"You're Making Me Feel Bad"

This week went really well for me work-wise. I don't know if I'd call it a breakthrough, but I was just unusually happy with everything I made. On the other hand, I had to sacrifice all activities besides sleeping, eating, and working to get everything done. The only time I wasted went to a couple hours at the grocery store and savers. Anyway, I made this artists's book for my advanced drawing class.

It's a little hard to explain, but it makes way more sense if you get the process so bear with me. The assignment was to do a "collaborative drawing", but since I hate collaborative projects at school, I decided to do something that minimized the amount of collaboration. I got about 20 or 30 of my friends to make me a small drawing of something that made them feel "anxious, nervous, sad, or generally bad." Once I collected all the drawings, I was struck by how petty our troubles were: getting too hot in a sweater, feeling uncomfortable when looking at the homeless, having "itchy pubes", etc. So I stained the paper and proceeded to paint on top portraits of people with real, desperate problems, like natural disasters, extreme poverty, or war. This was a weird experience for me, because I felt like I was exploiting these people by using their situations to make my own project. So between the original drawings, the contrast with the painted portraits, and the feeling of exploitation, the whole project made me feel...well...bad. The book is an encapsulation of feeling bad and the shades of meaning within the statement "I feel bad".

Now that block of text is over, here's some photos and scans of the pages.