University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

crab explores its wound

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crab explores its wound

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Content crab explores its wound
by
Sophie Genevieve Stark
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC ROSKI SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
May 2024
Copyright 2024 Sophie Genevieve Stark

Table of Contents
Abstract....................................................................................................................................... iii
Chapter One: Locked Out........................................................................................................... 1
Chapter Two: The Wet Lab..........................................................................................................2
Chapter Three: The Field Lab.....................................................................................................4
Chapter Four: Welcome to the Mystery Cult.............................................................................6
Chapter Five: A Boring Cyborg..................................................................................................8
Chapter Six: Simulated Realities..............................................................................................10
Chapter Seven: My Video Game Teacher................................................................................ 12
Chapter Eight: Just Add Water.................................................................................................14
Chapter Nine: Sleeping Specimens......................................................................................... 17
Chapter Ten: New Relics...........................................................................................................18
Chapter Eleven: Family Rituals................................................................................................22
Chapter Twelve: The Power of Christ Compels Me................................................................ 23
Chapter Thirteen: Piss Virgin Ever Sullied..............................................................................24
Chapter Fourteen: Hungry?......................................................................................................25
Chapter Fifteen: Crab Explores its Wound............................................................................. 28
Bibliography...............................................................................................................................30
ii

Abstract
In my thesis exhibition crab explores its wound, I make sculptures inspired by
archaeology to explore my personal history. Self reflection and art making parallel
archaeological excavation and lab work, where objects are excavated, sorted, studied
and archived. This paper will attempt to explain some of my aesthetic, conceptual, and
artistic references for my thesis exhibition; crab explores its wound.
iii

Chapter One: Locked Out
I lean out of my apartment door to prop up the recycling. The door clicks behind
me. Shit. I realize I don’t have my key, and I forgot to leave the door handle unlocked.
The security guard couldn’t help me unlock the door, and I didn’t want to pay for a
locksmith if my roommate was on his way home. Not like I could call anyway, my phone
was locked inside the apartment. The cleaning staff passed by and gave a sympathetic
smile, my kind neighbors offered help, but I knew I just had to wait a bit for my
roommate to get home, it would be a convincing reminder not to be an idiot and lock
myself out again.
But I was so bored. I am dependent on my phone for entertainment, and I quickly
exhausted my mental catalog of earworms. I was frustrated and cold, I didn’t know how
much time had passed, and I resorted to praying the rosary badly to pass the tedious
minutes. I couldn’t remember all the words, and if I did remember them, I certainly didn’t
believe in them, but the repetition kept me from embarrassing myself and crying in the
hallway.
My roommate found me splayed out in front of the door at midnight. I thought one
hour had passed, but it was four. I’d guess praying the rosary was a good portion of
that. I’m no longer Catholic, but these rituals are deeply rooted in me, the action of them
provides comfort.
1

Chapter Two: The Wet Lab
In my undergraduate studies at Vanderbilt University, I was a research assistant
in the Biological Stable Isotope Research lab. In this lab, scientists process samples of
bones, teeth, and plant matter to learn information about the people.
During my lab work, I spent many hours hunched over individual teeth, drilling
two lines, as parallel as possible, to one another. Adult teeth develop in your skull,
before you’ve even gotten use out of your baby teeth. Since they develop when we’re
babies, the teeth provide a record of an individual’s health during that time. The
isotopes in the tooth can tell you what their diet consists of and where water resources
come from. You can use this information to understand where those individuals came
from and how they might have lived. The teeth develop like the stratigraphy of soil, layer
by layer, built on top of one another.
There’s a goldmine of information available in a molar to the skilled hand. But the
work is tedious. You need to clean carefully to make sure no samples swap DNA. If you
breathed on the fine tooth dust, you’d lose thirty minutes of work and risk not having
enough tooth left in the band to finish the sample. Drill too far into the enamel and you’ll
hit dentin, which makes the sample’s values less accurate. The job was tedious, and
challenging. It was strange to reduce a recognizable part of a body to an unremarkable
looking white dust. The tiny sample of dust was an invaluable sample, unable to be
replicated, that’s why it was so important not to let any go to waste.
As I became educated as a low level lab technician, these skills actually carried
over to my art practice. I learned that a double gloved finger can be the best tool for
some jobs. And how important it is to have well fitting gloves, since they can wrap up in
2

