Toilet Paper Roll

For our 3D grad class, we were asked to make self-portraits that were inspired by this post on Colossal. I like how the material is so relatable to our society in this pandemic right now. Who knew toilet paper would be such an essential staple during this pandemic? On top of that, who knew toilet paper rolls could be turned into such delicate sculptures? These little sculptures by the french paper artist, Junior Fritz Jacquet, were genius and so amusing. I couldn’t wait to try one out for myself. After watching several YouTube tutorials, I found that it was really difficult to get the toilet paper roll to mold the way I wanted it to. Too much meddling led to rips, and it was actually quite frustrating. I also found that the position of the seams of the toilet paper roll was important because those intersections ripped easily as well. Either way, here are the results! You can see in the photos that I had to start over from the first one because I ripped a hole through it.

Clearly, this was more of an expressive self-portrait, since I’m not blue. One artist one YouTube referred to these toilet paper sculptures as grimaces. While I was making mine, I thought to myself about how sometimes I feel disgruntled about this pandemic. Being stuck at home has been nice, but sometimes I feel like time has been just wasting away. So, this toilet paper roll self-portrait is more of a portrayal of how I’m going to come out of this pandemic in the future. I would be perhaps weathered and would not know what year it is. I also have been thinking about a meme that has been going around. It said that about 70% of women reading the meme most likely had their hair up in a weird bun. That was totally me, so I put my yarn hair up into a bun!

Had to share Oscar’s very unsure face!