Touch Project

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Hand Full of Guts




Pumpkin guts and hand

"A plunge into an icy farm pond on a summer day when the air temperature and body temperature are the same. The feel of a sweat bee delicately licking moist beads from your ankle. Reaching blindfolded into a bowl of Jell-O as part of a club initiation. Pulling a foot out of the mud. the squish of wet sand between the toes." (Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses, Pg. 80-81)

When thinking about this piece I had read this section and knew I wanted to do something with it, but I did not know what. Later, I was carving a pumpkin and it made me think about the feeling of pumpkin guts. The sensation of wet and cold that you get when you are digging through your pumpkin to clean it out. I like to think of my fingers as ridges on the outside of a pumpkin.  


Printed Painting 




 Acrylic paint on 11x14 canvas and hand

"The tiny ridges in our fingertips, whose roughness makes it easier for us to grasp objects, are randomly formed, resulting in the unique swirling weather systems we call 'fingerprints.' The swirls through a few basic patterns of whorls, loops, and arches, but combine in endlessly different ways."(Diane Ackerman, A Natural History of the Senses, Pg. 117)

For this piece I wanted to replicate the shapes of fingerprints. This is a finger-painting which I repeatedly pressed my fingers into the canvas to create the shapes. Additionally, fingerprints are ways that we are identified so I added elements of identity such as the stereotypical use of blue and pink to distinguish gender. I also though about race through the use of black as well as class displayed in the gold. I wanted to include my hand in the pictures to add an extra element of interest.  

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