort of perverseness to it, that taints the impression and lingers uneasily in the mind.
- 1:20:00 AM
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