The Bloomington Breast Project
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About this Project The Bloomington Breast Project is as much a piece of art as it is a community event; it is as much an assemblage of individual sculptural pieces, as it is a collaboration, a collective event, a site-specific installation, and an ongoing community performance. The project was begun in 2000 by a handful of women who make casts of their own breasts. Each woman makes a matrix wax cast of her breast and then creates multiple copies from this matrix using handmade paper. The pulp we use is often from a combination of foraged materials indigenous to our South Central Indiana area, such as Indiana Sweet Grass, corn husks, or pink cone flower. Once dry individual multiples are contributed to a growing assemblage of breasts. The assemblage is installed at varying locations in our community. Each installation functions as an event adapted specifically to the location, its context and architectural modalities, and its relationship to the breast theme itself. Each installation will vary in expressive content depending on its interaction with the respective host and the public connected to this host. Choices for installation-locations and -format are made by the participants of the project. The projects' work process is ongoing and in constant flux. New participants join on an ongoing basis. Current participants come from all walks of life and many unexpected directions and are not always artists. They continue to make multiple paper casts of their breast even while the project is being shown somewhere in the community. Periodic get-togethers to share ideas are part of the process, and sharing and creative decision making happen informally and spontaneously similar to the 'chat at the corner of the block' or in the grocery store. Pinnacle of this project is its public presence facilitated by the host locale. Thus the host becomes a temporary participant and the public surrounding the event could in turn become an active participant in the project. The Bloomington Breast Project was funded by a grant from the Indiana Arts Commission in 2000. |