The Liberty Tree

America gathers 'round a tree of flesh, leaves of ideas.

An interactive piece of rearrangable collages created for class at my community college in winter 2023. Concepts inspired by my WIP game Resting Place.

The tree is exposed for what it is: flesh.

It was the final project, and my grades were absolutely fucked because I kept thinking too hard and not doing. So for this one, using things I had already thought about was my salvation. The professor loved it, gave it a perfect grade, and bumped me all the way up to an A. I kept my mouth shut about how I made most of it staying up all last night and accepted the positive reception. ^_^

The backs of each piece have toothpicks like this.

Each piece was created by first downloading images I planned to use, using Krita to fit them all on a sheet of paper and adjust their size and brightness after desaturating them. Then I would print that, cut everything up according to their "natural lines", and fiddle around putting those pieces on top of each other until I saw something I could see becoming more than just the sum of it's parts. Then I would take one of my carefully-measured and cut rectangles of board and glue everything together onto that, cutting the board around it to finish things off. The backs of each piece have toothpick/s attached with whatever this stuff is (It's been so long I've forgotten what it's called). That way, they can all be rearranged on the board's holes.

0024 :: South Insincere Inhumanity

Assembled from various pieces of metal which people gender female. This has more detail than the others because it came first, before the deadline crept up.

The head is from Joan Cussack's character in Toys (1992), the shoulders, hands, and skirt are from the female characters of Robots (2005), the chest and part of the torso is from Alicia Vikander's character in Ex Machina (2014), the legs are from Valorie Curry's character in Detroit: Become Human (2018), the hoop is from Brigitee Helm's character in Metropolis (1927), and the "base" of it all is from the character Kira Buckland voiced in the english version of Nier: Automata.

She's totally a humanoid robot. Totally.

2400 :: North Overprotective History

Assembled from childhood pictures, some of which you can see in my travel pages. The eyes come from the "Gypsy Girl" mosaic displayed at the Zeugma Museum in Gaziantep, which my family visited multiple times when I was a child. This one is more elaborate than some of the others because it came second, before the deadline crept up.

Always on the lookout, she is.

5005 :: Lovecraft's Copper Psychopomp

Assembled from Michelangelo's Charon, Jeff Bezos, and a scythe. You can't reduce it to a single humanoid body without it being stupid. Here is where they started getting simpler in order to meet the deadline.

Gimmie money!!!

8887 :: Mars Rose Ant Aquarium

Assembled from the head of Theodore Rosevelt, the torso of Andrew Tate, and the tail of a whale. I wanted to cut off the top of his head and add little abstract ants crawling out, but I created everything last minute in an all-nighter and didn't have the time.

He's almost one with his captured fishes.

4949 :: Visiting Mother Is You Now

Assembled from Hermaphroditus and two sets of cicada wings. I wanted to add the moon behind her head, and an inverted shade faun head in her stomach, but I created everything last minute in an all-nighter and didn't have the time.

(You lose control around her)