Oil Box - Process

It has been pointed out that some of the most interesting parts of my practice are in the preproduction of my product/still life work. Because of this, my blog will be moving in the direction of showing the development of work rather than being devoted solely to finished pieces.

The first piece I planned to investigate was the oil filled juice box. This idea originated as a “three dimensional political art piece.” After 5-6 large pages of rough ideas and brainstorming I had come to the final concept that the production of goods, such as drinking containers had a serious impact on the earth and its non-renewable resources. These effects were not as visible as the landfills spreading. By recycling and reusing as much as possible one could help to reduce the detrimental effects of production as well as the disposal. As obvious as all of this is, I was hoping to convey all of this in one simple eye-catching image.

After brainstorming the final imagery I had planned to take an actual juice box and cover it in dirt with grass on top to simulate a chunk of the earth. Finding materials that would translate well in this scale was more difficult than I had predicted. Originally I planned to use grass and dirt from model train suppliers. The grass worked well enough, but the dirt would require more structural support and building. At this point I decided that using real dirt would be a more realistic choice. The scale would become almost irrelevant due to most perceptions of the underground being skewed by television/movies. I proceeded to affix dirt with medium/low moisture content to the juice box using spray glue. About 15 layers of glue and dirt later, the coverage was finally sufficient. I ended up using more layers of glue to act as a sealant coat of sorts. The grass was much easier to adhere, as it wasn’t organic.

As I had mentioned earlier this piece was originally a three-dimensional sculpture, rather than a photograph. To simulate a droplet of oil suspended from the straw I laid out about 50 different droplets of hot glue onto a piece of tin foil which I then painted gloss black. Tin foil allowed for these droplets to be separated from the backing. Once I picked the “perfect” droplet I glued the tip into the tip of the straw. Mounting the entire juice box onto a foam-core backboard with dowelling I was able to make it “float” in front of the gallery wall.

painted hot glue droplet

When moving this work into the photographic medium, I became frustrated with the artificial look of the droplet. Although it was believable from far away, it did not hold up under close inspection.  I took another straw and this time I purchased India ink to create the “oil” droplet. I had thought about physically shooting ink through the straw but to do this I would waste too many straws making the perfect splotchy ink straw with the perfect drip. Wastage would go against the ideals of the final image itself.

I figured out that to create a drop coming from the tip of the straw all I had to do was physically dunk the straw’s tip into the jar of ink. Many drips later I had the shot and was able to composite this straw onto the body of the juice box. 

High sync'd droplet shots. The straw was wrapped with scotch tape and lodged inside a brass tripod adapter. =)

Final Image: