Calligram Project

Wow. This was an insanely trying and ultimately unsuccessful project. Overall, my failure was a matter of ambition and mistake. First, allow me to tell you the story of its creation.

When we first received the assignment, my mind began working on trying to find an original idea. This lead to the following sketches.

The peace sign, the dove, and the olive branch represent peace and happiness. A closer look reveals the picture to be made up of derogatory words and phrases.  

The cherry blossoms and the pagoda are symbols of Japan, to be made up of the names of those killed in the bombings of Nagasaki.

The KFC Colonel's head on a chicken pot pie. KFC's chicken pot pie has the longest ingredient list of all known food products. The picture would be made up of these ingredients.

By the demands of my professor, I eliminated the middle concept. Because I wanted this piece to reflect myself in some way, I decided to go with the first option.

There is a memorial in Nagasaki Japan that lists all known victims of the bombings during WWII. I initially intended to find these names but due to the high cost of travel, I decided to go another route. 

I called my mother who has kept some of my grandmother's things and she told me that she had a small book from my grandmother's last trip to Japan. This book included memorials and testimonials for the victims of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. I asked her to send it to me.

And so begins the most unnecessary and time consuming tangent...

When I recieved the book, I found that the names were listed first by city and then alphabetically. Within the groups, the names were accompanied by their ages. I then decided to make the individual flowers clusters of names with the age being the center. Hand-sorting these names became a VERY difficult and VERY trying process. So tedious that I had to abandon my initial intention of honoring all victims, and decided to just cover one city, Soma City. 

I originally intended for the trunk of the tree to be made of lines, but I came upon a poem in the book that I felt needed to be included. The letter, "On the White Ashes" is a traditional reading at Japanese mainland Buddhist funerals. This was read at my grandfather's funeral and I imagine was read at the services of these deceased individuals. Its significance is so strong for me and for Japanese Buddhists that I felt it needed to be included.

Overall, I'm not very proud of my work. It wasn't the idea that I originally wanted to do and I lost sight of various crucial points to the assignment because I was so confident in my idea. It was a very time consuming project and I but way too much effort into this. But, as with any project, it was a process by which I learned.