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What Happens in Alison\u2019s Room: Depictions of Art and Craft in Orphan Black<\/em><\/h2>\nJanet Brennan Croft<\/p>\n
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Abstract<\/h2>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”1″ _address=”1.0.1″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Abstract” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” _i=”0″ _address=”1.0.1.0″]<\/p>\n
Alison Hendrix, one of the clone-sisters central to the TV series Orphan Black<\/em>, is frequently seen in her craft room, a highly organized and regimented space straight out of a Martha Stewart magazine. In this space she creates floral arrangements hiding guns and pills, fancy boxes of soap concealing illegal drugs, a chart of the nefarious business connections of the Dyad Institute decorated with computer clip art and frilly frames. This is the expected craft room of the suburban soccer mom; a thin veneer over her desperation and moral failings, for it is also the room where she tortures her husband Donnie. In the final episodes of the fifth season, she transforms both her physical appearance and the focus of her artistic expression. This essay will note parallels between her artistic evolution and that of her clone-sister Sarah\u2019s adopted brother Felix, whose studio art develops in new directions by the end of the series, and clone-sister Helena, whose ritualistic drawings, shamanic constructions, and illustrated memoir are never presented as formal art or craft but serve the same purpose of self-expression, emotional channeling, and community bonding.<\/p>\nKEYWORDS: Orphan Black<\/em>, art, craft, gender in art and craft, cloning, stencilling, art as communication<\/p>\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”2″ _address=”1.0.2″][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Content Block” _builder_version=”3.27.3″ background_image=”https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/paper-square.png” custom_margin=”0px||0px||true|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” saved_tabs=”all” fb_built=”1″ _i=”2″ _address=”2″][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_5,3_5,1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.7″ _i=”0″ _address=”2.0″][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”0″ _address=”2.0.0″][et_pb_text admin_label=”section head” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ header_font=”Almendra SC||||||||” header_2_font=”Eczar|700|||||||” header_2_text_align=”right” header_2_letter_spacing=”2px” _i=”0″ _address=”2.0.0.0″]<\/p>\n
Introduction<\/h2>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”1″ _address=”2.0.1″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Introduction ” _builder_version=”3.29.2″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” _i=”0″ _address=”2.0.1.0″]The BBC America television series Orphan Black<\/em> (2013-2017), set primarily in contemporary Toronto, tells the story of a group of young women who discover that they are clones. They learn that they are experimental subjects bred by the Dyad Institute for the wealthy and shadowy Neolution organization as part of its project to secure immortality for the powerful elite of the world, while eventually sterilizing and eliminating everyone else. Over the course of five seasons, the women form alliances with each other — and with their families, loved ones, and colleagues — to expose and defeat Neolution, cure the fatal self-limiting diseases built into their own genetic structures, and free themselves to live their lives as they wish. Themes of self-determination, motherhood and sisterhood, trust, the influence of nature and nurture, and strength in community are central to the show. In a tour de force<\/em> of acting skill and technical camera work, all of the female clones are played by Tatiana Maslany.<\/p>\n![\"Tatiana](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/orphan-black-21-1200x640.jpg?resize=600%2C320&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
Tatiana Maslany as Sarah Manning, Alison Hendrix, Cosima Niehaus, Rachel Duncan, and Helena.<\/p><\/div>\n
