Curiouser and Curiouser
Artist Statement
My local library's collection of Lewis Carroll's work exemplified the way Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was a story able to flourish within numerous mediums. Through so many different views, they were all united in their shared absurdity.As a young girl who never found reading to be her thing, I was surprised when my mum gifted me a version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland proudly showing offYayoi Kusama's illustrative interpretations. And then proceeded to finish the book in an afternoon.
After that moment, its influence never really seemed to leave me. How Lewis Carroll turned the world so whimsically fun was something that lived within my imagination. For ages, I explored that nonsensical approach co creating art, and found it fed a fiery desire in my love for immersive art. I longed to create attractions that toyed with levels of reality and rules, allowing people to feel as curious as Alice. I longed to foster that feeling of free exploration to interact with whatever larger than life characters you might meet (within a safe environment), but even more than chat, I longed co foster that feeling where the world is slightly askew, and anything can happen.
And then, as with most loves, time sets in.
Moving schools, SATs, conferences, networking, other pieces of medias, other loves, these things began to take priority for a while, and that young girl grew up.
But the influences of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland never left me. Though I wasn't thinking so much of Alice and her friends, I was still thinking in nonsense art. I collected my materials from flea markets and antique shops, questioning how I can turn reality on its head and create things that leaked in from the wonderful worlds of imagination, things that didn't quite fit with the rules of our world. I was working on pies from alternate dimensions, gods that had been forgotten, and Ayers that advertised only absurdity.
And then this competition appeared.
This project is a love letter to the absurdity of Lewis Carroll, explored through a multitude of different mediums. I started off by enlisting some aid to truly capture that multimedia approach I thought was critical. It's a celebration of both Alice and Lewis Carroll's curiosity reflected within an experimental approach to using new mediums, following a flow of free form exploration. I took concepts from the book and combined them, influenced by other interpretations. My favorite example of this is the sheet music roses, where it was a combination of the singing flowers from Walt Disney's interpretation meeting painting the roses red from the original book. Then, there are creations of my own such as the time mushroom, seen in the back left corner, and the tea card (a tea cup made of playing cards).
The point of this piece was to collect a host of strange materials, some I was familiar with, others I'd never touched, and be open to explore whatever ideas manifested, all staged within an antique bird cage. I've named it Curiouser and Curiouser after the mission statement of this project: exploration. I hope you enjoy the illogical whimsy.
Thank you so much for an opportunity to bring to life dreams from my childhood.
