The Helga Files

Without further ado, here is the outline for my term’s project.
Working Title: The Helga Files
The Helga Files are an artistic representation of an art history lesson through the eyes of Helga Minelli in relation to a series of her lovers.
Helga Minelli is a pseudonym/alter-ego character I have created both as inspiration and a representer for the art I have slight trepidation in producing. For this particular project I plan to research the personal lives of certain artists and how their personal relationships have been represented through their work in unflattering ways, and how these behaviors correlate to Helga’s “Lovers”.
A trend and stereotype among artists is that they have rather turbulent lives, especially when it boils down to their love life. What I would like to do is look into specific artists that have influenced me, research their personal lives, and how their personal life made its way into their art, especially where it has been petty and vengeful. From there I plan on taking the vast source of turbulent love stories involving historically significant artists and concentrate on the ones that directly parallel and compare them to the “Lover” characters in Helga Minelli’s story. After concentrating down the artists and their stories, I will pinpoint the specific works of art that represent the people that were in their lives, and then recreate that work through my own or “Helga’s” interpretation.
The format in which I will do this will be in small matted drawings that will eventually build into a collection, and then stored in a box. The inspiration for this format came from researching into the art of Marcel Duchamp, who’s pretty much the champ at presenting art in unique ways.
Marcel was already a person of interest to me for a few reasons. The first was that he too had a pseudonym persona by the name of Rrose Sélavy, which sounds like the French translation of “Eros, such is life.” This whole idea is very attractive to the concept of Helga Minelli, especially the twist on love. Secondly, his art dealing with Rrose Sélavy were self-portrait photographs playing with gender roles and building personas, so he’s definitely got my attention. While researching more into his artwork, I came across a series he did of miniature works he had previously made to keep his show on the go, and I love the convenience and compact nature of the whole thing.
I plan on drawing seven to eight pictures for the series, and finding (ready-made hehehe) or making a box to store them in through the duration of my show. The only time they will be presented other than on the blog is at the show opening where their presentation will be combined with a lecture relating the artists’ stories and drawings done to a separate series of photographs that will be hanging as well. Once the lecture and the opening have closed, the drawings will be vaulted away in the box and only the box will be on display below the separate series of photographs.
During the course of the project I will research each artist I feel relates to what I do and the story involving Helga’s Lovers. I will then recreate a specific piece of work they did that relates to that research. I will also find the specific materials needed for the project, which will be seven to eight graphite/ink drawings with matted framing and a box yet to be determined. The series will be accompanied by a detailed lecture gathered from the research done during the process. Vigorous art text book studying, use of the internet, and haunting craft stores/ art supply stores will be necessary.
Timeline:

October 14th: research nearly complete and evidenced with blog postings, preliminary drawings completed.

October 28th: 3-5 drawings completed, box situation figured out.

November 10th : matting figured out, drawings almost to completely finished

November 17th: technical stuff done… hopefully. Lecture nearly finished.

November 22nd: the show must go on.