“oil is thicker than blood” is an exploration of unconventional materials, expanded into a zine publication. my chosen material for this project was oil, a material that holds so much political, metaphorical, and contextual weight throughout history. this book was created after dozens of experiments with the abstraction of oil through trials such as pouring, shining light, and dripping ink into the oil. i would photograph these experiments as i completed them, spending hours afterwards editing the images to bring in interesting color and textural elements.
Amid my oil experiments, my narrative concept emerged. In trying to clean surfaces, clothing, and skin after my attempts to think of oil differently, I noticed the way in which it might change a surface permanently—even after hours of cleaning. The stains reminded me of the way each moment in time leads to an action or reaction that changes the course of histroy, no matter how small. I could not help but write a series of poetry to go along with this idea of chain reactions in an attempt for humanity to straighten its messes.
I spent much of my time researching the implications of oil as a material and as a symbol, using the material itself to create abstract design elements and creating my own typeface. For the typeface, I swirled oil paint in motor oil, photographed it, and vectorized it in illustrator, creating a stark black series of flowing letters and characters to convey the topic of mess and mending. Throughout the zine, my stanzas are formatted to flow with the pictorial elements.
