Householder: Creative Brief and Mood Boards

CREATIVE BRIEF

The content of my exhibition will be a selection of antique/secondhand items with inherently intimate qualities, based upon the object itself or the relationship it would have had to its previous owner. 

This would probably be a smaller exhibit hosted as part of a historic home tour or something like that, let's say the Cox House in Heritage Park for now. Another idea would be just to set it as an imaginary exhibit in the Bower Bird gallery space.

The intended audience would be anyone who likes antiques and oddities or gets sentimental about old stuff. So, women, probably. Pardon my sexism.

I would want people to see the beauty in otherwise useless objects. In my eyes, just the fact of having been owned causes a thing to take on its own little soul. Handling those items can remind us that our own belongings will someday be antiques, and we, too, will wither and die. Not to get all depressing or anything.

IMAGERY

I haven't gone 'shopping' for my actual images yet but I want the objects I include to be visually beautiful  in addition to having a backstory. I will be looking for intricate details and combinations of texture as well as clear signs of wear. I want the images to convey a feeling of fragility, speaking to the age of the object, a more ornamental time period, and the sensitivity of its history.

COLORS

My color palette will be inspired by the aging process, but I want the overall color scheme to be light and airy. The creamy off-whites (looks super yellow against bright white) are supposed to mimic the yellowing of white fabric, while the grays conjure up images of dirt and aged wood and metal.

TYPOGRAPHY 

I would like to hand-make the type for the title, and use that process to convey age and history. Again, I want it to be pretty delicate and intricate, so I thought of using something like engraving, ink calligraphy, hand-stitching, or some other traditional art. 

TITLE

For titles I was considering Second Hand, because an antique store is technically a secondhand shop, it's just creepy to call it that because the first pair of hands is probably kinda dead. Also a play on the second hand of a clock, passage of time, etc. The other one I liked (better) was Trifles. It's an old-fashioned, kind of girly-sounding word, and basically a prettier way of saying 'junk,' so it's meant to be sort of ironic, and I think it would fit nicely with the aesthetic of the exhibit/book.

Here's some others:

Relics

Remnants

Artifacts

Past Lives

Hand Me Down

Salvage