Final Project - Deanna Glogowski

     

     The subject of my project is myself as a servant of Jesus Christ, being saved by my savior. My project contains me kneeling at the bloody cross with broken chains around my ankles and the broken part of the chains are also covered in blood. I chose to make the cross out of wood to make it more authentic. The one Jesus died on was also wooden. I painted it brown to make it look better and wrapped its center with twine for more authenticity. I painted it red like I did to symbolize blood being smeared all over the cross, just like the Christian symbol. I chose to have me kneeling at the cross so as to make a certain public declaration of faith. In the Christian faith, we are called to make such public declarations, so that is what my being in the art is meant to symbolize. Also, it symbolizes how much influence the cross has on my life. It is more important to me than anything else and even one I made at home is enough to bring me to my knees because of what it symbolizes. I put chains around my ankles to show the concept of death and sin. In the Christian religion, sins and death are commonly compared to bondage and chains. It is said that the blood of Christ, shed in remission for our sins, is the only thing that can break the binding of sin and death in our lives. So, I grabbed props to simulate broken chains and painted the parts that were meant to look broken red to show the blood of Jesus Christ breaking my chains. I made twenty links to the broken chains to show my twenty years of life and the twenty years the Lord has walked with me.
     My piece of art is most definitely a performance piece as I am a part of it and acting in it. I was influenced by a few artists when making my piece. For one, I was influenced by Cindy Sherman as she was a bit of a performance artist herself. She often starred in her works and played a part of sorts. Also, they all tended to lean more towards the gory side, like my piece does when picturing blood. Ana Mendieta is another artistic influence for my work. She was very much into featuring blood and death in her art and she also did a great deal of performance art. I am preforming in my art and it heavily features gory themes such as blood and death to highlight the main theme of life through Christ's death. I also can connect my work to that of Patricia Piccinini and her art featured at the Mirror Mirror Gallery at Rutgers University, Newark The Osculating Curve. For one, both are sculptures of sorts. Also, both are meant to call attention certain emotional landscapes. To the audience, my art is most definitely conveying my faith and my life as a Christian woman. One major difference between my Midterm Project and my Final Project is that my Final Project is a sculpture and a performance, while my Midterm Project was a mere cutting and pasting assignment. What influenced that change was how much I cared for showing off my God. It meant much more to me because my Lord means more to me than anything, even my writing. Writing is a very important part of how I am, but my religion is all of who I am. Every decision goes through God first. Even the one to make this my Final Project went through God first. God has a piece of every part of me, so he is all of me. He is more important than anything, so it means more to me to do things for him than for me. Even what I watch in media.      
     Media is a constant cycle for man. What we watch is what we are or are not. As Joanne Finkelstein wrote in chapter 4 or her book, The Art of Self-Invention, "How we think and feel does not easily correspond to the nature of the external world, yet paradoxically we understand ourselves through the contract and continuity with the outside, with others," (Finkelstein, 158). We see models and think we are fat because we do not look like them. We see game shows and think we are dumb for not answering all the questions that others do. We see cartoons and think we are not cool or fun because we do not jump over buildings or fly or can fall from fifty feet in the air and live. We are crazy if we like gory things. It is like the old saying goes, "Garbage in, garbage out." With that in mind, I make sure I always keep God in mind when I pick what I watch. I do not want bad influences. My art is also a spectacle. A spectacle is, in the words of Guy Debord in chapter 1 of his book, Society of the Spectacle, "The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images," (Debord, Chapter 1). If the spectacle is more than an image, what is it? It is decided by society. Whatever in society at the current moment makes people talk and makes them have a reaction. Something that makes them form an opinion and makes them notice. A spectacle is something that makes people talk, makes people have a reaction and makes them react. How is that used today? It is used to make statements and make specific things be remembered. What is meant to be remembered? Well, anything the initiator of the spectacle wants you to remember. Whatever statement they want to make, they'll make you remember it. Whatever they want immortalized in your mind, they use the spectacle to make it so. Like John Breger stated in chapter 7 of  his book, Ways of Seeing, "One may remember or forget these messages but briefly one takes them in, and for a moment they stimulate the imagination by way of either memory or expectation," (Breger, 129). Breger was referring to advertising, but the is advertising not a form a spectacle? We are dazzled and wowed by what a seller puts in front of us and it is ingrained in our minds, making us form some kind of opinion and making us think. Is this okay? What does it cost? Can it help me? Do I want it? We mention it to our friends and keep the conversation on it going. Maybe we'll forget it down the line, but, in that moment, we know it and we talk about it and we react to it and we think about it. It may leave us, or it may not. It may change us forever, or it may go to the wind for all ages here and after. Yet, for that one moment, it was presented and it was alive in us and we saw it and we reacted to it. It made us talk. It made us think. It made us react. It deserved more than a passing glance. What does that more than religion? Especially today? When people are speaking around a table, people say the last thing you want to talk about are politics and religion. Why? Because politics and religion are spectacles in themselves. Religion especially. So many people have an opinion on religion and so many statements are made in the name of religion. My project itself is a statement just like that. A statement of my faith and my beliefs to the masses that will receive more than a passing glance. It will stay in people's minds. If not forever, then for a little while. My project is a huge wooden and decorated declaration of faith and that, in itself, is a spectacle. I made people see it, think about it, form an opinion about it, talk about it. They reacted to it. Religion itself is a spectacle and one that has always been and always will be a spectacle. Thus, so is my project.

Works Cited

Finkelstein, Joanne. The Art of Self Invention: Image and Identity in Popular Visual Culture. Tauris, 2007.

Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Black & Red, 2016.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. Penguin Group, 1972.