the dremel bit and rip. I learned how to fold a square piece of paper into a flexible
temporary scoopula to precisely guide small bits of material into vials. I even migrated
tools and materials over between the fields. I used a Dremel before working in the lab,
but after working in the lab I became more skilled and learned about a flex shaft
attachment that would extend my reach with the tool. I became a better worker, more
precise, more focused on the idea of control and variables. I learned about taking
diligent notes about my process, and changing the protocol when necessary. These
skills made me a better science student and a better artist.
Making artwork reminds me of lab work. It’s tedious, you need to be precise. My
process of making artwork involves a lot of steps. I lay synthetic and natural fibers with
glue to simulate hair. I use two different types of 3D printers, SLA and FDM. They both
print along a vertical axis, stacking prints layer by layer to create the final image over
hours or days. You need to monitor the printers and troubleshoot their issues otherwise
you’ll just be left with a pile of plastic spaghetti. Similarly to the samples I worked on in
the lab, these pieces can only be finished through a complicated series of steps and
steady hand.
3

Chapter Three: The Field Lab
Archaeological field work was entirely different compared to its stuffy older
brother lab work. Field work was about making do with whatever you could scrape
together. It was messier, a different kind of science than I had experienced before. In
both of my experiences working on archaeological excavations, we moved huge piles of
earth, all of which was pushed through sieves, bucket by bucket, making sure to keep
the dirt separated by color, texture, and which section it came from. Every artifact and
bone (human or animal) was sorted by size, type and context, tied in a bag and stacked
away inside a box for safekeeping and later study. When the burial pit was larger than
anticipated, the temporary bone storage overflowed into the dig leader’s bedroom.
Plastic bins filled with bones enclosed her bed, it looked like she was living in a
catacomb.
In anthropology class, I learned that many archaeological sites are either trash
heaps or burial sites. Something left behind is either not valuable enough to take with
and is discarded, or the artifacts are so valuable that they are interned for the afterlife.
This hierarchy of value comes up with artifacts and human remains alike. Some artifacts
and remains are seen as valuable, and some valueless. It depends on who is doing the
judging. Ultimately, a valuable object can be ugly, a valueless object can be beautiful,
value is determined.
In some ways- my experience in archaeological field work reminds me of my
experience in therapy. In archaeology, the researcher is excavating information to better
understand, catalog, and study it.
4

Inspired by my experiences sorting artifacts in the lab, study table is a lighted
table for examining various amber artifacts and works. This piece replicates the study
trays I used to learn anatomy. During my osteology classes, real bones would be placed
in plastic trays so students could pass them around and handle them in order to learn
bone pathology. Professors would mark notable anatomy on the bones with stickers and
labels. Study table emulates this teaching device, but the artifacts in the study trays are
my own resin artworks and invented artifacts. Sand catalog is a collection of all the
pieces I've sculpted digitally, reduced to a tiny scale. These grains are laid on smaller
light tables, and mixed and sorted into glass vials.
Feelings are drudged up in therapy that I cope with by making artwork. Similar to
the excavating, sorting, studying archiving that happens in the field lab and wet lab. In
my artwork, I’m making an analogy about excavating artifacts from my mind that
represent the institutions that created me. These institutions are both religious and
academic, and come with their own baggage.
5

Chapter Four: Welcome to the Mystery Cult
My field school, where I first practiced archaeology, was near a site that was
used by the Cult of Mithras. Worshippers of Mithras practiced in intimate underground
spaces called mithraeum (Zar). And these mithraeum contain the imagery and artifacts
that make up all we have left of the Cult of Mithras. They are repurposed underground
vaults, originally made for storage.
A mystery cult is a cult whose operations are secret to all but the cult members.
All that is left to us is evidence that a cult operated and the symbols left over from the
cult. The knowledge of the cult dies with it because of the well kept secrets. Even if the
meaning of these artifacts is not immediately apparent to outsiders of the cult, we know
they had meaning to those who practiced this religion.
The Cult of Mithras also reminds me I didn’t have to be born into Christianity. “In
the first few centuries of its existence, Christianity’s strongest religious competitor was
Mithrasm” (Hopfe 2). Smaller religions like mystery cults were squashed in favor of
Christianity. But if Christianity was similarly diminished by a larger religion, I might’ve
had trauma from a different religion. Or maybe not.
Learning that every woman I knew in archaeology had been sexually harassed
felt like being brought into a mystery cult. I was given a list of people to avoid. I left the
field of archaeology, deciding I could not continue. Many of my mentors and friends
eventually did too. Our predicament reminded me of a mystery cult because we know
the lawyers protecting these institutions were able to keep it secret. I was told to keep it
a secret when it happened to me. Only the people in the cult know what it means to be
in the cult. And if the secrets aren’t revealed it will remain a mystery.
6

