Transform
Rose Kramer
Transform begins with an interest in how art is created with makeup, and how the same face can take on many different personas based on which colors were applied where. I want to figure out a way to take all the same effects of the way that a glitter shifts on the eyelid or of how a shimmer glints on the tops of one's cheekbones into the graphic space. Working with iridescent pigments, which have the same textures, colors, and reflectivity of makeup, I am silkscreening images of faces that are in a state of “camp.”
Transform takes excerpts of Susan Sontag’s essay “Notes On Camp” that speaks to the love of character, exaggeration, and all things artificial. In the book, the use of the iridescent pigments reflect Sontag’s text when at certain angles they become surface/style and the content disappears. The accordion book works to slow down the reading process and create a sustained interaction between the reader, the text, and the images.
It is important that this topic takes shape in a physical sense. Making a book is analogous to making a face. Applying and reading makeup pigments on a book’s surfaces is a visually tangible action no different than a cosmetic application. In the same way that a cosmetic surface effect transforms the face, this project seeks to transform the book into an object that shimmers.