Ubercorn: Kristine's entry for Work of Art Challenge #1

Emily and I have completed our version of "Work of Art," Season 2, Challenge #1! Here is my thrift store treasure, before and after. As you can see, I made a few minor alterations...


The Challenge:

Turn a kitschy piece of thrift store art (our limit: $5) into something worthy of being displayed in an art gallery. (click here for our challenge rules)

My process:

On Friday evening I visited Goodwill in search of a piece of art that I could upcycle. When I first saw all of the $20-30 items, I feared I'd have trouble finding something within our $5 challenge limit. And then I saw it: a unicorn picture in a cheap gold frame, for only $3.96. Perfect!! I grabbed it and went home. (yes, after paying for it)


In keeping with the "Work of Art" TV inspiration, I guess I have to select my personal art style. Umm... is "nerdifying" a valid art style? That and line art, I guess. I decided to start with the decorating of the unicorn. OK, let's back up... in line with reality TV, we've gotta include drama. I managed to cut myself removing that cheap gold plastic frame! Yay, first war wound goes to me!


Back to my artwork. I decided to go with line art for the hair, horn, and hooves. For the body, I went for cyber. Teensy tiny zeroes and ones from head to hoof! 0 = light area, 1 = dark area. Man, that took a long time!! I watched the entire season of "Marcel's Quantum Kitchen" during the decorating process. That was actually a fascinating show! I don't understand why that show aired on Syfy; regardless, the creative process was fun to watch.

Back on topic now... Here are a few pictures of the work in progress:




After what seemed like forever, I finished adding my cyber texture to the unicorn. I then probably spent another few TV shows cutting the obnoxious thing out. Ugh, so many pointy blocks of unicorn hair!! And then I moved on to the process of finding an appropriate background. My initial choice was an image of Jupiter that I got when I was at NASA last week for the premiere of "The Wanderers," a fantastic new film that they project onto a globe-shaped screen. It's like having each of the planets in our solar system hovering mid-air in front of you!! Gorgeous. Go see it!!

I digress again. After ruling out the Jupiter picture because of all the text on the poster I remembered that I had a few posters of fractals lying around my apartment. Perfect!! I pasted the beautifully cut out cyber unicorn onto a red and yellow fractal.


I wanted to stick with the general vibe of the original poster, which meant I needed to add some clouds around the outside edges. Hmm, what to use?? I decided to go with the weekly coupon mailer that I hadn't yet recycled. I tore out some rough circles, then pasted them into an arbitrary cloud-like layout.



The clouds weren't quite standing out against the bright fractal pattern, so I grabbed a Sharpie and outlined some of the cloud edges. If I were to redo the challenge, I'd probably go with solid-colored clouds, or something that produced more of a layered effect. Ah, well. I'm still proud of the finished product.

My final piece of art, "Ubercorn"


This evening Emily came over to compare artwork and watch last week's episode of Work of Art. The contestants went in very different directions than us... two dimensional, three dimensional, performance art... in some cases, it was difficult to see the original inspiration in the final piece! We went for a more literal interpretation of the challenge, leaving the original artwork visible in our final pieces.

Don't forget to admire Emily's upcycling (when she posts it--I won't give it away!), and then vote for the challenge winner!