Sometimes, there is protection in secrecy. When you know an institution won’t
protect you. When I let people in on my secrets about the mistreatment I experienced
under religion and academia, more often than not, they make me feel worse. People are
hungry to hear me retell or re-enact my assault experiences in the work. It is mortifying.
I want to make mystery cult iconography based on my experience. I’m aiming to
visually translate my personal experiences of having a female body and working as an
archaeologist into mystery cult iconography. These include figures of crabs, geckos, and
other invertebrates that remind me of shedding and feeling insignificant.
Memento parvus is a sculpture of an outhouse made up of a ready made
camping outhouse and camping toilet. My own bad Latin translation "memento parvus”
which is supposed to mean "remember you are small." This piece is inspired by the
outhouse I used on a dig site in Peru. When someone wandered over to the 3 walled
lean-to with a hole in the ground, we would warn them not to knock over the poop tower,
the stack of logs rising day by day. We were adding our own human stratigraphy, but a
real structure will never be built like this. It's a crude joke about how I feel regarding
institutions that failed to build structures to shelter me, and I feel helpless to build them
better.
7

Chapter Five: A Boring Cyborg
I am a child of the internet. I have the expectation that I’ll always be able to
access it, and I feel its absence. I’m spoiled by unlimited data and neverending
stimulation. The internet feels like an extension of my cyborg mind. I can use it to
represent myself, seek information, relationships with like minded people, and maintain
existing relationships. Because I was raised using the internet, I have an expectation to
be able to access it whenever it's gone. I’m chronically online, I have a vitamin D
deficiency, I’m a modern cave dweller. But I’ve learned how to use my computer fixation
as an asset to my art practice.
Printmaking class opened my mind to making multiples. Making multiples was
the first time I was able to part with work. An original artist-made object fetish, but made
on the assembly line as an addition. Through free information on youtube, I learned how
to apply multiples to 3D, through molds and casts. I have a purpose, to make multiples,
to be a human factory. But unfortunately, I am not a robot.
Working with silicone exhausts my hands. Every time you peel the silicone glove
mold off of a finished silicone cast, you have to fight the rubber. I’ve made over four
hundred furbies at this point, and the strain on my wrists adds up. I ended up with a
nasty case of tendonitis and if I push myself too hard I’ll end back up in wrist braces.
The worst part about an overuse injury is that it’s on you to rest it and recover. Art
making is one of my few pastimes, I can’t afford to lose it.
I taught myself 3D modeling software to overcome the physical challenges of
making my sculptures. The 3D printer acted as my cyborg hands, and now I don't have
to get splinters of fiberglass in my hand anymore. I’m able to use the 3D modeling
8

software and the printer to continue making work without having to physically push clay
and overwork my hands. The printer and its vat of primordial ooze replicates my designs
far more precisely than I could by hand. I can use the same raw materials to make
entirely different forms, and the precision of the machine helps minimize waste. Each
layer is laid, again like the stratigraphy, layer by layer over time until the whole sculpture
is completed. Then the print is removed from the build plate. This streamlines the
process of designing art tremendously. I can think of an idea and have a painted
prototype finished by the afternoon. It feels like thinking something into existence.
Using my 3D printer and Zbrush, my 3D modeling software of choice, I can be a
contemporary Renaissance man and use technology to overcome the limitations of my
human body. I’m a boring cyborg, I use 3D printing to overcome my hand fatigue, and
the internet to overcome my agoraphobia. I can use the internet as an access point to
the sublime, the beauty and horror of an unprecedented wealth of information all at
once. The internet allows us to access information from outside of institutions, for better
or worse. You can teach yourself new skills for cheap without a formal education. On the
other hand, the internet allows me access to information I shouldn’t see. The beauty
and horror of the sublime can be searched on reddit if you know where to look.
9

Chapter Six: Simulated Realities
I was listening to a podcast about using the sims to simulate utopias. A young
woman named Autumn made sims of her beloved grandmother. She gave the sim
personality traits and hobbies of her grandmother, and built her a digital house to match
her real one. Using custom content and mods created by other dedicated players, she
built an accurate version of her life as a person of color, with “‘things [she] could take
and put in [her] grandmother's house and put it in her life to make her feel more
solidified’” (Mack).
When Autumn’s grandmother passed away from lung cancer, she was able to
use this simulated reality as a way to cope. Autumn could make a choice to suspend
her sim grandmother’s aging, giving her “‘a sense of power’” (Mack). “Autumn started to
notice that after a while she'd go into the game and it wasn't working as well as it used
to. Like it just–it didn't make her happy anymore. And she starts to realize the problem.
She just created a world where her grandma could never die, which meant she can't
grieve” (Mack). So she decided to turn aging back on. She was able to be there for her
grandmother’s passing in a way that she couldn’t as a child. Autumn used the sims as a
tool to process her feelings of grief. Autumn’s story demonstrates how people use the
sims to create simulated realities that meet their needs.
The sims is a good outlet to exercise total agency over a simulated digital world,
teeming with simulated relationships, families, jobs, hobbies. The sims also gave me an
interesting way to think about parallel lives. Many people who play the sims make
themselves, their friends, celebrities, their enemies. And once you’ve populated the
digital world with a cast of characters, it's easy to duplicate and tweak, like little parallel
10

universes. A user stimulated modding community makes almost anything possible in the
sims. And it makes me wonder what my life would be like if I could exercise godlike
agency. I am able to use the sims, my fantasies, my artwork to explore a fantasy world
where I have more agency.
11

