seven deadly jars of sin

for my seven deadly sins/seven holy virtues imagery, i decided early on that i wanted to use jars. i like the connotations of a jar: the encapsulation, the isolation, the sterility against a clean background. it holds its contents separate from the outside, not letting anything harmful escape, nor letting any contaminants in. the idea of containing sins and virtues in jars, separating them from any context, distilling them into one object of essence: this was my initial idea. however, even though i was able to come up with an object for all 7 sins and all 7 virtues, trying to get each of those single objects to have the same sort of relationship both with their sin/virtue and also with their opposite made that something of an unwieldy goal. some objects were artifacts, evidence of the sin/virtue, props to be used in the demonstration, like a knife or food (wrath & gluttony), and some were abstract symbols, like a flower (kindness), and some were little puzzles of vague references with an a-ha! moment that might have been somewhat hard to come by, like binoculars (envy? it made sense to me.) some were directly related to their opposites, two sides of a single idea, (credit card/coins for greed and charity) and some didn't fit together all that well (that kindness flower and the envy binoculars).

regardless.

as happens, it evolved.  i simplified to just the sins, because i would rather have 7 strong objects than 14 pretty okay objects.  i started thinking about the variety of relationships my objects were having to their concepts. i found myself wondering if there wasn't something telling in that aspect, maybe more potent than trying to choose one single object as a representation. couldn't i build a meaning out of several things? maybe each one can't communicate a whole idea on its own, but using all of them together, letting the viewer try to find the connecting thread... there it was. so then i brainstormed further, without trying to limit my objects to one relationship. if you're curious, ask, and i promise i can explain what all the objects mean. otherwise, i'm gonna leave the backstory out, because when they work, they work, and when they don't communicate, me explaining it is not going to help. they will, of course, get tighter by the time i'm done.

with no more ado:

envy

gluttony

greed

lust

pride

sloth

wrath