Proposal

I would like to create a clever body of work that makes people laugh using my love for play on words. Incorporating many common idiomatic phrases in my pieces such as “busy bees”, “putting all your eggs in one basket”, “hit two birds with one stone”, and “couch potato”, I want to show the humor and ridiculousness of these phrases by portraying them visually. I have attached some examples of my own work to show how I could possibly convey idiomatic phrases. One example shown is intended to represent “busy bees.” I have specifically chosen the color pallet of the office cubicles to represent a beehive. In my body of work that I create, I think color may play an important role too. The next piece I have attached represents the phrase “two birds with one stone,” which represents another possible example of how I could portray idiomatic phrases visually. Additionally, a goal of mine is to convey a sense of awkwardness in my works that makes them more humorous and intriguing for the viewers. While Peter Bruegel’s main goal in working with common phrases of his time was to teach moral lessons, I want to make people laugh.

I possibly may want to unify my works through a narrative story, perhaps creating a large children’s book composed of these every day sayings. If I was to create a children’s book, I think it would be interesting to explore different textures and medias with in the book through collage. I think that using different textures would make the book more interactive for the viewer. Another way that I could make my book more interactive would be to make it more sculptural by creating pop ups within the book. One benefit of creating a children’s book is that a narrative story would add another dimension to my idea. Also, framing my work in the context of a book would further develop a sense of irony since my idea deals with some of the absurdities in language and books are typically places for writing.

An alternative to a children’s book would be to work with photography. If I were to work with photography, I think that it would be interesting to take many juxtapose different images to dramatize these everyday sayings. For example, I could juxtapose pictures I have taken of an elephant into a room. If I use photography as my main medium, it will be important that I further develop skills in photo shop so that my images appear seamless and the lighting appears believable. An advantage of using photography may be that I will be to produce a larger amount of images, which may have a more powerful effect when seen all together. Similar to my previous idea, I think the body of work as a whole may be more intriguing if all of my images were housed in the context of a book.

In order to generate more ideas for my project, I plan to a book my friend gave me a book titled The Pun Also Rises by John Pollack. This book explores “how the Humble Pun revolutionized language, changed history, and made wordplay more than some antics” (Pollack). I think that this book may help give context to my project.