Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Preview of the Hitchcock Show at Gallery 1988


As I mentioned in the previous post I have three pieces in the upcoming "Suspense & Gallows Humor" show at Gallery 1988:Venice. Above is a piece I did based on Psycho which is a 3-D cut paper collage. Here's a detail of the section behind Norman's elbow...


... a hole in the wall which reveals Marion Crane in the next room getting ready for her final shower.

This piece changed a bit from my original concept which was going to include more taxidermied birds and a more muted pallette with the eyes of the birds and Norman's eyes being the most colorful elements drawing the viewer's focus to them. To enhance the sense of voyeurism, I toyed with adding an actual electric rice light to the room with Marion undressing, and also planned to have a window behind the table with the iconic house showing in the background with a single window illuminated the same yellow as the birds eyes with Norman's mother's silhouette against it.

In the end I thought this would make the piece too cluttered and busy and opted to streamline it down to Norman posing with his hobby.


The second piece is based on The Birds. This is also a 3-D cut paper collage. I knew that this movie, and this scene in particular would lend itself really well to the 3-D format. I didn't even bother to sketch this one out first. I spent a lot of time cutting out crows of various sizes. Thankfully they work perfectly as silhouettes. I actually ended up with an extra kid and many extra crows when I was finished. Like the Psycho piece, there became a point where any more elements would have made the piece look too bust, crowded and overworked. There are around seventy individual crows on the piece but give an impression of more. I spent a bit of time arranging the fleeing humans in order to give the piece a sense of forward motion, but other than pointing them at their victims, applied the crows more or less randomly  to give them more of a feeling of chaotic aggression.

For the third piece, you'll just have to wait until this weekend when you can either visit Gallery 1988 in person, or check it out on their website.

Click on any of the above images to see them larger.

1 comment:

Stephen said...

Man, that's awesome. Too bad I can't be there to see it.