Chapter Seven: My Video Game Teacher
Growing up playing video games, I would get attached to these simulated
realities and the characters in them. One way around this is duplicating saves. You can
try out different options with characters, but with the godlike advantage of being able to
jump back and forth in time and test out different strategies. For example, when playing
Skyrim, I’d save before entering a big dungeon. If you are thoughtful about the way you
save files, you can use this to improve your gameplay.
In games, I have the expectation that I can navigate to a previous or save file in a
few clicks. Similarly, Zbrush lets me make sculpting decisions in a few clicks. Sculpting
with clay, especially on a large scale model, is physically taxing. When I used to sculpt
with waxy monster clay, I would stick to sculptural decisions because I had already
invested too much time and manual labor into the piece. Changing major elements of
the sculpture was difficult. Sculpting digitally removes this physical roadblock to
changing the work. The other advantage to 3D modeling is the “activate symmetry”
function. When sculpting a portrait, you can use or “break” symmetry to make your
sculpting workflow more efficient. It’s far easier, which is great, because it allows me to
spend more time designing and less time laboring.
I have two 3D printers by my bedside at home. Because sometimes you have to
feed them filament in the middle of the night. It reminds me of when I had tamagotchi in
the second grade. I set the clock on the device wrong, and it would wake me up with
shrill beeping because it wanted to play simon says or eat five loaves of bread and
three pieces of candy at 10pm. But my tamagotchi motherhood prepared me to take
12

care of different robots at 10pm. They’re less cute than the tamagotchis and it’s harder
to figure out what the 3D printers want, but I name them all.
13

Chapter Eight: Just Add Water
Sea monkeys are brine shrimp marketed as instantly hatching pets. They don't
actually instantly hatch, but they rapidly grow over the course of a few days. The waving
shrimp family caricatures on the packet look vastly different from the real tiny wiggling
brine shrimps. But they make pretty easy pets, as long as you don’t add too much algae
powder and suffocate them. My childhood sea monkeys met the same fate,
unfortunately.
But there was another "just add water" pet I never had as a child - triops, or
shield shrimp. Triops references the three eyes of the shrimp. The third eye is a more
simple sensory organ than what humans think of as eyes. Like the sea monkeys, troops
hatch and grow rapidly. But while adult sea monkeys grow to a few centimeters, triops
grow to a few inches. They hatch and grow so rapidly it feels like something alchemical,
as if life just sprouted out of water spontaneously. You can buy packaged triop eggs
online, it's a mix of teeny spherical eggs, and dark brown mulch in a bag. You truly just
add water, the triops live in fresh spring water, and the eggs include smaller freshwater
shrimp species like fairy shrimp and clam shrimp. These shrimps are cute but you won't
see them past a day or two, they exist only to feed the voracious baby triops. Having
one triop is cute, they’re much larger than sea monkeys, so you can see what they're
doing easily. If you give them a slice of carrot or a nugget of fish food they twirl around
the tank with it, all their little legs clutching the food. Having more than one triop is far
less cute. Triops are hungry bottom feeding opportunists. And when their brothers die
they won’t pass up the opportunity to play tug of war for the body.
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Triops can reproduce by themselves, they don't need a partner. Triops only live
for a month or two, because they're adapted to live in shallow puddles that are only
hydrated during rainfall. The soil needs to dry before the process starts again. When
you raise triops at home, you also need to work within that cycle. Once the triops die,
you dry out the gravel and mulch and leave it in a dark dry closet for a few weeks. Only
once the soil matrix has dried and been left in the dark, can the cycle repeat. Just add
fresh water. Their whole adult life triops are producing eggs. Eggs that can't hatch until
they're dried and rehydrated again. I enjoyed this cyclical cycle of taking care of the
ephemeral shrimp. Since they only live for a month, you get a month on, caring for the
shrimp, and a month off, drying their eggs in the closet, and a break from cleaning the
aquarium.
Creatures like bugs are so small that often their complex life cycles seem
beneath our notice. But just because we can't see something doesn't mean it's not
there. Like the triop eggs, something tiny can rapidly become big and hungry. I’m
interested in invertebrates and the ideal of the tiny drama. Artist Jason Freeny made a
work called “tiny drama,” that depicts lice babies viewing the pinned corpse of their
louse mother (Keegan). This piece reminds me of the relative perspective and value of
organisms. Some are large, and some are small. To the large ones, the problems of the
small seem small, but it’s all relative. Right now, most bugs are relatively small
compared to humans, but millions of years ago there was so much carbon in the air that
millipedes were so big you could ride them. If they were that big today you’d have a
hard time ignoring millipede drama (Animalogic).
15

