Interviewing Differences for the Shrine Project

(what a dull prolix title...)
 (I interviewed Casey C. which in the following I make the comparisons of being alike or different).
When I first started the shrine project I could only think that it seemed like a vain project, a way to strut your peacock feathers about yourself to others. I also had only one matchbox on me (the recommended size for this project) but I had no desire to empty said matchbox of it's useful matches. So, instead I emptied out my little metal, umbrella container, about the length of my thumb ( and I did have to empty out that poor thing of pen nibs). Originally I had planned to make little envelopes that would be threaded together and each envelope would hold words that would somehow represent me, but, after I decided to use the worn umbrella printed container I decided maybe I'd have everything connected on a string that could be held up and extend from the opening of the container.

For the items I used some were drawn, cut out or "origamied" into a different shape to represent 2 things at once. I don't have any deep symbology, or perhaps none at all even with mine, but with Casey's she did have items symbolize certain aspects of herself or particular memories and moments in her life. She even had a huge box full of things she keeps of memories and went through it to see what pertained to her for this shrine project. On some items, though, due to size restraints she kept in the box of memories.

Casey's Shrine

The container I used I think I chose for convenience but it also did work as a 2-in-1 deal: since it was old and worn it showed how I enjoy old items. As for Casey she said that her box, size wise, revealed nothing- but, for the outside she not only included a map from Rome (where she went on a choir trip) and a key on the top as well (she likes old keys and a friend had given her a whole bag full of them), so I guess her box did reveal something about herself, if not the size/shape part.

Both of us used objects that we had to represent us. I had, unfortunately, already glued all of my fortune cookie labels into my sketchbook, but Casey put some in her shrine, along with a piece of blue glass to represent the ocean, a little metal from her first art competition, meaningful quotes, and more items that were more symbolic of things than anything else.

My shrine

My items were also pretty simple to show what they meant (for the most part). The tip of the red thread is taped to the inside, bottom part of the container, and the tip of the thread is glued to the hand of a joker playing card. When I was younger I was afraid of clowns, but I liked his outfit, enjoy playing games, and also the deck he came from I got in Montana where I was in my first musical and made many wonderful friends. After the joker I have objects such as a feather( love of birds), a drawn cat( my cats and love 'em as well), button (love old buttons), a Ricolla cough drop I did some origami on to turn into a heart (whenever I go to school sick I always have cough drops and the only thing I know how to fold paper into is a heart), a drawing of an old pocket watch, the word 'fonts' in which I did each letter differently, another red string that hangs from the main one that has six threaded poke'balls (because I grew up on poke'mon),  an ear plug (light sleeper), a tootsie roll cut-out balloon, a hand drawn owl on reused paper (like birds(again) and enjoy reusing paper), and finally a pen nib because I enjoy ink drawings, old lettering, calligraphy, and trying to ink with them. Oh, and I used red thread because in Japan there's a lore about a "red string of fate/destiny" in which the "gods tie an invisible red string around the ankles of men and women who are destined to be soul mates and will one day marry each other." I think it's a cute legend, so yeah.

As far Joseph Cornell goes, I forgot to look him up but Casey did. She said that originally she just had her things laying in her shrine but after looking at his work she decided to have dividers.

How we both put the shrine together, I think I just explained that, maybe, in the other paragraph (just had everything threaded together), while it seems that Casey did hers with dividers and made her own box...

Our similarities for this project is that we both chose things that were meaningful to us, I think we both had items that symbolized things more that representing the item. But I think mine might have had less symbolism than hers.
What I learned from this project is that some people didn't want to put items into the shrine because they didn't want to reveal fully to people who they were, which I guess surprised me because I hadn't really thought of hiding any secrets much less revealing any in this project. I learned that, as always, I was probably one of the less "deep" people in the group. I find that as an artist I don't like to delve to heavily into 'deeper meanings' and what an artist 'really means.' I mean I can do it if I have to, or have fun making up symbolism that obviously isn't there, but I don't know..
I shall leave you with a quote.
"The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem.... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists"
~Marcel Duchamp
Later guys
~Alex