Sarah Whitt Fine Arts Senior Thesis Project
Date
2013
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Haverford College. Department of Fine Arts
Type
Thesis
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Award
Language
eng
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Open Access
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Abstract
A conversation with a friend, which likened human yearning to moths drawn to light, inspired my curiosity. I learned moths use the moon to navigate flightlines; a closer light may prompt them to over correct, clustering around globes before spiraling in free-falls. As the moon guides moths through sky, it guides fish through sea. These creatures trust instinct. Both of their forms begin with skeleton, end in scales—intricately armored, yet vulnerable to interference from the human environment. The same scales that flake in fingers compose eyes, fur, tongues and glands—inspiring my object material. Grains of sugar bond in layers constructing my insects. While boiling sugar to a cracking point, I scratch a drawing through the hard ground that films a zinc plate. I drizzle and mold wings and antennae from cooled sugar-glass by hand. An acid bath nibbles my drawing into the zinc. Reheated sugar glues bodies together. I dust the zinc with rosin, bathe multiple times to achieve desired tones. I suspend the insects to swarm around the viewer. I ink and wipe the plates, roll many times with multiple colors, run once through the press. The prints document process. They are static specimens, fossils flattened and preserved. The moths are pinned in their prime beside fish who reveal basic form. In the meantime, the objects process. They move and react, melt and drip, crack and break.