LEARNING GOALS With this lesson plan, you can engage in the curriculum’s Big Idea: “Exploring and sharing multiple perspectives extends our thinking.” RESOURCES
More about the series Comfort: As is the case in much of my work, my personal experience is used as a point of departure. When I am seeking comfort, I gravitate towards structure (routine, pattern, familiarity, balance) and candy/sweets. Intrigued by the contrast between these two ways of comforting myself, I conceived a series of images that would speak to this tension. I started by creating highly patterned and structured compositions out of candy (regular, geometric-shaped candies I associate with my childhood – nostalgia is also comforting – such as Lifesavers, Necco wafers, Pez, Licorice twists) and photographing them, relatively close up. The colored patterns and grid structure created by the arrangement of candies, as well as the scale of the prints, invoke Minimalist painting and Op art. For quite some time, my work has functioned in dialogue with artistic traditions that I reference and rework. My interest here is to re-invest these visual approaches with social and cultural meanings that extend beyond the frame of abstraction. Finding comfort in candy and finding comfort in structure do not have the same resonance in our culture. Turning to candy for comfort implies indulgence and weakness, whereas turning to structure implies restraint, power, control. These associations, I would argue, are highly gendered. By presenting these two very different comforts within the same context, I attempt to forefront the contrasting values associated with each.
VOCABULARY & CONCEPTS Gender identity Sexual identity Different perspectives Representation
BODY OF LESSON Introduce Liss Platt
Liss Platt is a media and visual artist
Through a combination of personal narrative, critical analysis, gender politics, and strategies of appropriation, her work often examines how various representations and discourses shape our understanding of ourselves within the world.
Liss Platt is queer, and identifies as a lesbian
Examine and discuss some of the images from Platt’s series Comfort
She talks about how candy and structure give her comfort.
This sets the class up to listen to the following brief interviews with Liss Platt which go further in depth about her work and perspective.
Next, watch Liss Platt - On the Personal Narratives in Her Work (1/9) (1:02 minutes) embedded above Reflection Questions:
Liss Platt says her work is very much about her personal experiences and stories (or narratives). How does talking about and looking at art about her personal perspectives extend our thinking about the world?
She says she hopes to try to give people an opportunity to reflect on their own personal stories, and help people understand themselves, the world, and representation. Thinking about Platt’s Comfort series of work: what do you find comfort in? Does this connect to your own gender identity?
Next, watch Liss Platt - On Parody, Humour and Camp (2/9) (0:59 minutes) embedded above Reflection Questions:
Liss Platt talks about how using humour and parody in her work helps with accessibility; it helps people “ask questions” and engage with topics like “Butch identity and queerness”, something that some people might not otherwise want to talk about.
What do you think about this approach to opening dialogue in her work? Do you think humour and parody, looking at big patterned images of candy, helped you have a dialogue about gender identity? The limitations and restrictions of gendered ways of finding comfort?
Finally, watch Liss Platt - On Sexual Identities (3/9) (1:21 minutes) embedded above Reflection Questions:
Liss Platt talks about how there are not many representations of queer women in the media, and that “As a dyke moving through the world, a lot of my personal experience has been about my gender identity being a butch, being a woman, being a lesbian, and that certainly is about how my world is constructed and how I understand myself in the world.”
Liss Platt shares her perspective in her art and interviews. Her perspective may be different from your own, and she allows us to explore her perspective in her art.
Had you ever considered how someone finding comfort in candy AND structure could run up against dominant cultural norms and expectations of gender identity? And how that might make that person feel?