Ejaculation

Title: Ejaculation

Materials: Bible, pages from book, poster board, fishing line, bench

The initial concept for this piece came out of thinking about the wonderland theme. I settled on the idea of depicting stylized flying animals of some kind -- birds, bats, butterflies (I wasn't sure at first) -- bursting forth from the open pages of a book. I felt this both worked well with the theme and would be visually exciting.

Using a Bible for the book wasn't something I'd planned from the start. I just wanted a book that was fairly thick and had pages with lots of text on them. Of the books I found, the Bible fit these requirements the best. After I'd chosen it, I remembered how butterflies are sometimes used as a Christian symbol representing rebirth and resurrection (due to their caterpillar-cocoon-butterfly lifecycle.) I was pleased, as this fits in nicely with my piece and adds another layer of meaning to it.

I decided to use paper as my medium for the butterflies. I wanted to continue the transformation from the pages of the book to the poster board paper that I cut out the rest of the butterflies with. I felt paper was the perfect medium for this piece because of its transformative qualities and also its fragility. I decided to make them cut outs instead of solid pieces so the light would shine through them and would project their shadows.

From the very beginning, I wanted to make the use of light and shadow a significant aspect of my piece. As I had limited control over the lighting in the gallery, though, it was hard to predict exactly how the shadows would turn out beforehand. Once the setup of the piece had begun, I adjusted the directions and angles of the lights and the placement of the butterflies with the generation of shadows in mind. Thematically, the bright, "from above" lighting ties in with the religious symbolism of the pieces, evoking a holy or divine light.

An interesting surprise I found upon setting up the piece was that the shadows of the butterflies seemed to actually appear more realistic than the paper shapes themselves. Just looking at the shadows on the wall, it was easy to imagine that substantive, three dimensional forms were casting them.

The title sprang out of this religious aspect of the piece. I recalled reading that the word "ejaculation," in addition to its primary definition, also has a secondary, less often used meaning that is something along the line of an exclamation or excited pronouncement. I looked it up in a dictionary and found that it could mean: "a sudden short exclamation, especially a brief pious utterance or prayer." I feel this is a perfect match for my piece, as it suggests both its religious symbolism and the sense of explosive motion I set out to capture.

The stone bench is employed as the resting place for the Bible because I wanted to tell a story, of sorts, with the piece. I imagined someone had been sitting there, reading from the book. At some point he or she stopped, put it down and then (as this is wonderland) it came to life, releasing the butterflies out into the world.

Ensuring that the bench is something visitors can actually sit on was also important to me. I wanted to provide a way for people to engage with my work in a way that was more personal than just looking at it from a distance -- the bench allows them to actually be a part of it! It also provides a nice, dramatic vantage point for viewing the rest of the piece, as well as neighboring pieces in the show.
Ejaculation:



Close-ups:

Shadows:

I had my piece wrap around the top right corner of the wall my piece was against, to have it connect and flow with the rest of the show:


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Here's a link to some pictures that I took from the Faux Real show:

Faux Real