Sustained Investigation

Daisy Meadows’ Rainbow Fairies, Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson, Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments… I have always been enthralled with fictional, fanatical, and magical lands. So, while signing up for AP Art, I knew from the get go that my concentration would involve mythical creatures or magic of some kind. Bouncing between multiple ideas, I landed on my final sustained investigation question: If humans and mythical creatures existed in the same world, how would we [humans] treat them? However, this is posed as a rhetorical question, because I answer that through my pieces. And the answer is… badly.

The reason I believe humans would abuse the mythical powers and beings is due to our treatment of other humans and the brushes of “magic” we have experienced. In the late 1600s, in colonial Massachusetts, the Salem witch trials tore through the land. Women accused of witchcraft were hung, simply out of human fear of alternate “power”. I wager that when faced with a race “different” from our own, humans would take advantage. The past centuries were defined by colonization, and capturing the natives from each area to work for the colonizers. Why wouldn’t mythical creatures experience the same fate?

I chose to depict each piece with how each creature would be exploited. In my piece, “Silver Servant”, I created a silver jewelry box cage to ensnare a goblin. Faced with greed for precious metals and jewels, the goblin fell trap to the rich human’s metal bait. Now, he is trapped for eternity, working to create his master custom jewels; a slave to what he onced desired most. As for my sculpture, “Loch Ness’ted in Waste”, I wanted to depict a magical creature in a setting a common animal would experience. Pollution has ravaged habitats and killed ecosystems. Mythical creatures would be subjected to the same environmental abuse that human’s push on the environment.

Material wise, I wanted to create sculptures solely out of found or “human” objects. The water bottle from “Genie in a Bottle” was a bottle I received with a meal. The jewelry box base was actually an old metal Whitman’s chocolate box. By using objects from around the human environment, I hope to show that the difference between humans and magic is miniscule. However, any difference is enough for the human race to take control over another.