Kafkaesque

 

 In Kafka’s story, The Metamorphosis, a man wakes up to find he’s been turned into a beetle. Kafka didn’t want there to be any depiction of the beetle, not in an illustration inside the book or on the cover. Many people, of course, have drawn the beetle anyway. There is one popular illustration of the beetle in his bedroom. I decided to make a diorama of the illustration, and then obstruct the only open wall that you can look through with a piece of white mesh fabric. It sort of gives back to Kafkas request that the beetle not be depicted. I’m taking the visual composition of the illustration, and making it 3D. 

To make this piece, I started by cutting wood pieces for the structure of the diorama, I spackled and painted the walls, to get a plaster look. For the floor, I carved floor boards into a piece of wood, so it would look like there’s individual boards pieced together. Then I stained the floor with wood stains to make it look more legitimate. To make the beetle, I made a wire armature around a ball of tinfoil. I sculpted a layer of clay onto the armature then cooked it, layered, cooked, until it was fully formed. Along the way the sculpture got very burnt and deformed, because I don't know how to properly use my toaster oven. When it was fully formed, I painted it beetle colored. I made a few details to the piece like glasses, a clock, and the picture frame on the wall.  I did a small watercolor of the view out of his window and secured it behind a clear piece of plastic, so it would look like glass. The other details I did throughout this process, and aren’t worth mentioning. Finally, I secured the walls together and put a mesh fabric over the opening.

After making this piece, I want to make more dioramas. There is only one difference in my piece vs the illustration I am copying, which is there is no jut out in the wall like in the illustration. I didn’t have the right materials to do it, and I didn’t want to. 

In the end I’m pretty happy with this piece, and everytime I worried that it had gotten messed up, it ended up looking good.