When I played with tamagotchis as a child I was very dedicated to being a
responsible parent and raising a successful lineage with many generations. But
sometimes tamagotchi parenthood is overwhelming to a second grader, and I would
take the battery out to give myself a break. I would put the battery back when I was
ready to babysit a beeping digital blob again, and my tamagotchi dynasty was
preserved in the memory of the toy.
I’m interested in the marketing of triops and sea monkeys as pets, but also toys
for children. Although my tamagotchi was digital, it is born, copulates, dies with
improper care, not unlike the sea monkeys. Drying triop eggs in my closet feels like a
biological break, like taking the battery out of my tamagotchi. Sometimes I wish my own
body worked like that. I wish I could be dried out, have my battery removed, be put on
ice, be pickled in a jar, just to pass more time asleep.
16

Chapter Nine: Sleeping Specimens
In my third grade science classroom, there was a specimen jar with a shark pup
inside of it. Because of the jar, I was able to have a close encounter with something that
scared me. Suspended in alcohol, the shark pup was clearly dead, milky deflated eyes,
but still moving and soft. A weird memento mori where you’re waiting for the shark to
wake up.
I read about how the postwar period and Forest lawn ingrained the culture of
embalming the dead for American funerals (Doughty). We put lipstick on a corpse and
pretend they're just sleeping. We need to prevent death, capitalism created a chemical
cocktail and process that allows us to pretend death doesn't happen. We would rather
pickle ourselves than suffer the indignity of death. Specimen jars act as a tool to put
these things handleable. Sometimes the glass wall lets you approach or hold something
that scares you.
17

Chapter Ten: New Relics
In Catholic tradition, relics of human remains are said to be “incorruptible” –
meaning they will not decay even though the body has not been artificially preserved
(Nickell 42). Nickell elaborates that for Catholics, “incorruptibility is a sign of sanctity,
proof of the miraculous and evidence of God's endorsement of their religion” (Nickell
42). However, scientific investigations into the legitimacy of these claims found that the
seemingly “incorrupt” bodies had been embalmed or mummified to preserve the tissue
(Nickell 42).
Catholic relics act as “the bridge between the ethereal realm and the physical
world: They were tangible reminders of the presence of the holy, objects imbued with
devotional significance, instruments of divine power, and physical links to sacred
individuals and events” (Brockey 42). However, not all Catholic relics are valued equally.
Notable relics include pieces of the cross Jesus was crucified on, large portions of the
body or significant body parts like the head or tongue (Stumpe 66). First class relics
include the bones, hair, and limbs of saints and items associated with the life of Christ
(Stumpe 66). Clothing or objects used by a saint are considered second class relics,
and objects that have been in contact with first and second class relics are considered
third-class relics (Stavish). There is a distinction between the worship meant for god and
for relics. Latria is a term that means worship meant for god, while doulia is the honor
shown to saints and relics (Stavish). Catholics distinguish between latria and doulia by
saying that they give worship to God but honor to relics and Saints. Therefore, they're
not committing idolatry by honoring relics.The theory behind this practice is that relics of
the Saints are gifts from God, so the veneration of these relics is veneration of God and
18

