Kathryn

1. Description of My Project

Ideas:
- Hope
- Giving & Receiving
- Value of an object and how it can change
- Mass production of objects

I became interested in lucky paper stars and how something that is considered valuable (as a gift and the apparent ability to grant a wish) has become such a mass produced, commercialized product.

I am also interested in how something so vulnerable and very much worthless (material-wise) is transformed into something powerful, to which people invest their hopes into – regardless of whether they actually believe in the idea of a wish being granted. People claim they don’t believe it, yet they still keep clinging on to these objects of apparent value or power.

By bronze casting each paper star, I am playing with the idea of value – the process and the outcome. Bronze is more valuable than paper, and while it takes less than a minute to create a star out of paper, it takes days to prepare and cast a bronze star.

Also, starting a mission of collecting 1,000 paper stars with each one containing a different person’s wish written on it and initialed by them, I’m exploring the concept of hope, mass production-yet-not, giving and receiving, and again, value.

I have come to realize that process is a very important aspect to my project, and the outcome may stay as an unfinished/process-based one.