Representations of art and craft are essential to several major character arcs and subplots of the series.\u00a0 These representations demonstrate the development and evolution of multiple characters and their relationships with the world, underline the show\u2019s concern with the competing effects of nature and nurture on the skills and life-paths the clones pursue, and emphasize the strengths they gain from communication with and connection to each other.\u00a0[1]<\/sup><\/a> At a meta-level, depicting a character engaged in art practice is an excellent way to show — rather than tell — important information, including the characters\u2019 coming to greater mutual understanding of each other\u2019s emotions, history, and psychological concerns. Art practices of the characters in Orphan Black<\/em> may variously demonstrate: an overwhelming need to fit into a societally determined role, existential discomfort with the very concept of cloning, the search for biological family, personal guilt and spiritual growth, developmental phases of childhood, recovery from trauma, overt and covert communication, family and community healing, or the achievement of mental balance and joy in life. This essay will explore several of these functions of art for three of the main characters.<\/p>\nOne potentially problematic aspect of some ways the show represents art practice is its gender alignment of art<\/em> with higher value and a male practitioner, and craft<\/em> with lower value and a female practitioner.\u00a0 Certain areas of craft, particularly fiber crafts, have long been devalued on the basis of gender association; Auther (2010), for example, discusses \u201cprejudices against fiber\u201d due to \u201chistorical associations to the \u2018decorative,\u2019 \u2018craft,\u2019 or \u2018women\u2019s work\u2019\u201d (p.xii). Fiber art has long been dismissed because of its utilitarian or decorative nature; it does not partake of \u201cthe heroic struggle between the artist and the blank canvas\u201d (Greenberg qtd. in Auther, 2010, p.xvi) and is not designed solely for \u201cdisinterested, hands-off contemplation\u201d but also appeals to touch and handling (Mays qtd. in Auther, 2010, p.xviii). An uncritical use of this stereotypical distinction could easily be read as undermining the centrally important struggle of the young women against the gender structures of society and of Dyad\u2019s female cloning project.<\/p>\nHowever, there is a certain intersectionality at play here in the fact that the male artist is gay, and respect is shown to the female crafter as she discovers a medium better suited to her talents and starts to mature as an artist. Additionally, her craft activities are never shown as something she feels driven to do so that she can express her inner self or experience artistic satisfaction; they serve more to align her with social expectations within her community and class, and give her a means to measure and position herself vis \u00e0 vis<\/em> her mother and other women in her social circle. Her craft work is definitively not what Fisk (2012) describes as a practice of spiritual expression and discourse, a way of relating to the world, being at home in the world, and creating meaning in the everyday. So when she ultimately rejects \u201ccraftiness\u201d in the search for truly meaningful personal expression, it is not as much of a value judgment against female-identified \u201ccraft\u201d as it might seem. What we are seeing rejected is not craft that borders on or challenges definitions of art (Auther, 2010), or craft seriously pursued, but \u201cbeing crafty\u201d as a means for a stay-at-home mom to occupy her time and signal her virtue, and her accompanying feeling of a life lived uselessly and pointlessly.[2]<\/sup><\/a>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”2″ _address=”2.0.2″][et_pb_text disabled_on=”on|on|off” module_class=”noindent” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_enable_color=”off” custom_padding=”4px|4px|4px|4px|true|true” border_radii=”on|6px|6px|6px|6px” border_width_all=”2px” border_color_all=”#bf1a46″ _i=”0″ _address=”2.0.2.0″]<\/p>\nOne potentially problematic aspect of some ways the show represents art practice is its gender alignment of <\/span>art<\/span><\/i> with higher value and a male practitioner, and <\/span>craft<\/span><\/i> with lower value and a female practitioner.<\/span><\/p>\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Content Block” _builder_version=”3.27.3″ background_image=”https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/paper-square.png” custom_margin=”0px||0px||true|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” saved_tabs=”all” fb_built=”1″ _i=”3″ _address=”3″][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_5,3_5,1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.7″ _i=”0″ _address=”3.0″][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”0″ _address=”3.0.0″][et_pb_text admin_label=”section head” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ text_font=”Eczar||||||||” header_font=”Eczar||||||||” header_2_font=”Eczar|700|||||||” header_2_text_align=”right” header_2_letter_spacing=”2px” _i=”0″ _address=”3.0.0.0″]<\/p>\n
