Space, Place, Pointed Invention: Final Project

The criteria: Your final project will be an investigation into how an intense experience of a space or place can bolster and spur on a visual imagination. You will make a mid-sized collage (minimum size is 22"x30") based on source drawings, notes AND memory of a place you have easy access to on a daily basis. You may not work from photographs of a place directly. To clarify--you can generate source drawings from photographs, but minimally. I want you to have to work with the potentially inventive results which happen when you are forced to recall or work with images that are not visually exacting in re-presentation. The material is up to you. You must somehow employ these concepts into the work: repetition, monochromatic, texture (reproduced or actual). All the visual source imagery you use must originate with your site.

The space I have chosen is under the kitchen table.  When I was a kid, my brother and I would throw blankets and quilts over the kitchen table to construct a fort.  My intent for this project is to create an image of that, but take it a step further by creating the imaginary, jungle world that the table fort became when I climbed under it.

It took me a while to get started on the actual piece; I made drawings of the table, took pictures, and built a fort with blankets and quilts.  I also sketched a lot of plant life to aid in creating my jungle world.  Now that I've started, things are moving along pretty well.  I got stuck after about a day.  Fortunately, we had an in-class critique and I got some excellent feedback from my peers.  Here is what it looked like before:

The suggestions:  establish a ground plane; correct the perspective; need a signifier that it's a table, perhaps with a table setting on top, or details in the legs.  After taking these things into consideration, I began working on it again, and this is what it looks like now:

After changing the perspective, it looks more like a table.  I've still got some editing to do on the table, but at least it looks more like a table now.  I still need to establish a ground and then start building up the flora.  And I've got to do it in 2 weeks.