not of the relic itself (Stavish). In this way, Catholic relics act not only as a body
surrogate to the deceased saint, but to God's intangible body as well.
The preservation of these relics prompted the creation of reliquaries, furniture
with the sole purpose of maintaining relics. The reliquaries were able to protect relics
from damage by pilgrims without entirely obscuring the view. These reliquaries were
often “elaborate and made from precious materials” (Stumpe 66). Although the
presentation of the relic object is important, it is also important to wrap the object in an
elaborate display that conveys its significance and status as a fetish object. Yet,
“reliquaries, whose lavish materiality is meant to be an antidote against the fetishizing of
relics, can themselves be turned into objects of fetishism” (Leone S54). Reliquaries
began as simple silver containers, but became more elaborate in the Middle Ages to
accommodate larger and more important relics (Bartlett 267). The later Middle Ages
brought the addition of glass windows to reliquaries (Bartlett 267). This allowed the relic
to be on display even in its case. Reliquaries were also made in the shape of human
body parts later in the Middle Ages (Bartlett 269). Body part shaped reliquaries activate
the relic by putting it in context with the deceased’s body in a way that simple reliquaries
do not. “A head reliquary or bust reliquary, as a three-dimensional likeness, can be
regarded as a statue of the saint. It offered a focus for devotion that was in human form,
not a box or a coffin. The worshipper looked at the Saint and the saint looked back”
(Bartlett 270). In this way, the reliquary acts as a body surrogate to fill in the parts that
are missing and extend the presence of the genuine relic. The relic, a limited portion of
the body, becomes a representation of the body in its entirety.
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Severed heads became one of the most fetishized and sought-after first-class
relics. “The severed head was particularly potent. Of all body parts, the human head
has the most complex significance, as a locus of all five senses, the most easily
identifiable marker of personal identity, and often indeed, the only visible part of a
clothed individual.” (Bartlett 241).
Leone notes that “relics have always been considered a dangerous source of
fetishism” whether the relic is a pop star’s clothing or a saint’s bones (Leone S56). And
Catholic churches, with their broad collection of religious fetish artifacts, play into this
fetishism. In their creation of fetish objects, “churches became the precursor to
museums… ”relics and reliquaries [were] on the cusp of becoming objets d'art for the
admiration of connoisseurs” (Bartlett 282). Due to their large and well-documented
catalogs, churches and the relics inside became the common man’s first museum
(Stumpe 63).
Catholic relics are considered indelible. I’m interested in the line between
indelible and delible, corrupt and incorrupt. Unfortunately, I quickly figured out I had the
rotting sinning body instead of an incorrupt one. My confirmation saint, Catherine of
Siena's, "incorrupt" body looked pretty withered, so I don't think I'm missing out on too
much.
In my recent body of work, I'm thinking about new relics- relics made from bodies
of recent martyrs that incorporate more contemporary symbols from pop culture, things
that are relevant to my life and experiences. What will new relics look like? What do
relics look like to people who are not religious anymore? I’m interested in emerging
20

relics that have been preserved not by the grace of god, but instead by man made
chemicals. Science lets men pretend we have godly powers.
Inspired by the tradition of Catholic relics and the legend of Mary’s virginity, Piss
virgin is a self portrait in 3D printed resin, submerged in an aquarium of water. The head
of the figure is printed in clear resin and dyed amber with alcohol ink. The water helps
suspend and move the natural and synthetic hairs attached to the head. The title is a
reference to Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ, however, the figurine appears to be made
out of urine rather than being submerged in it.
Angel Gabe awaiting the second cumming, is a sculpture of a lifesize iridescent
pale mummy self portrait of myself doing the chad face, sucking my cheeks in. This is a
portrait of the Angel Gabriel as a stoner fuckboy. This work is my acknowledgement that
being born as male or female is coincidental rather than fated by divine power. Angel
Gabriel, the messenger angel, is tasked with telling a woman that she must carry Jesus
2. This isn’t his choice, he was sent to do god’s bidding. This piece includes accessories
like angel Gabe’s fantasy vape, a dropped off gecko tail codpiece and a male
breastplate with an iridescent toga to conceal his apparently female form. A tamagotchi
shaped like a shark’s egg, tells the story of the second annunciation, where the viewer
has been chosen to bear Jesus.
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Chapter Eleven: Family Rituals
Ice cream memento mori is a piece inspired by my father, holding a dipped Dairy
Queen cone without eating it. I asked what he was waiting for. "You gotta let it harden
up first… like a baby skull." It was actually a great metaphor to explain skull
development, where the fetal skull is flexible in order to accommodate childbirth. As the
child grows, the growth plates in the skull close and the skull hardens. The chocolate
shell mirrors bone that thickens and hardens as time goes on. The piece is a collection
of different ice creams and stages of dipping and eating them. As the cone hardens, the
shell turns from a glossy finish to a shiny one. One of the unhardens cones has a mush
in the chocolate coating rather than the sharp edges of the bitten one. The empty cone
and eaten cone show the beginning and end stages of the ice cream. The soft and hard
edges also resemble the soft and hard edges of either an antemortem or postmortem
skull fracture.
Dough headed antagonist is a silicone ball of hot cross bun dough with a face on
it. During Easter every year, my father would sculpt a face out of hot cross bun dough
and antagonize you with it, to goad you into punching and kneading the dough. It
became something of a family tradition to smack the dough head around at Easter. This
sculpture is a silicone version of this dough ball that can be smacked all year round
instead of just on Easter. These pieces are tributes to new rituals that my dad created.
22

