Found Object

 We Absorb Things Like a Napkin

My Silly Little Emotions

Food has always been important to me. I can remember cooking in the kitchen with my Nanny and learning the knowledge that I have today. I also remember the few times a year we got to see my Vietnamese grandmother and enjoy Vietnamese food. It is interesting how different yet similar the style of eating between both sides of my family were. My Vietnamese family would all gather around a table with food on massive plates in the middle. We would all pick off of those plates and put them in our bowls of rice. My American family would do something similar with our potlucks, but we all had the food on counter and then take the food back to a separate table.

 

In high school is where my relationship with food changed. I think about how I hurt my grandmother because I didn’t eat her food because all I wanted was to be skinny. I remember the comments people made to me that hurt my relationship with food. But what I remember most is how some of the people that were cooking me food and gave me my love of food love hurt me. My own mother who raised me and called me her baby boy could say words that made me want to make myself throw up. My grandmother who gave me my love for cooking could hurt me and made me not want to eat. The person that hurt me the most was myself. I took all of the things people said to me to heart and did not think that anyone could ever love me if I were fat. The struggle never ends but I have realized that I need to love myself and I people cannot love me for all that I am then their opinion does not matter to me. These comments are just the few things that I could scrape up from my memory but there is so much more that I have had to fight through on my journey to self-love.

P.S. I am okay please don't care report me. 

The Process

The process began with digging through the trash. Technically it is trash that is set aside for art students to discover as treasure, but items someone thought was trash, nonetheless. There at the top was a “broken” napkin holder that just needed a little love to become a work of art. It was taken apart and cleaned. Then it was spraypainted with a bright pink paint called “Farmers Daughter.” Pink is a color that society has claimed for girls and eating disorders is also something that people only think women experience. I however, like pink and have experienced eating disorders so I think it was a powerful color to use to share my experience. As I was spraying the napkin holder, the paint started dripping a little and I wanted to emphasize the drips as they were somewhat symbolic of the tears I shed, and the words people said to me flowing out of my memory. I then wrote some thought-provoking words on the napkin holder once it was dry to draw in people’s attention. 

 

When thinking about what I could put in the napkin holder, I found napkins in my childhood car that is also at Flagler with me now. Some of the napkins might be really old or they might be new because my dad taught me to horde napkins from restaurants. Either way, they came out of the car that I grew up in and experienced some of these feeling in. I then stuck a few napkins together using PVA glue and a sponge brush. I got to work writing quotes from people that I could remember using different colored markers to think about the different people. It was such a therapeutic process to get all of the words out of my head and to see how far I have come on my journey of self-love. If I could do it again, I would not use the black sharpie on the napkin because of how badly it bled. However, I think that the process of recalling the things people said to me as I was writing them is a big part of the sculpture and I think that rewriting them would not be as meaningful. I ended by signing the napkin holder with two of the names I have been called "Big Ben" and "The Pillsbury Dough Boy."