My high school AP art portfolio was intended to be a joke. As in, it was comprised of a bunch of thoughtfully designed, beautifully rendered, highly-realistic pieces, all of which centered on a porcelain cat figurine with a hole in its butt.
Why did I do this when I could’ve chosen literally anything else?
In AP Drawing, students were tasked with creating a portfolio of 15 pieces surrounding one theme, or concentration. At least 5 had to be finished, polished pieces; however, you could — and were encouraged to — include process pictures, thumbnails, etc., as evidence of artistic growth and complexity. Many students did things like the environment, or technology and the digital age, or sexuality, or any number of really big, really important topics. Mine was…not that.
In junior year, during my independent study, my teacher set me a first assignment, which was a grisaille oil painting. Only using black and white to create a painting seemed like a good transition step between my strong still life drawing background and my goal of learning to paint well from life. I was told to go to the closet and pick out a few white objects. Mr. Allik has a closet full of art supplies, random pieces left behind over the years, items and knickknacks that could potentially be subjects of still life drawings and whatnot, and all manner of other debris. One of the items I found was a small cat statue, hollowed out, almost like a planter; it was glazed, creamy-ivory-white-colored, and was crouching, sticking up its butt, with a hole at the top of its posterior. I fell in love immediately. Of course I had to paint this!
After that, things got more ridiculous. I put a plant in its butthole; I put a fishhook in its butthole and dangled it from the top of my workstation; I licked its butthole; I put 2-year-old fudgesicles in its butthole and let them melt; etc. This cat was a fountain of inspiration for me, and it was always fun to come up with new setups to make art depicting it.
How on earth could I possibly intellectualize this?
The thing was, I had to send this stuff to the CollegeBoard. And submit my work to art contests and competitions. And send my portfolios to colleges as part of the application processes, especially to places like RISD. All of those things meant that I had to write about my work, which involved making it seem much more weighty and meaningful than it was.
I started writing in November of senior year. I had to submit my senior portfolio for the Scholastic Art Awards, and I needed it to be cohesive and seem like it mattered. The fact was, I wasn’t making art for any social purpose; I was doing it because I liked making it, and I thought these pieces would be funny concepts. I was pretty much just a little court jester, trying to amuse. However, the fact that I had to write about it made me reflect on my art and what it was doing and saying, even if I wasn’t trying to make it do and say things. And I kept coming back to the idea of sex.
Not in a funny way, or in a surface-level way, even. Just the idea of the figurine being funny because it’s presenting its hole – it’s inherently sexual, and why? Who is this cat trying to please? Is it important that it’s a cat, and that we call female genitals “pussy”? I was thinking very much of the concept of the “male gaze,” ever-discussed in feminist theory, pop culture and media, etc., and how it connects to this cat. All of a sudden, this haha-funny cat statue seemed like a reflection of patriarchal desire.
Are we all just porcelain cats with buttholes?
This cat could be interpreted in a lot of ways, but what I cannot un-think of is how women are all-too-often conceptualized as just a hole. Isn’t that a sickening thought? That no matter how much personality I have, what environment I’m in, how I choose to express myself, who I surround myself with, someone-somewhere might think I’m just a set of holes to fill??
I don’t want people to ever think of themselves this way, or conceptualize others thinking of them this way. I think there is a huge difference between being sexualized and being sexual; it makes all the difference in the world. One is a subjective, personal choice; one is a projection of others’ desire that turns a person into an object. The way I chose to express this in my portfolio was to sculpt a new cat, one that was being sexual all by itself, fulfilling its own needs. The male gaze can often imply the presence and engagement of the male viewer; this cat is removed from everyone else, without want or need of a viewer’s involvement.
Maybe little by little, through a wave of art and media and public intervention and communication and interpersonal engagement and so much more, we can change the way we portray and conceptualize people. People are not objects. It’s incredible how often people forget that.