Chapter Twelve: The Power of Christ Compels Me
I am often confronted with the question- why did you make this? It’s a simple
answer, I was compelled. It reminds me of what I learned about the sacraments in
Sunday school and confirmation classes. Priests, monks, nuns, married people, are
called to service. I have also been called to service. An unseen force whispered a funny
little joke in my ear and I was compelled to realize their vision. The object did not exist, I
can see a way for it to exist, it is now my obligation to make it real. An idea that feels
like it was delivered from above, nags at me until I make it.
The calling is a sculpture inspired by Christian paintings of caucasian Jesus
helping doctors perform surgery. My brothers are doctors in the south, and they see
these paintings in the offices of doctors. Based on these paintings, I imagined what it
would be like if man, white Jesus, and creation as one shared body, but with a less
noble passtime, the life of an artist.
I’m also interested in depicting the fusion between man and god. There’s a scene
from Videodrome where the protagonist’s hand fuses with a gun (Chaw). In my art
piece, I, the artist, am fused with Jesus, the creator, and my creation, the spaghettio
furby. This work is meant to show that just as Jesus is present helping a surgeon do
surgery, he is present helping me make something dumb like a spaghettio furby. Just
like good Christians are called to the priesthood or marriage, I have been called to make
a spaghettio furby. Hallelujah!
23

Chapter Thirteen: Piss Virgin Ever Sullied
Piss virgin tincture is a sculpture of an amber bottle, shaped like the virgin Mary.
The figurine is hollow to hold the moving liquid tincture and her head can be removed as
the bottle top. This piece turns a statuette of Mary into a container for viscous liquid and
smaller sculpture particles. This piece is meant to compare Mary to a container.
Dr. Manhattan years is a resin sculpture of an amber tamagotchi with a self
portrait and landscape inside. This self portrait is inspired by my years turning away
from people to be consumed in the act of creation of art, even when the art seems
frivolous. The scene inside is referencing the character Dr. Manhattan from the graphic
novel Watchmen. The graphic novel Watchmen, trauma separates Dr. Manhattan from
humanity, he takes time away from the planet earth to make and destroy his own
worlds. I feel that I'm in my Dr. Manhattan on the moon years, where I’m focused on
creating and self-reflection. I need some time to have agency over my own world, and
disengage with the chaos on earth. This scene places me into the character of Dr.
Manhattan, while also referencing the storytelling vignettes of the stations of the cross in
the Catholic church. Instead of depicting events from the stations of the cross, this
landscape is housed inside of a rendering of a tamagotchi, the classic handheld virtual
pet.
24

Chapter Fourteen: Hungry?
Cock pocket and cock pocket ever virgin are silicone replicas of hot pockets that
can be used as male masturbatory devices. Cock pocket ever virgin is emblazoned
with the virgin mary’s face. There is also a moldy version of cock pocket ever virgin.
Cock pocket micro is a miniature fully 1/5 scale functional replica of the original.
One bread one body is a video piece that shows how the cock pocket and cock
pocket ever virgin can be used. The hot pocket is stretched, fingered, and penetrated
while the Catholic hymn, One Bread, one body, plays. At the end of the video, the hot
pocket and a piss virgin statuette are sprayed with a stream of easy cheese.
Cock pocket hymen chart is a collection of hot pockets that have cheese
modeled after a chart of hymen anatomy. In this work, I emulated the anatomy of
hymens in simulated resin hot pocket cheese and meat chunks, and labeled them after
the anatomy. The anatomy is complicated and detailed, but that can seem arbitrary
without existing methods of classification. This tablet becomes a reference point for the
angel Gabe to determine the virginity of Jesus’s second mom.
The cock pocket series of work is my crude joke at how my body is objectified
and consumed. I’m showing the chip on my shoulder. I’m aware of how my own female
body is fetishized. I cannot enjoy my own female body without being called a fetishist. I
feel like my body is an object of lust or disgust, an extension of the madonna/whore
complex.
Incel culture feeds into women being treated as sex objects, but unfortunately it's
nothing new. I remember reading one of my mom’s books, in elementary school. It was
written by a feminist gynecologist. She wrote how the term “vagina” was derived from
25

