THE THREE-DIMENSIONAL SKETCHBOOK
The Three-Dimensional Sketchbook is a peek into the creative process of visual artist Cecilia Fogelberg. The book was made as a part of the B-sides exhibition at Blindside Galley, curated by Andy Tetzlaff, Melbourne, November 2008.
The book can be purchased from:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/403643
The book can be purchased from:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/403643
TEXT FROM BOOK:
The Three-Dimensional Sketchbook
A major part of my art practice is my daily thought process – my way of living. These thoughts are at times recorded in sketchbooks where I draw and write down my ideas and future projects. However, these sketchbooks are mainly to-do lists of already considered ideas and projects in process. The very beginning of my ideas and the main recording of my research is manifested and played out through a collection of objects: my three-dimensional sketchbook.
My objects are everything from made objects (sculptures/models) to objects that I have found in secondhand shops or in the streets; souvenirs, toys, or gifts from family, friends and lovers. Some of the objects may not have a given context attached to them and are often seen asjunk to most people. Other objects might have their own clear context, such as a religious icon.
Either way, all the objects are given their specific context by me at the time when I receive or find them, as I weave my ideas and stories into any of their existing contexts. This changes the objects into subjective objects that individually represent a story or an experience, which then symbolizes particular ideas.
As all the objects in my collection have a personal attachment and a personalised context they could very easily just be seen as sentimental memorabilia. I would however like to push the point that these objects have become simplified symbols and when I’m exploring my ideas, the original context is hardly thought of.
When I use the three-dimensional sketchbook, I set up the objects on a plinth or on a table in my bedroom. This plinth/table becomes what I call the playground, or my altar. I arrange my selected objects on this playground/altar in a way that the objects forms a relationship with one another, and the contexts of the objects become sentences, the sentences becomes stories, and it becomes a complicated version of a child’s role-play with dolls. The playground/altar is in this way a board game where I can play out my ideas against each other. I can build ideas, structures and relationships in-between ideas and thoughts, and by physically arranging them to create a drama, a situation and a connection, I can test different balances, analyze and investigate my ideas.
I could explain the full story behind each of these objects, however, this story is seldom thought of when I’m using them. If I were to describe the full meaning of each object, I would have to divide each object into three categories:
1. The describing title and the origin of the object.
2. What the subject is symbolizing / associated with.
3. My personal story behind the object.
In this way category number one and two becomes predominant, and the third category, which I will not focus on in this book, becomes personal and secondary. I will however give three examples of how I break down the objects into the three categories just to explain the complete process:
Example 1:
1. The female head/broken marble statue. Found in a rented cottage, Algutsrum, 1997.
2. Female independence, the history of feminism, the history of female artists. As well as; domestic violence, female body obsession and self mutilation.
3.I found this marble head left behind in a summer cottage I rented in Sweden in 1997. The objects context contains the memory of the neighboring pregnant woman Annelie Ojonen. She was mysteriously killed, her killer never caught and her body is still missing; rumors was suggesting that she was killed by her husband and she was dumped in a farmer’s manure silo to quickly dissolve any murder evidence. However, the marble head also contains memories of my own independence, my own identity as a woman, my struggle with male relationship and the balance between the sexes. This object has the ‘soundtracks’ of Misfit’s Last Caress and The Best of Album of Nina Simone attached to it.
Example 2:
1. The two hand-carved wooden bears (one wearing a plastic lock around its neck), given to me by Erika Höglund, Stockholm, 2005.
2. Mythological story telling, folk art, strength, partnership, tradition and heritage. Animal extinction, regrowth and hunting.
3. The Two Bears were given to me by my flatmate Erika Höglund while we were sharing an apartment in Stockholm during a six month period in 2005. We were both standing in a crossroad of our lives, and we were two women sharing our experiences of our past and our worries for the future (family, career, love). The Two bears came to represent our friendship, but also my personal journey of making up my mind up if I were to make a life in Sweden after living in Australia for 6 years, or if I were to return to Australia to embrace my new citizenship. The light colored bear (with the plastic lock around its neck) came to represent an imprisoned bear (the traditional dancing bear) with the burden of society around its neck (the bear I felt like while being in Sweden) and the smaller black bear came to represent the freedom of making your own journey as an emigrant; as well as they together represented the combination of the two as you are never just one thing and the two personas exist in a symbiosis.
Example 3:
1. The Armadillo from Peru. Bought in Prahran, 2003.
2. The joker – never take life too serious when you can play a song out of the Armadillo’s arse.
3. Bought in Chapel Street during a trying period of my life in 2003, as a reminder to myself that everything can be questioned, and that there is always a sunny side to the misery.
I use my objects as a form of ‘mind mapping’ without using written words, as words always have given me great troubles because I have reading and writing difficulties.
