Overview:
The Belle Collector is an exploration of the current political climate of the U.S. from the lens of a woman. Five abstract butterfly-female-reproductive-system organisms are pinned to open pages of classic feminist literature, imitating how a butterfly collector would display their deceased butterflies in glass cases. The organisms teeter the line between dead and alive, symbolizing the grief of female freedom in our country.
In order to create a site-specific design to UW’s Odegaard Library, I tied my feminist ideas to literature. I used my personal experiences as a woman as my research, additionally reading novels that evoked the ideas I was interested in conveying. I also looked into designers that were creating about similar topics or with similar artistic processes (shown right).
Printmaking is an essential process that informs the conceptual side of the design. The movement and natural textures in response to the ink provides an organism-like appearance that gives power to the reproductive imagery.