What Happens in Alison\u2019s Room: \u201cI\u2019m always different\u201d<\/h2>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”1″ _address=”3.0.1″][et_pb_text admin_label=”What Happens in Alison’s Room” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” _i=”0″ _address=”3.0.1.0″]<\/p>\n
Alison Hendrix (Tatiana Maslany), the crafter referred to above, is one of the first clone-sisters we meet and remains central to the story until the very end. Alison appears to be a typical suburban housewife; she lives in a large and well-appointed house in a densely-packed suburban housing development near Toronto with her husband and their two adopted children. Bailey Downs is the town where she grew up and where her mother still lives and runs a bath and beauty product store. Alison is deeply involved in her community: active in coaching children\u2019s sports, community theatre, local politics, and her church.<\/p>\n
Alison is frequently seen in her craft room, a highly organized and regimented space straight out of a Martha Stewart magazine. This is the expected craft room of the stereotypical suburban soccer mom, but in going through the episodes one by one, we discover that she is rarely shown actually crafting in this space. \u00a0 More frequently, she folds laundry there, has clandestine meetings with the \u201cclone club\u201d by webcam or in person, or manages and organizes her family\u2019s lives. The constrained Instagram-perfect tidiness of Alison\u2019s craft room is a thin veneer over her desperation and moral failings; it is the scene of tense confrontations, self-medication, and secrecy, the room where she hides her pills, booze, and guns. Others are discouraged from using this room or her supplies; we never see her children crafting with her (though their art is displayed on a bulletin board), and at one point fellow clone Helena makes it clear that she has been forbidden to work in this room because of the chaos she creates in Alison\u2019s \u201csystem\u201d (\u201cTransgressive Border Crossing\u201d [Cochrane & Fawcett, 2016], \u201cFrom Instinct to Rational Control\u201d [Levine & Stebbings, 2016]). This is in contrast with another central clone character, Sarah Manning, who, though not artistically talented herself, is shown spending unstructured time coloring, painting, and doing various paper crafts with her daughter Kira. [3]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nExamples of some of the craft products we do see come out of this room are two floral arrangements, one hiding a gun (in \u201cNature Under Constraint and Vexed\u201d [Manson & Fawcett, 2014a]) and the other pills and a false urine sample (\u201cThe Collapse of Nature\u201d [Manson and Fawcett, 2016a]), both complete with hand-made glitter-embellished cards (\u201cThese are SO Alison,\u201d as another character says of one of these arrangements [Manson & Fawcett, 2014a]). Also notable are fancy boxes of soap concealing illegal drugs, and a flowchart of the nefarious business connections of the Dyad Institute, decorated with computer clip art against a pink ticking-stripe background. This room is a place where both dirty laundry and secrets are cleaned up and smoothed out and tidied away neatly in boxes and bins.<\/p>\n
Our first look at the craft room is in the second episode of the first season, and tellingly, Alison is not crafting; she is clipping coupons and filing them in a loose-leaf binder (\u201cInstinct\u201d [Manson & Fawcett, 2013a]). In a scene set a short time later, where she and fellow clones Cosima and Sarah meet in person, she retreats from the family room into her craft room when upset (\u201cVariation Under Nature\u201d [Manson & Frazee, 2013]). In \u201cEffects of External Conditions\u201d (Manson & Fawcett, 2013b), while standing by in case Sarah needs backup, we see her set yarn, a gun, car keys, and a \u201cclone phone\u201d on the table (\u201cclone phones\u201d are untraceable burner phones the \u201cClone Club\u201d uses for communication); a completed pair of mittens indicates the passage of time in a later scene.<\/p>\n
One of the most important scenes set in this room occurs in episode 1.6 (\u201cVariations Under Domestication\u201d [Pascoe & Fawcett, 2013]). As Staci Stutsman (2016) observes, Alison\u2019s \u201ccraft room serves as one of the more interesting indicators of her repressed unruliness. At first, it operates as a clear signifier of Alison\u2019s obsessive need to order her life,\u201d but in this episode, \u201cthis craft room and Alison\u2019s props within it begin to signify her anger\u201d (p.91). More and more paranoid about the identity of her \u2018monitor,\u2019 the person assigned by the Dyad Institute to observe and report on each clone, she knocks her husband Donnie (Kristian Bruun) unconscious with one of his own golf clubs and ties him to a chair in the craft room using yarn, tape, and other craft supplies. Not taking her threats seriously at first, he says \u201cwhat\u2014you\u2019re going to stick sequins on me?