Something I’ve been really enjoying is walking around; while, at WashU, everything is centralized around campus, here, every class is always somewhere else and meeting in different places around the city. I very much enjoy walking around the streets of Florence, my mental map of the city expanding with every adventure.
I have also been developing various habits and preferences. For example, I know that, especially on cold days, I prefer a caffe latte over a cappuccino because they give you more to warm up with. Also, when I am walking from Santa Croce back to the apartments, I like to make my three stops: a nice little residential park with beautiful colors, textures, and senior citizens, a small Chinese store that sells familiar foodstuffs that I use in cooking (also, it presents an opportunity to speak Mandarin… in Italy!!! which I find kind of fun in a weird way), and the antique market, which may be my absolute favorite place in town.
Through meandering through the city, interacting with the locals (or at least trying to), going to class (which have been incredibly insightful; I feel very lucky), and gaining exposure to various galleries and exhibitions, I have gained many enlightening insights towards the thoughts and questions that have already been floating around in my mind. I’m usually rather scatter-brained but the theme-sequence class is helping me gather and organize my thoughts. The object that I chose is a stuffed animal. Not a specific stuffed animal, really, but any stuffed animal. I think it can have many visually interesting possibilities, as I feel that the mechanical and material components that make up a plushie (skin sewed up with stitches, stuffed with beans or fluff, and decorated with button details or clothing) is interesting, assembled or de-assembled.
The nature of the plushie has much room for exploration as well. The stuffed animal can be seen as a toy or a plaything. Or, it is an object of comfort, something tactile to be fiddled and cuddled with. Stuffed toys are also often a marketing strategy; when there is a successful television show or movie, its characters are often made into dolls (for example, Disney characters, Looney Toons, Pokemon, etc.). They become three-dimensional manifestations of cartoon characters. What if they become a portrait of someone real? a materialization of a real identity? Plushies can also become collectibles (beanie babies), and even cultural artifacts (hello kitty dolls, raggedy anne, etc.). The personal meanings we often assign to stuffed animals is also very important; they are usually seen as living memory of our childhood, sometimes even specific times or feelings we had when we turned to them for comfort. From this perspective, it’s interesting how a stuffed animal, usually designed for aesthetic and business reasons, can retain so much personality and significance for us. What does this say about our interaction with the inanimate world? or even the animate world?
Thinking about the plushie led me to my concept. I liked the physical nature of the plushie and extended it to other objects that are stuffed, wrapped, or sewn, such as pillows, packages, surgical sutures, plastic bags, clothing, etc. These various things follow a trend of having a sort of skin enclosed around some sort of innards, whatever they may be. This led me to the question, Why do we wrap things? what is the purpose of an outside skin? is it to protect? or to hide? is it to represent? or transform? Why do we like to wrap a present? What is the charm behind receiving an ambiguously wrapped package in the mail, even when we know what is inside? Do we wrap for aesthetic reasons, because of our inherent desire to beautify things, or because we enjoy the mystery behind something unknown?
general photos
concrete and concept
Ciao~!
