|.Introduction |.Process |.Samples |.Artists |.Contexts |.Variation 1 | Variation 2 |
A project created at the Spiral Workshop, University of Illinois at Chicago in 1996
by Olivia Gude, Barbara Bernard, Kelly Pelka, and Tracy Van Duinen.
Imagine that you are making a sculpture of yourself, but have no traditional art materials – no clay, metal, wood, or papier-mache.

If you made a sculpture of yourself out of chocolate would it have a different meaning than an identical sculpture made out of mud?

This project gives you the opportunity to explore and create your self-image. The self portrait will not rely on literal representations or iconography.

Instead you are asked to consider and make use of the potential symbolic significance of the everyday stuff of this world. In this project you will work in ways similar to many contemporary sculptors who create meaning in their work by the use of non-traditional materials.

There are several versions of this project--they are all types of collage. None of the projects are actual sculptures because it would be too time consuming, too difficult, or impossible to actually construct a 3D image out of nails or mud or movie tickets.
The project can be created large or small, high tech or low tech. Some portraits were created in life size scale using digital photography and assemblage. Others are based on a simple traced outline. In another version, the artists created a book of self- portraits of their class using only xeroxed photos, pens, and whiteout