"FOAMETE / FAMINE" / OCT 2022 / chipboard, poster board, thread

This project was an abstraction of my first Sibiu birdhouse. I chose to abstract it through texture and execution. My first sculpture was very clean and mathematically sound so for this one I wanted to do something completely different. I started my first sculpture with pure math but for this one, I did no math at all. Instead, I went with my gut and built things first and considered the math later, “building off” each piece I made. My first sculpture was the houses in Sibiu which is one of the best-developed parts of Romania and a solid tourist destination. My sculpture this time represents the ugly side of Romania: the government ration-induced famines. As such it is severely less well-polished and clean. During the communist regime in Romania, no one made things for themselves. You produced goods and those goods were taken by the government and “redistributed.” Due to the widespread corruption, however, the common citizen did not get any of these products and they were instead sold to the highest bidder on the black market. For an accent, I included “Punctul Cruciulita Cu O Fata” which is popular Romanian cross stitching in red. The other accent I included was a pale blue in the dead eyes of the cow. Visually, the 26 ribs lead the eye upward to the roof, this is my strongest use of line. The other main use of line is in the bird's nest. I went for a sparse nest instead of a strong and well focuses one to reflect the scarcity of materials. I wanted the use of lines to contrast the organic shapes in the cowhide.