Jiao, inspired by Tom Phillips’ A Humument, exhibits her works and at the same time, tells a short-story plot about Macbeth, she also adds a new feeling to it other than the tragedy; a positive feeling of relaxation and warmness for readers. Tom Phillips created Humument by using a collage, placement, color value, and other skills as reference to that. Jiao created her own humument art known as The Stage of Value, Box of dimension and Music Party DO-RE-MI. Jiao conveys a lot messages in her humument arts, and also gives an effect of Macbeth itself. She chose Macbeth by William Shakespeare to be the paper layer for her humument, by using the same skills as Tom Phillips, she chose to use the three skills which are the collage-making, placement, and overlapping. Each skill used in a different piece of work.
The Stage of Value is her best piece of work. It may look easy and simple but, the meaning behind, is significant. For The Stage of Value the artist chose to articulate value, which is the lightness and darkness of a color, she used materials of inking brush pens (black, dark gray, and light gray). Using inking brush pens to block out specific words, Jiao chose the word “stage” to incorporate the fact that Macbeth is a famous play itself. Using the skill of placement, the page shows value from the darkest blacks to no color at all. The black and grays color choices refers to the evilness, hopeless, and the o a lot of negative messages conveyed from Macbeth. More than half of the areas were low-key, with only a small part left as white, because there remain little positive messages left in Macbeth, which are former king’s kindness and soldiers’ loyalty.
Her second work is The Box of Dimension, in this piece, Jiao shows technique of overlap. Using inking brush pens to color boxes into different values, the transparent gray colors merged up and becomes overlapped. By overlapping the boxes with different ranges of value together, it tricks the audience’s eyes and gives a 3D-feeling. The design makes it look like a time tunnel, the boxes represent tunnel entrances that connect with different time dimensions. They can transfer you to the another world, the era that had Macbeth’s existence is included in one box of dimensions; viewers could take a guess of which box is the entrance to the world of Macbeth. This page can be a little game for you, after you chose a box, flip to the next page to see if there is a word that says “Macbeth” behind the box you chose, if there is, it means you were right.
The last one is Music Party DO-RE-MI, it shows Jiao’s learning of rhythmic pattern that she connects with her interest in music. This composition shows the two different rhythms of staccato and legato. Staccato represents sharp patterns while legato represents round patterns, Jiao combines them up and turned music into art. Macbeth is also a famous stage opera show, the actors sing out their lines while following the background music. In her last humument art, Jiao gives the message that Macbeth is not just a book, it is also an opera. By covering the patterns over the lines, she conveys these lines that could be sung out as a beautiful song. So when people read Macbeth, at the same time they can get a feeling of listening to music, feel relaxed, get a different feeling such as Macbeth’s tragedy. Same concept for Box of Dimension, interesting 3D-feeling that brings you out of a sad tragedy and makes you feel joyful.
