Paper Dolls: A transformation of real women
Joyce Jackson
Copy Editor
A reception for the Paper Dolls exhibition Nov.12 focused on silhouettes of a number of women from a variety of ages, cultures and socio-economic backgrounds.
Brazos Gallery Director John Spriggins’ display was an exploration of how cultural influences, especially the media, affect women.
Spriggins said in order to create the female silhouettes, he became interested in how women develop their self concept and self-image. He first thought about those things that creep into a person’s head to create low self esteem. He then started asking questions to women so he could create this particular body of work.
“Now I am 100 percent man, you know, through and through, and I know nothing about being a woman,” he said.
Staff photo Isai Diaz
John Spriggins and his favorite art piece.
Some people asked him, he said, how he could possibly have a body of work about what it means to be a woman. He told them, “because I’ve done my research, I’ve done my homework.”
Spriggins said the topic concerned him because he wants to raise his daughter the best way he can, along with his wife, Alishia, who also attended the reception.
“I came up with the concept about four or five years ago,” he said. He created a series of 10 questions about every one of the individual silhouettes.
“There were actually 20 in the series, but only 13 are in the gallery. They are people that I’ve encountered through work, through relationships and friendships that I’ve had over the years,” Spriggins said. “I interviewed them and asked those questions.”
Spriggins said he next photographed the women, turned the photographs into silhouettes, blew them up and then created the images.
“This is a collage project. The colorful backgrounds are all enamel paint. Those collage images that you’re seeing there are cutout paper,” he said. “One of the things that I wanted to make sure I did is that I didn’t identify who they [the women] were.”
Spriggins said he wanted everyone to be able to identify them as real people, not “some fictitious Photoshopped, air-brushed made-up person, but real women.
“Those real women have feelings. They have ideas. They have emotions. They have hopes. They have dreams. They have failures,” Spriggins said. “They have all kinds of things – they’re human beings, and so the scale of them is important.”
Spriggins said the magazines, text and images come from piles of magazines that he purchased or that were given to him and each one has a theme.
“The idea of paper dolls,” Spriggins said, “is that the media [and] society has all these different things that they force onto us, that help shape who we are, how we see ourselves. You spend the majority of your life trying to deflect those things … you know, the more you’re a part of this society, the more and more you’re exposed to what other people have to say about who you should be.”
One colorful silhouette contained a grave with a headstone, flowers and magazines.
“You see these images of ghosts,” Spriggins said. “This is where all that negativity goes to die – the gravesite. So those words that you see – fear, low self concept – those things are memorialized … all the negative things that effect us are there, whether it comes from the media, whether it comes from our family members, friends, people that we’ve encountered or people that we don’t even know.”
Paper Dolls will be on display in the Brazos Gallery through Wednesday.
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