"The Book Thief" Project
As a class, read "The Book Thief". It was quite an amazing book of the story of a girl in WWII Nazi Germany. After we finished the book we had a project to reflect on it. The option that I chose was to discuss and create an art piece to prove if the world is beautiful or brutal. I think that the world is both, we have crap and amazingness in everyone of us. Originally the project guidelines told that you had to create a poster. Me being creative me wouldn't let myself. I decided to use a foam skull as the main part of my piece, to symbolize humans and their mind. From there, I chose 2 examples from the book of how humans are brutal and 2 of how they are beautiful. We also had to chose one example of each side from our world today.
Here is my final piece, which I am very proud of:
Here is my final piece, which I am very proud of:
Here is my artist statement explaining my piece:
Artist Statement
An Art Piece by Emily Joy Shaffer
Many elements of the world of the book thief and our world are combined in my project. I decided that the world is not infact brutal or beautiful, just one or the other. I think that the world is a lot of both. Using a skull for the base of project, as it resembled a human, I starting figuring out how to show both “sides” of a human. I decided that I would do half of the skull black and the other half white, the good and bad. But, I also wanted to do something a little different by incorporating the continual theme of words, using pages (some white with black ink and others black with white ink) to cover the skull. Next began finding elements of the book to proof my statement. Two examples of “brutal” that I found were 1) brutal people- Nazis and Adolf Hitler and 2) brutal actions- the destruction of places and people by plane bombs. I wanted to also have this idea of spreading, using the little swastikas coming out of the flag and the smoke of the bomb to enhance this idea that they were both infecting the minds of the people there. For my “beautiful” side using The Book Thief’s elements were 1) humans have beautiful minds- they create and write and draw, making beautiful things, as Liesel and Max share that same love. And 2) humans do beautiful things- Rudy risked his life to save Liesel’s book, out of his love for her, a very selfless action. My two examples for the world being brutal today is more of a reasoning that has stood true since the beginning of time- we are selfish, we are obsessed with ourselves, hence the mirror with the person staring into it. The other example for today is that humans are beautiful by using their resources and skills to help and benefit others, so I created a well which I feel symbolizes human beauty very well. A major theme in the book is words, you can use words for both brutal and beautiful reasons.
Artist Statement
An Art Piece by Emily Joy Shaffer
Many elements of the world of the book thief and our world are combined in my project. I decided that the world is not infact brutal or beautiful, just one or the other. I think that the world is a lot of both. Using a skull for the base of project, as it resembled a human, I starting figuring out how to show both “sides” of a human. I decided that I would do half of the skull black and the other half white, the good and bad. But, I also wanted to do something a little different by incorporating the continual theme of words, using pages (some white with black ink and others black with white ink) to cover the skull. Next began finding elements of the book to proof my statement. Two examples of “brutal” that I found were 1) brutal people- Nazis and Adolf Hitler and 2) brutal actions- the destruction of places and people by plane bombs. I wanted to also have this idea of spreading, using the little swastikas coming out of the flag and the smoke of the bomb to enhance this idea that they were both infecting the minds of the people there. For my “beautiful” side using The Book Thief’s elements were 1) humans have beautiful minds- they create and write and draw, making beautiful things, as Liesel and Max share that same love. And 2) humans do beautiful things- Rudy risked his life to save Liesel’s book, out of his love for her, a very selfless action. My two examples for the world being brutal today is more of a reasoning that has stood true since the beginning of time- we are selfish, we are obsessed with ourselves, hence the mirror with the person staring into it. The other example for today is that humans are beautiful by using their resources and skills to help and benefit others, so I created a well which I feel symbolizes human beauty very well. A major theme in the book is words, you can use words for both brutal and beautiful reasons.