title: elizabeth, the two steves, and the mylar balloon

time: collection= one month collage=32 frigging hours without sleeping and barely eating

materials: cigarette boxes littered on the ground

concept: i have alwaysss been facinated with garbage, garbage tells stories of people's lives. garbage is the representation of not being wanted, in this i am utterly moved. one thing that really i wanted to accomplish here was to give love and meaning to a meaningless discarded object. in deconstructing and reconstructing these cigarette boxes i attempted to mimic religious iconography, book illustrations, and luminous stain glass. this wonderous thing gleeeeeeams in the sunlight.

back story: this is a piece about duality, hypocricy, and contradictions. the focal point of this piece, the mylar balloon goes back to a balloon i begged elizabeth lasky to buy for me... it didnt really cheer me up all that much but i carried it around with me all day until an errant gust of wind swooshed in and tore it from my hands, hopelessly i watched it float away as no one helped catch it up up up into the blue of the perfect sky. agony. i was talking to simran about it and we decided losing a balloon is really the epitome of a let down. in this piece i wanted to capture the moment before i lost it, sitting on the steps of siddall hall smoking, but not with anyone else. i generally am alone for the most part of my day and since i dont sleep or eat often enough i tend to halucinate. yeah. this is being sad on a beautiful day, this is my own immaturity in collage format.

the process- commentary: collecting the cigarette boxes i used for this piece (over 50) took about a month to accomplish. left over i had about 30 more. i began noticing trends and personalities... the brand most found: camel lights (hard box) 40ish, brand least found: djarum anything. most people never bothered to remove the celophane, some people left things inside of the boxes. this slowly became a study of desperation. blue was the hardest color to find. the act of collageing had stolen my sleep from me for about 3 or 4 days... when i did manage to sleep, i would dream about collaging. huge massive dreams of my hands cutting out perfect pieces and applying them. this became a part of my life

anyway this thing is frigging huge. it comes up to my waist or so. the size was daunting, i felt like id never conceivably finish...

the photo sucks, but i dunno how i could get far enough away to get the whole thing and still get the detail.. it looks much better in person