Experiencing The Cycle of Life: A Junior Conceptual Project by Kyra Kliman (2015)

I am exploring the feeling of disgust through the experience of seeing signs of aging. I choose to use an infinity sign to show the cycle of life. When humans are born they are fresh with no problems. As they experience life they go through positive and negative experiences. They don’t always make the best choices this can cause them to be disgusted in themselves for their behaviors, actions or thoughts. Most people learn from their mistakes and choose a different behavior and actions and their life becomes brighter. Everyone has flaws so it is inevitable that they will make mistakes throughout their lives. It is a cycle between acceptable and disgust throughout the life cycle. I used lemons to demonstrate the process of aging. The perfect lemon is bright yellow and fresh representing the beginning of life. The disgusting lemons become brown and withered showing how a person gets old.

For my fine art medium I took a photograph of lemons in different stages on an infinity sign made of tanbark. I painted a background on white paper with a mixture of yellow and red and a touch of green. I used this color scheme for dramatic contrast making the lemons stand out in the piece. For my digital medium I scanned the background which I painted and merged layered it with the photograph of the lemons in an infinity sign. I used photoshop to create my piece.