Process

 

While looking for objects to use in my piece, I was searching the lost and found bin at my job and found about 10 pairs of "lost" glasses. I liked the idea that these glasses had once been used to help (prescription) or hinder (sunglasses) the owner to view the world. I found it interesting that at one point the owners had taken the glasses off and placed them somewhere to better see something and then forgotten about the glasses altogether.

I began by placing the whole glasses into the environment to try and convey a "lost and found" feeling. I placed the glasses in the sand on the beach, in holes in trees out in the woods, and on a volleyball net. When originally presented, I realized that I had two concepts. The first concept, the lost and found idea, wasn't coming across as I had originally wanted. I found it hard to turn the placed glasses into "lost" instead of just "placed."

The second concept I was working with was the idea of "seeing" the world through other people's eyes. The "eyes" in this case becomes the lenses. My next step was to isolate the lenses in my piece by removing them from their frames. I decided to glue some of the lenses together and I came up with three forms. I then hung the forms from tree branches.

When I went to remove the forms from the branches, the big one fell and brought apart some of the lenses. (I had used Crazy Glue meant for plastics and it was definitely a poor choice.) Instead of gluing the form back together I decided to work with the new pieces it had created. I placed the lenses in the dirt and in the bark of a tree.

By using this new placement, I was able to better "see" through the lenses with the camera. I was able to focus the camera according to the lenses. This technique yielded some pretty interesting results playing with color and magnifcation.