Updated Proposal: A Dictionary of Puns

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. 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 also want to explore the ambiguous nature of these phrases, by contrasting the real and the imagined in my works. To do this, I will show the real aspect of the phrase through a photograph, while the imagined will be through drawing. I plan on juxtaposing the images together through photoshop. Then I would like to print the images on nice paper and work with drawing and possibly collage to give a more handmade feel to the work and make it more interesting. I think that using pen over the digital image will also serve to connect the real and the unreal. Compositionally, it will also connect the photo with the painting better.

I want to place my works in the context of an Idiomatic Phrase Dicitonary. I think that a dictionary will be humorous and it will also tie all the works together in an interesting creative way. I plan on making categories for the phrases such as Food Puns, Religious Puns, Sports Puns, and Anatomy Puns. Each category will have an image of a pun to represent it. 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.

I want to use a book that I created by hand as my dictionary, so that the dictionary will be entirely mine. I plan on gluing each page into the book that I have already created. Also, I want to design a cover for the book so that it has the feel of an actual dictionary. I may scan the pages so that my book may be viewed digitally too.