Blank Canvas
As I made progress on this project, I ran into many issues regarding the transfer of the photos onto canvas. It took me several tries, but, at the end, I settled on the rough look of the transfer. With the spraypaint and the handwritten lyrics, I strived to make the project look as rough as possible in order to reflect myself as an “ongoing project.” Right now, as a senior in college, I do not find myself to be nearly as well-put as many other people, and the photographs, as well as the installation itself, reflects the lack of clarity in my own personality.
The photos, while they are sharp and colorful in the original take, actually take on a completely different look on the transfer. In my opinion, it better reflects the lack of clarity that I have in my own introspections. While I might think of myself in one particular way, people view me differently. In a way, this installation is how I view how other people view me, if that makes any sense. When talking to my sister again last week, she mentioned how another song by Frank Ocean, “Nights,” really reminded her of me. After comparing the two songs, I found “Nights” to be a more fitting song, especially since another friend I knew said the same thing when I was talking about the project with her. Another song, one that I included, will play during the presentation of the installation, mostly because it is how I view myself. The lyrics are not written anywhere, nor are there any photos associated with it. Lil Uzi Vert’s “XO TOUR Llif3” resonated with me whenever I listened to it, so I included it as a way to add to the overall rough look of the installation.
Obviously, there were some deviations from what I originally wanted to do. While I had the concept and transfer idea in mind, I had to turn to writing the lyrics in permanent marker rather than carving them in. As I ran a couple tests on another canvas, I had trouble making sure the letters didn’t tear with the canvas. Rather than printing the lyrics and transferring them onto the canvas, I found it to have a rougher feel with the handwritten words over the print and transfer. As for the photo transfers, they were a fairly challenging thing to experiment with. While the pictures didn’t come out as crisp as I originally wanted them to, I think it, again, adds to the overall rough feeling of the photos. They reminded me of damaged photographs, where the photo is overexposed due to some issue with the processing. Just like the process of film photography, the transfer from ink paper to canvas mimicked the process and the imperfections it may cause.
While far from what I originally envisioned in my head, I think the installation works very well to convey how I and others view me. A lot of people compare human beings as “blank canvases” that get filled in with different images, words, etc. as they go through life. With everything that happened to me and others who know (or don’t know) me, I feel as though, while there is some idea of who I am, I don’t have a clear idea. I had a conversation with my therapist about this very idea; when he asked me, “Who are you?,” I could not come up with an immediate answer. Are we all merely the things we do and feel, or are we more complex than that?
