Two Sides of the Same Coin
Fantasy and reality are interconnected; They are always drawing from each other. Fiction can help people empathize with one another. People sometimes insert themselves in a fictional universe or in history by asking themselves, "what if I was there?" Cosplayers dress up as their favorite characters because they see themselves within them or something they admire. This in turn can bring out a different side to them. Sometimes people get inspired to commit awful crimes from a movie they see. (Or any other piece of media for that matter.) If someone is trying to escape from a terrible reality by immersing themselves in a fantasy, are they truly doing so? I pondered this when I decided I would make a collage that would comment on the relationship between fiction and the real world.
It took me a long time to figure out how I wanted to create this. I collected newspaper passages, pages from magazines and a fiction book and tissue paper. I made the self portraits by referencing "selfies" and by using graphite and watercolor. I did this so that it would be easier to show which was being drawn from. I primed the surface so I could tint much it with pastel, and make a sky behind the "Alice" reflection. For the floor, I printed out pictures of butterflies and cogs and made stencils out of them. I colored and traced in the stencils using vermilion watercolor.