Brainstorming/Proposal for Marriage Hope Chest Project

Ideas I potentially want to play with:
*hope chest
*jewelry box
*Pandora's box
*black box theater
*hat box
*vagina box
*drawer
*bureau
*treasure chest
*heart box! (just came up with that!)

Shapes I am considering... non-square, to be sure. Well... actually, a black box theater would probably be square. Rectangular, possibly. I'm attracted to the idea of a circular box (perhaps oval-esque, a feminine shape). I am of course contemplating a heart box. A vagina box would ideally resemble a vulva. A hat box would be circular.

I narrow this list down to... jewelry box, black box, vagina box, and heart box. I shall now sketch them.

The vagina box would be shaped like a vulva, decorated to resemble a vulva, with a lid. Interior would be filled with...
precious treasures!
identity
previous/current/future lovers
something or somethings for myself
a distant dream

The black box theater would be a wooden cube painted black. It would not have a lid. Instead, it would be missing one of its walls, in the tradition of conventional black box realism. The interior would be a stage:
performance of marriage
ceremony
rites
roles
scripts
costumes
audience

The heart box would be similar to vulva box-- a place to keep special things that are mine, gifts of love to myself. The exterior would be shaped like a heart, and it would have a removable lid. Decorated with collage in the Rauschenberg/Johns style: expressing identity with found materials. Interior would be a special room! A "heart chamber."
Place for love letters I have written to/for myself
vows to myself

The jewelry box would be rectangular, and would have a lid that hinged. The exterior would be decorated with feminine details, such as lace, the color pink, beads... The jewelry box would appear feminine and conventional from the outside, but the jewelry inside would be subversive! Anti-wedding, anti-marriage, queer, anti-(ironically) feminine. I might use alternative jewelry-making materials (such as barbed wire), or use traditional jewelry-making materials and use images and text (collage) to make the jewelry have a subversive message. On the underside of the hinged lid I would attach small hooks to hold bracelets and necklaces.

But which idea shall I go with?

Talked with Fereshteh; got some helpful feedback. I'm going to build a box that is a hybrid of my black box theater and my jewelry box.

Concept statement:
I propose to construct a box that is slightly rectangular, elongated lengthwise just a few more inches than the width so that it is not a square. I have yet to decide if I want a functioning lid or a non-functioning lid at the top of the box, and/or a false wall of the box that drops down like a drawbridge. The top (lid?) of the box will feature small hooks (or fabric with snaps) which will serve to hold necklaces, which I will make. The exterior of the box will be overtly feminine, frilly, and "girly", and I will accomplish this using the Rauschenberg/Johns style of collage, found materials, and possibly text (OR the opposite-- I might paint the exterior in the style of abstract expressionism, and make the jewelry in the style of RR/JJ, thereby re-telling the story of how they opposed and subverted the popular abstract expressionism of their time with their work). The color of the exterior will be primarily pink, the color that saturates "girlworld." The interior of the box will be dramatically different from the exterior: it will resemble a theater, and the necklaces that hang down from the roof of the box will be the characters on the floor of the box, which will be the stage. I am contemplating whether to have a functioning lid that is hinged in the back as well as a false wall that drops down to create more playing space for the dolls/characters/jewelry pieces, or to construct only one "door." The jewelry pieces I plan to make will be subversive, directly in opposition to the conventionally feminine exterior. I plan to use images and text and found materials in the style of Rauschenberg to give my jewelry pieces subversive meanings. The jewelry pieces will also resemble bodies, which inhabit a performance space (the stage of the box). I plan to incorporate as many theatrical and performative elements into this work as possible in order to reveal things like gender, marriage, femininity, and ceremonies as performative and constructed.