The 3D doodles are a result of two personal creative trajectories colliding. The first trajectory is the doodle development. The other is a constant attempt to create my own version of primitive art. I haven been traveling on those two paths for such a long time that they are unconsciously imbedded in my creative work.
Prior to the current attempt there was never any attempt or even a thought of turning the 2D doodles into 3D objects. Since the doodles exists in a 2D world their visual existence is bond by 2D world freedoms. The doodles are free to float weightless in air. Their bodies can twist on the paper. They don’t have to be balanced. They can start without finishing or end without staring. Playing with those freedoms is part of the doodling process. Much like a letter that expands out of the page and can still be read; or a movie scene leaving the spectators to fill in the gaps, the missing elements cause the spectator to pause, use their imagination. Same goes for the unresolved doodle. The more I used the unresolved doodles the more I drifted away from the ability or desire to translate the doodles into 3D space.
The other trajectory, the desire to create primitive art is guided by one main philosophy/roles… Embrace the imposed material limitation. The primitive artist… The artist had to discover materials and develop technique to handle them. This search is evident in the work giving it energy, creativity, imperfection… The other role in creating primitive art is… No art History. The primitive artist… The artist did not have the library/vocabulary of art imagery, symbols, genres… that would be created later trough human history. Without the privilege of having this visual library the artist was left with his own inner world. Since I can’t (and don’t want to) shut off my visual art memories. I am left with only one role… material limitation.
How do we get from material limitations to Papier Mache?
In my world, Papier Mache is a missed opportunity. My memories of Papier Mache consist of an early-age craft teacher showing us how to cover a balloon with multiple layers of tiny pieces of paper. Her kindergarten soft instructive intonation and the multi-step slow pace process stood in complete contrast to my young self. As a result, I turned rebellious, doing the exact opposite, resulting in complete failure. Even then I realized it was a miss. The Papier Mache stayed a far option. The opportunity to revisit Papier Mache came a few years ago in a need for a personal present for a close family member. Playing with different techniques I created my technical arsenal and my visual language. The result was a functional black and white, primitive looking object.
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The next time I approached the process of making a Papier Mache primitive object I encountered two problems. The first one, subject. Classical primitive art subjects describe animals or people. My relationship with animals and nature doesn’t have even a close resembles to the relationship that primitive artist had with nature. Trying to create animals would surely be a road to failure. Initial attempts with people subjects required a story. Who is the person? What is he doing? In other words, I needed mythology. The second issue was that Papier Mache did not limit me enough.
As a result of all the above, I stopped, Put the learning on a shelf and went to pursue other projects.
Years went by and the way I perceived doodling has changed. I stared to take doodling more seriously and started to give it much more thought. As part of this process I started to wonder what would be a good way to transfer them into 3D objects. Again Papier Mache came to the rescue.
Armed with a technique that I already had developed and with an arsenal of my own doodle mythology I set on creating my 3D doodle interpretation. Since they still carried over primitive art the first ones had a symbolic container. This feature was finally dropped on the advice of my daughter giving me even more freedom to pursue the doodle transformation.
