Story Metaphor Lion Thingy

For this project I decided to make a lion, out of tape. I took a picture of a lion did some fancy Photoshop stuff (Mr. Sands actually did that part) then I made a grid of where each layer of tape needs to go. After that I put a bunch of transparent little overhead sheets on top of my grid and then started the taping process. Let me tell you cutting up tape is not fun, and then layering 5 layers of teeny tiny tape in the precise location is not fun. Its also very time consuming, so I'm nowhere close to done yet. But I'll put a picture in here when I finish. Anyways so why did I do a tape lion? because Mr. Sands showed me how layering packing tape adds different values. But seriously the metaphor behind this whole lion, well as you will be able to see there are so many different layers to the piece because there is so much meaning, and it represents so many stories. The first being the whole Cecil the lion, yes it is sad a lion died, but can we only focus on negative things happening in Africa, I understand there are a lot of issues in Africa, but some countries in Africa are growing extremely rapidly and are doing very well economically and politically. However, we are Americans and seeing that another countries GDP is increasing drastically doesn't interest us like a group of murders does. Next why do Americans care so much about one lion dying compared to all the deer being killed, all the squirrels, the cows the pigs. What makes a lion so much more deserving of life? Is it because they're beautiful, they're intelligent. Pigs are as smart as dogs, but they aren't as attractive to Americans- therefore they get to die. Cows aren't pretty enough they can die, same with tuna, fish, chickens, turkey, etc. Why because we are humans do we feel we get to rule the rest of the world, we pride ourselves on our compassion and love, but only show a select few animals that love. As you can tell this piece has a lot of meaning to it, and I really hope that people will see it as more than just a picture of a lion.

The stencil face

I based my blind portrait off of a few things on that sheet, 1. He said "kill everything" and that's all I could make out 2. He couldn't write neatly. So I started off by making this angry drawing with chalk pastels and stuff. I wanted it to be angry but super messy at the same time. That was really easy to do with chalk pastels. For my real project I wanted to something even bigger, and slightly less boring. At first I was going to do a huge painting, but instead I ended up making cardboard stencils of my angry face and put them up around the school. The part that kept it being really messy and making it look angry was when I put a super huge coat of chalk paint on so when I pressed it against the wall some would drip down. Anyways this project ended up a lot better than I though it would, but it didn't last too long. The chalk paint soaked up into the cardboard and ruined the stencils, but it was fun while it lasted :)