latin that translates to “sheath for a sword” (Engelhaupt). A vagina creates life, but men
basically named it “penis hole.” This pissed me off. In high school, boys would refer to
female anatomy as objects of disgust. Girls had “pepperoni nipples, roast beef lips,
nacho cheese pussy.” If a girl wasn’t an object of desire, she was an object of disgust.
The Catholic church I was raised in has an unsurprisingly narrow view on female
bodies, purity culture, and homosexuality. But to my surprise, Anthropology professors
and teaching assistants also used their power to sexually harass me. When I wanted to
make artwork to unpack my own abuse at the hands of religion and academia, I was
shocked by the reception. I wanted to make work focused on healing from trauma,
making vague references to my own abuse to protect myself, but people were hungry
for details. In my undergraduate program, a visiting artist told me not to invent my own
trauma. I wish my trauma was invented, it is not. But this studio visit was a good
example of the skepticism I am met with when talking about my own experiences. In
graduate school, a male professor asked me if I intended to reenact my own sexual
assault on the rubber hot pocket I created. Unfortunately for him, I cannot do that, as I
was blackout drunk when it happened. I cannot, and never intended to, give this
performance of my own assault. Experiences like this happen all too often. People feel
entitled to know the details of my story, the specifics of what happened to my body. And
they are not gentle about it. I feel like a cheap object someone is trying to use or
consume.
I made cock pocket because I wanted to make a joke about the idea of a
woman’s body always being centered around a man. If a vagina is a sheath for a
“sword,” what if a hot pocket was similarly reduced to just a place to put one’s penis.
26

Both a vagina and a hot pocket have other uses, but if the institution or marketing
names it as a place to put a penis, that’s what it is.
27

Chapter Fifteen: Crab Explores its Wound
Scrolling Instagram, I saw a video of a crab in a tide pool picking at its own
innards (Nosowitz). The piece was titled “inner voice, Metacarcinus magister explores
its wound after being opened by gulls” (Sanchez). Commenters under the video were
speculating about how much the crab was actually able to understand, how much it was
suffering, if it was aware of what it was feeling. Was the crab experiencing painless
curiosity or agony? People were also commenting on the choice of the word “explores”
in the title. How much was this small life form able to process? This is tragic for the crab
of course. But for the viewer, the crab becomes a spectacle. Its milky flesh looks alien
and sculptural. The crab silently “explores” its wound for the first and last time. The
anatomy of the crab was foreign to me, and the spectacle invited curiosity rather than
horror.
I enjoy making work about invertebrates and other animals that have different
biology than me. A crab has an enviable body, an armored shell, several sets of arms,
and the ability to molt and replace damaged extremities. Carcinization is the
evolutionary trend of organisms becoming more crablike (Hamers). This led to a meme
about all creatures eventually evolving into a crab (Watson). In reality, the trend toward
some critters becoming crabs is really a case of convergent evolution, “which is when
different groups evolve to have the same traits” (Hamers). Unrelated creatures may
develop similar biological traits by chance. Thinking about how the human potential to
evolve similarly in the distant future is intriguing to me.
Triop nervous system is an amber sculpture of a human nervous system relic in
an aquarium. It represents the nervous system of the piss virgin character but merges it
28

with the anatomy of the triop, as if the mind is its own creature, separated from the body
in a tank. My mind is isolated as a nervous system, free of a female body. In this piece,
I’m considering how my mind could separate from my body and become a different type
of organism.
Dropped tail is an amber sculpture modeled after a gecko tail. Some geckos can
drop their tails as a defense mechanism. The predator is distracted by the movement
and the gecko can escape. This piece is based on the fantasy that if I had a tail to drop
off, people would be shocked and I could escape the interaction. It’s also a reference to
my lack of a penis or “tail”. I wanted to create my own “mystery cult” imagery of the
gecko tail and its capacity for regeneration.
While making this body of work, I’ve been reflecting on value judgments and
trauma processing. Is an artifact too small or gross to care about? Ultimately it's up to
the system evaluating these artifacts. It comes down to the scientist to determine the
value, whether the individual is educated or knowledgeable enough to know what
something is worth saving. If I'm treating my mind and artwork like an excavation, how
do I separate the important things from the stupid ones? What do I decide to preserve
and what do I dispose of?
29

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31

Abstract (if available)

Abstract In my thesis exhibition crab explores its wound, I make sculptures inspired by archaeology to explore my personal history. Self reflection and art making parallel archaeological excavation and lab work, where objects are excavated, sorted, studied and archived. This paper will attempt to explain some of my aesthetic, conceptual, and artistic references for my thesis exhibition; crab explores its wound.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Stark, Sophia Genevieve (author)

Core Title crab explores its wound

School Roski School of Art and Design

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Fine Arts

Degree Conferral Date 2024-05

Publication Date 05/24/2024

Defense Date 05/24/2024

Publisher Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag art,OAI-PMH Harvest

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Mayerson, Keith (committee chair), Mueller, Thomas (committee member), West, Jennifer (committee member)

Creator Email sgstark@usc.edu,sophiagstark@gmail.com

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