Poem Response

The poem was "Gatsby, Again" by Laney Burrell.

 Here are the dark sides drying. I used black ink but it came out more as a grey. I wanted the outside of the one further back to the left to be dark whereas the inside of the one front and center to be dark because on the latter (top side pictured below) features yellow for Gatsby's car and the green fragment he sought so dearly...while a dark underbelly was the reality of his dream.

I wanted the pieces to be made of pieces of paper, showing how unstable and broken both Gatsby's dream and the reality of the 1920s was.

Here is the inside of the further back piece. It is dark on the outside for reality exposed, but inside the yellow of Gatsby's car and red (although the ink behaved in pink) for the light at the end of the poem: "before I reach the green light, it turns red." I waned the red to drip all over the yellow and did not mean for it to become so messy, but I actually like it better since that yellow car created such a mess in the Buchanan's lives.

 Detail shot of the way the ink soaked in the frayed texture of the paper.

Two work-in-progress shots. A balloon was used to make one of the pieces round and the tupper-ware container to the left was the mold for other piece before it was used to hold the yellow ink.