My artwork is based off a phrenological head. Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), a Viennese physician, proposed that the contours of the skull followed the brain’s shape, with each region responsible for an aspect of personality or behavior. My concept behind the piece was memories. I wanted this artwork to be based around memories of my childhood. I kept the same idea of using a foam head but create images on top of the head to represent memories of my childhood. My idea was to buy a foam head to get the basic shape of a phrenological head.
I started this project by thinking that I could paint the pictures on the Styrofoam ball. But the paint just absorbed into the air bubbles on the ball, so I had to use some newspaper to hold the paint. After I painted the squares on the newspaper I started to think about the most important things from my childhood that would go great for each particular box. I wanted have the colors to represents different feelings that I remember from my memories. The warm colors represent happy times that I remember and the cooler colors don’t necessary represent bad times but not as exciting moments during my childhood.
Phrenological Head, 2013
Styrofoam Head, Newspaper, Water Color