The objects have helped me to develop a method where I can record my thoughts quickly. I can leave the objects in a certain position, reorganize the object to create different sentences, and then come back later and re-read them. The thoughts have in this way become materialized on the playground/altar and it becomes my three dimensional sketch book.
Cecilia Fogelberg, November, 2008
A major part of my art practice is my daily thought process – my way of living. These thoughts are at times recorded in sketchbooks where I draw and write down my ideas and future projects. However, these sketchbooks are mainly to-do lists of already considered ideas and projects in process. The very beginning of my ideas and the main recording of my research is manifested and played out through a collection of objects: my three-dimensional sketchbook.
My objects are everything from made objects (sculptures/models) to objects that I have found in secondhand shops or in the streets; souvenirs, toys, or gifts from family, friends and lovers. Some of the objects may not have a given context attached to them and are often seen asjunk to most people. Other objects might have their own clear context, such as a religious icon.
Either way, all the objects are given their specific context by me at the time when I receive or find them, as I weave my ideas and stories into any of their existing contexts. This changes the objects into subjective objects that individually represent a story or an experience, which then symbolizes particular ideas.
As all the objects in my collection have a personal attachment and a personalised context they could very easily just be seen as sentimental memorabilia. I would however like to push the point that these objects have become simplified symbols and when I’m exploring my ideas, the original context is hardly thought of.
When I use the three-dimensional sketchbook, I set up the objects on a plinth or on a table in my bedroom. This plinth/table becomes what I call the playground, or my altar. I arrange my selected objects on this playground/altar in a way that the objects forms a relationship with one another, and the contexts of the objects become sentences, the sentences becomes stories, and it becomes a complicated version of a child’s role-play with dolls. The playground/altar is in this way a board game where I can play out my ideas against each other. I can build ideas, structures and relationships in-between ideas and thoughts, and by physically arranging them to create a drama, a situation and a connection, I can test different balances, analyze and investigate my ideas.
I could explain the full story behind each of these objects, however, this story is seldom thought of when I’m using them. If I were to describe the full meaning of each object, I would have to divide each object into three categories:
1. The describing title and the origin of the object.
2. What the subject is symbolizing / associated with.
3. My personal story behind the object.
In this way category number one and two becomes predominant, and the third category, which I will not focus on in this book, becomes personal and secondary. I will however give three examples of how I break down the objects into the three categories just to explain the complete process:
Example 1:
1. The female head/broken marble statue. Found in a rented cottage, Algutsrum, 1997.
2. Female independence, the history of feminism, the history of female artists. As well as; domestic violence, female body obsession and self mutilation.
3.I found this marble head left behind in a summer cottage I rented in Sweden in 1997. The objects context contains the memory of the neighboring pregnant woman Annelie Ojonen. She was mysteriously killed, her killer never caught and her body is still missing; rumors was suggesting that she was killed by her husband and she was dumped in a farmer’s manure silo to quickly dissolve any murder evidence. However, the marble head also contains memories of my own independence, my own identity as a woman, my struggle with male relationship and the balance between the sexes. This object has the ‘soundtracks’ of Misfit’s Last Caress and The Best of Album of Nina Simone attached to it.
Example 2:
1. The two hand-carved wooden bears (one wearing a plastic lock around its neck), given to me by Erika Höglund, Stockholm, 2005.
2. Mythological story telling, folk art, strength, partnership, tradition and heritage. Animal extinction, regrowth and hunting.
3. The Two Bears were given to me by my flatmate Erika Höglund while we were sharing an apartment in Stockholm during a six month period in 2005. We were both standing in a crossroad of our lives, and we were two women sharing our experiences of our past and our worries for the future (family, career, love). The Two bears came to represent our friendship, but also my personal journey of making up my mind up if I were to make a life in Sweden after living in Australia for 6 years, or if I were to return to Australia to embrace my new citizenship. The light colored bear (with the plastic lock around its neck) came to represent an imprisoned bear (the traditional dancing bear) with the burden of society around its neck (the bear I felt like while being in Sweden) and the smaller black bear came to represent the freedom of making your own journey as an emigrant; as well as they together represented the combination of the two as you are never just one thing and the two personas exist in a symbiosis.
Example 3:
1. The Armadillo from Peru. Bought in Prahran, 2003.
2. The joker – never take life too serious when you can play a song out of the Armadillo’s arse.
3. Bought in Chapel Street during a trying period of my life in 2003, as a reminder to myself that everything can be questioned, and that there is always a sunny side to the misery.
I use my objects as a form of ‘mind mapping’ without using written words, as words always have given me great troubles because I have reading and writing difficulties.
The objects have helped me to develop a method where I can record my thoughts quickly. I can leave the objects in a certain position, reorganize the object to create different sentences, and then come back later and re-read them. The thoughts have in this way become materialized on the playground/altar and it becomes my three dimensional sketch book.
Cecilia Fogelberg, November, 2008
