This writing project was possibly the most difficult for me to get started on just because it is so different from anything I have ever done before. A letter to a sculpture? An inanimate object that cannot understand anything I'm writing to it? It was hard for me to grasp this concept, but once I did, I think I was able to produce a well-written letter that covered all the points of the assignment.
I did less revision between my first and final drafts for this project because the peer reviewing we did was much different. I received a lot of good feed back from my peers, but we only did one in-class revision. In addition, we did not receive suggestions from our instructor, which I had found helpful in the past. As a result of this, I had to come up with more of the revisions on my own, and I also asked another peer for suggestions on my letter.
I didn't do much extensive or drastic reworking of my first draft, but I did work in some additional information. I included a bit about the creator of my sculpture, Rueben Nakian, and I used this to further juxtapose the sculpture "Birth of Venus" with the classical art it was based off of. Also, I expanded on the fact that you can see the pipes that hold the sculpture together. This adds to the argument that my sculpture is not the mystical goddess that Venus was--it is evident what the sculpture is made of and how it stays together. There is no mystery in that. I tried to make it clear in my final draft that the mystery of "Birth of Venus" lies in figuring out who she is rather than what she is. It is obvious that what she is is a bronze sculpture. Who she is is a bit more difficult to figure out because it is not immediately apparent just from looking at the sculpture.
Dear Birth of Venus,
But Birth of Venus, you are not beautiful. You are not flawless. You are not perfect. You are the farthest thing from the image of a goddess. You are grotesque. Flawed. Imperfect. Some might even go so far as to call you ugly. You are average in every way imaginable. You are probably even below average. At first glance, there is absolutely nothing special about you. You are not a magnificent piece of classical art; you were created in the 1960s by Rueben Nakian, who though talented, is not on the same level as the ancient artists who created your namesakes. How can you be the complete polar opposite of these works? Why were you named after something that you have nothing in common with?
You were named after that Venus because you are so different. Your name draws attention to the juxtaposition between the idealistic beauty of the gods and the realistic normalcy of everyday life, and these differences are important. By naming you after the painting, it not only demands that you be beautiful, it demands that you be compared to it. People hear your name and compare you to this goddess, this epitome of beauty and perfection. They hold you to her, and note the stark differences between the two.
And how can you even compare to her? You don’t even look human. Honestly, it’s really hard to tell what you do look like. You are so complex, so…different. You are a complicated mass of bronze pieces welded together. You’re hard to figure out, but it’s easy to see what you are. Whereas Venus was something mystical, it is obvious what you’re physically made of. A scaffold of metal pipes is all that holds you up and keeps you in tact, and the pipes are completely visible to anyone looking at you, connecting all your individual pieces like some crude skeleton. Each piece is completely unique—different size, shape, and texture, even different colors where the bronze has turned a greenish hue. Each fold and curve in the metal creates different shadows that fall on different places, and even that is different depending on the time of day.
One of the pieces is higher than the rest of you, like it’s rising up out of the wreckage that makes up your body. This is what people’s eyes are drawn to when first looking at you. This is what we notice. Why is this piece of you so important? Is this your face? Are you looking back at us? This is nothing like the smooth pale face of the Venus in the painting, with her golden hair falling behind her. This is different.
Further setting you apart from the Venus that you were named for is that you are very real. We can see and touch and feel you. We can walk around you and observe you in all your dimensions. An ancient myth, an old painting—these things aren’t real for us. We know about them, we can look at pictures of them, but they are not here right in front of us like you are. And because you are here right in front of us, we are able to really get to know you. We can look all around you, and each time we look at you, we see something different. Certain parts of you are visible only from certain angles, and other parts of you look different as the onlooker stands in a different spot. You have more to you than what initially meets the eye. You have depth. It’s impossible for someone to stand in one spot and think that they really understand you. Your mystery isn’t in what you are—it is in who you are.
This is why you are appealing to people. People can relate to you. You’re a better example for us than some fictional ancient goddess. You are like us. People aren’t flat and one-dimensional. People aren’t transparent and easy to understand. People aren’t always who or what they appear to be. People take time to get to know and to figure out. We all have spots and imperfections. We as people are complicated and unique and difficult, just like you are.
Sincerely,
Cara Anderson
