Kate Jenkins: April 2022

From the beginning of this assignment, I was curious about the effects of plastic and how plastic continuously harms our ocean, but I wanted to find a new and unique way to represent this idea. I remembered hearing Professor Mongiovi discussing and showing our class a traditional net she had created for one of her shows and I was intrigued by this idea. I wanted to find a way to blend these two ideas into a unique and thought-provoking piece. I finally decided that the best way to combine the two ideas would be to collect trash from the beach, clean it, and turn it into strips of weave able material. Once I had collected enough trash, cleaned it, and turned it into strips, I had to figure out how to connect it all and make the trash tie together. It was during this process that I had to change my direction slightly. The trash i had found and was attempting to use would not come together in a neat and clean manner which left the piece looking messy. I reevaluated and realized I personally had several plastic bags and found many plastic grocery bags on the beach. With this, I decided to not use the other trash and focus on using the plastic bags as my yarn-like material to create the net. I enjoyed the rhythmic process of creating this net and ended up making two and tying them together to add more width to the piece. I believe if I were to recreate this piece id like to add a third or fourth net to it to give it even more width and make it even more net-like.

Surface Design Pattern Piece

Dye Experiments

Dye in-progress photos:

Dye photos:

Gregors Room

The Hope within the Despair

A visual response to the short story The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

White copy paper and ink (no adhesives used)

9x9x7 in

The sculpture collection reflects my perception of the short story The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Through this short story, I was inspired by how unique and different Gregor's room felt in my mind's eye and how he seemed to be constantly miserable. I wanted to focus on creating a different and sort of odd space for Gregor. I wanted to do this through an odd bed and bedside table. Similarly, I used grungy sort of colors like bruise green, dirty yellow, and browns to help accentuate the unhappiness Gregor experienced. I chose to do slowly rotting apples as my representation of Gregor because at the very beginning of the story he was happy but as the read delves more into the story we slowly see Gregor's panic and general unhappiness.

In Process Photos:

Dinner and a Movie

Justice Will Come Around

Various Objects and Materials

Inspired by the movie Murder on the Orient Express

I wanted to explore the themes of a broken idea of justice, racial injustice in the 1930s, and the effect that murder can have on a group of people. The decorated and shattered plate represents two important things. The first thing the plate represents is the shattered idea of what justice can be. How justice is not, and likely never will be, black and white. Similarly, the shattered plate also represents how a group of people and their lives can be shattered by one tragic event like murder. The knives tie into the effect that tragic events have on people. It has been seen many times that tragic events can lead good people to do bad things. The knives are pointed inward as if threatening the remaining ideas of justice and polite refined society. Similarly, the singular black knife represents the ever-present theme of racial injustice during the 1930s. The spotlight that is on the knife further focuses on how the world was unjust during this time period. Through this piece, I hope to further draw importance on how traumatic events affect people as well as the racial injustices of the past.