We both have a fondness for pretty things
- Isabella Borda
- Apr 30, 2024
- 2 min read
Found object sculpture
Winter 2024, Professor Elizabeth Folk
Exhibited in the 2024 Juried Student Exhibition, Juried by Alicia Piller
This project's prompt was to create a sculpture using found objects. I started the design process by examining the role of found objects in my life, defining what impact they have on me and in general. I had recently inherited knicknacks, books, and decorative objects from my great-aunt Esther who passed away last year. As I looked closer at her collection of objects, I started to wonder at the woman I hardly knew but who adorned her life with household treasures.
I wanted to honor Esther's memory at the same time as looking at myself. It is an interesting thing to know someone through their objects alone, a way of communicating to each other across time and space. Her life was vastly different from my own; the little I know is regarding her immigration from Cuba all the way to Bakersfield, California in the early '60s. She left as a young woman, a few months after my grandpa arrived in Miami alone at 10 years old.
Through her objects, I picture that she was someone who liked to have beauty surround her, down to the smallest objects. She was from Havana, a city filled with faded pastels, crumbling crown moulding, and masterpieces on every wrought iron balcony. I wanted to cast her belongings within a portal of sorts, a wrought iron screen that references the rich mixture of architecture in Havana, as well as the more mundane screen door I remember from her home and typical to Bakersfield. I then built a shallow shelf that references an altar, or a dressing mirror, in an attempt to engage with her Catholic faith.
The finished sculpture is a shelf, a window, an heirloom case, and a mirror that engages past with present. When I walk by, I see myself and Esther speaking together, admiring the details on her silver spoon, or the calm blue birds in flight.
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