Grimm Fairytales Design Brief

Drawing inspiration from Grimm fairytales, my teammates and I created three entirely different pieces. We decided on dark fairytales as the theme, and from there we created whatever we wished. My Grimm fairytale was “The Juniper Tree,” a story in which an evil stepmother decapitates her stepson.

"The Juniper Tree" (http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm047.html) is a dark Grimm fairytale in which a child gets decapitated by his stepmother. The mother despises her stepson, so she tells him to reach into a wooden chest and pull out an apple. As he reaches in, she slams the lid of the chest closed, chopping his head off. Shortly after the boy’s head gets chopped off, his sister finds him, thinking his decapitation is somehow her fault. She tells the stepmother, who then cuts her son up and serves him as stew to her husband; the boy’s biological father. The sister is so upset by the unfolding of events that she takes the bones of her brother and lays them under a juniper tree in the yard; the same juniper tree that his biological mother is buried under. Once the bones are set here, they erupt into flames and the boy becomes a bird. He flies throughout town, collecting things as he goes. He collects a gold chain for his father, a pair of shoes for his sister, and a cinderblock for his stepmother. He drops the block on his stepmother, killing her, and restoring himself back to life.

The inspiration for this piece obviously drew from the story, but also from designers Herbert Matter and Paul Rand. Keeping Matter’s hand-photoshopped look in mind, I decided to collage a photograph onto some sort of background, just as he did in his pieces. The faded color of the people in his pieces also somewhat influenced my choice to keep my photos black and white. Matter's use of one large focal portrait image influenced me as well to use a cropped portrait as the imagery for my project. Paul Rand’s early collage work, specifically, “Summer,” inspired me as well. I love the collage aspect of the piece, so I drew inspiration for my own collage from him. This piece has a bit of a hand made element to it that I wanted to capture in my piece as well through the torn edges.

http://herbertmatter.org/welcome/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/1932-Swiss-Tourism-by-Herbert-Matter.jpg

http://www.paul-rand.com/assets/gallery/editorial/summer1936.jpg

Inspiration from the story came into play quite a bit in my piece. The story is incredibly dark and twisted, so in addition to drawing from Herbert Matter’s color scheme, I knew I wanted my images to be dark to mimic the tone. I wanted the decapitated head to be the main image, with the inclusion of the apple, since that is more or less what killed the boy. I have four heads circling the page to represent the boy’s head, as well as the three “gifts” he gives his family. The main head, the one with the red colored apple, represents his actual decapitated head, and the apple that caused it. The circling heads are symbolic for the three things he gives his family; the chain, the shoes, and the cinderblock.

Process Shot

The background pieces are green to represent the juniper tree. I covered them in Sharpie and dark chalk pastels to add to the grungy, dark feel of the story. I wanted the piece to look a bit like a zine with the dark colors, torn edges, and scribbles. I made a zine cover last semester, and knew that zines are typically very dark and handmade by nature, just as my collage and story inspirations, so I thought it would be fitting. The sharpie lines on the boys face add to the dark, zine aspect I was going far, mimicking the darkness and deranged energy of the story. The organic shape of the piece also comes from the handmade zine inspiration. 

Zine inspiration

To add to the influence of the tree in the story and my piece, I added twigs and pine needles so physical aspects of the tree are seen. This addition helped the piece to have more presence and look more complete by incorporating an integral part of the fairytale. 

Final product