Lifes True Beauty

In Chinese culture, Cherry Blossom Trees represent femininity as well as good luck. In Japanese culture the Cherry Blossom's beautiful but short blooming represents human life. Cherry Blossoms have always been deeply symbolic to artists and have been used as inspiration for poets, musicians, and painters.Cherry Blossoms can be found in almost every Asian country and a few places in the United States (they were given to the U.S. as gifts of friendship from China).

My piece is a zoomed in view of a Cherry Blossom Tree. I chose to make this 3D sculpture to really show how feminine Cherry Blossoms can be. I chose a zoomed in view instead of far away in order to be able to illustrate how a Cherry Blossom tree curves and curls (like a woman's body).

The idea of the piece was to zoom in so that tree branches would be coming from every direction and the viewers would be able to get a close up view of the flowers on the tree. The blue background represents the sky, which is what the viewer might see if they looked through the branches of a Cherry Blossom tree.

The way I formed my branches was by shaping them with aluminium foil. After the branches had their shape, I paper mached them using a layer of newspaper and a layer of tissue paper (so that the branches would have a smooth finish). After the paper mache dried, I painted the branches dark brown. The reason I used the technique of paper mache was so that my branches would look more realistic and stick up from the background.

The way that I created my flowers was by getting two pieces of unryu paper ( a pink piece and a natural piece). First I drew a flat 5leafed flower on one piece of unryu and then using pva glue to glue both sheets of paper together. After that, I cut the flower out (while the paper is still wet) and then I pinched the center of the flower and twisted it until the flower looked 3D. After they were dry I used pva glue to glue red rhinestones into the center of the flower. Then I used pva glue to attach the flowers to the branches. I chose to use unryu paper because it looks like a very traditional Asian paper and I knew that it would make the flowers look like they had veins.

Items Used:

Aluminum Foil

Newspaper

Tissue Paper

Unryu Paper (natural and pink)

Light blue Poster Board (20''x26'')

Gold Mat Board (30''x40'')

PVA Glue

Brown Acrylic Paint

Size: 30''x40''