\u201d but he soon finds out exactly how painful hot glue dripped on bare skin can be. \u201cAs Alison presses Donnie for information, she menacingly twirls a caddy of scissors around, rendering the tools of domesticity into instruments of terror. While the scissors imply violence, they also offer a moment of parodic commentary on Alison\u2019s \u2018perfect world,\u2019 forcing viewers to ask why would one person need more than a dozen pairs of craft scissors?\u201d\u00a0 (Bell, 2019, p.53). Here \u201cAlison uses the very props that signify her repression [to reveal] her unruliness. Whereas the props originally implied Alison\u2019s repression, they transform into literal enactments of her latent desires\u201d (Stutsman, 2016, p.92).<\/p>\n
Another of her craft projects is involved in a later act of violence. When Alison turns her attention to neighbor Aynsley (Natalie Lisinska) as a possible monitor, a fight leads to Aynsley stuffing a Christmas angel Alison made for her down her garbage disposal. As Aynsley\u2019s scarf becomes entangled with the doll, she strangles to death while Alison looks on (\u201cEndless Forms Most Beautiful\u201d [Manson & Fawcett, 2013c]).<\/p>\n
Thematically interwoven with this ambivalent imagery about craft is the truth about where Alison\u2019s real artistic talents and interests lie: in music, theatre, and musical theatre in particular. Very early, in 1.4 (\u201cEffects of External Conditions\u201d [Manson & Fawcett, 2013b]), Alison reveals her pride in her acting to Felix as he coaches her to impersonate Sarah, and in the early episodes of season 2 we watch her rehearse for, and take the lead role in, a musical entitled Blood Ties<\/em>. But her meltdown in 2.3 (\u201cMingling Its Own Nature With It\u201d [Levine & Scott, 2014]) results in a fall from the stage and a stay in rehab\u2014where she also does crafts, embellishing nametags for family day and knitting nine-fingered gloves for fellow inmate Vic.<\/p>\nIt is in season 3 that Alison and Donnie, now firmly partners in crime, come up with the idea to finance her run for a seat on the school board by becoming drug dealers, first hiding drugs in the fancy packages of home-made soap they hand out to potential supporters, and then buying out her mother\u2019s store, Bubbles, as a front for larger-scale operations. The soap store gives us a vital clue to Alison\u2019s character: her mother is revealed to be a passive-aggressive yet domineering personality for whom Alison has always been a disappointment, and the aesthetic of Bubbles\u2014Barbie-pink, bedazzled, uber-feminine, glittery and frilly, even the products for men fragranced with feminine mint\u2014is the aesthetic that has clearly dominated Alison\u2019s attempts at self-expression. Her confrontation with her mother, who subsequently retires to Florida, helps create a space for Alison to assert her own personality.<\/p>\n
In season 4, as the drug dealing sideline spirals out of control and events get more serious in the clone conspiracy, we begin to see more sincere and heartfelt expressions of Alison\u2019s own artistic self. For example, when Kendall Malone is killed, Alison sends a simple, straightforward floral arrangement and a handwritten note to Kendall\u2019s daughter Siobhan (Maria Doyle Kennedy)\u2014no hidden agenda, no glitter, just honest sympathy (\u201cThe Antisocialism of Sex\u201d [Troubetzkoy, Manson, & Frazee, 2016]). And when she is anxiously awaiting news about a death threat against Donnie during a rehearsal for Jesus Christ Superstar<\/em>, her relief at his reprieve triggers her to truly open up and belt out her part (Judas Iscariot) with heartfelt emotion (\u201cThe Redesign of Natural Objects\u201d [Mohan & Morton, 2016]).<\/p>\nThe climax of Alison\u2019s character arc begins in episode 5.3 (\u201cBeneath Her Heart\u201d [Levine & Wellington, 2017]). At the end of this Alison-focused episode, where a series of flashbacks are intercut with scenes of her attending an online wake after the violent death of yet another clone-sister, falling off the wagon, facing serious challenges to her pride and self-image, and finally confronting Dyad-aligned clone Rachel in person, she resolves that she has to \u201cgo away for a while.\u201d \u201cYou mean like a yoga retreat?\u201d Donnie asks, but her idea is something much more free-form and unplanned. Together they sing \u201cAin\u2019t No Mountain High Enough\u201d before she disappears for three episodes.<\/p>\n
Alison returns in \u201cGag or Throttle\u201d (St. Cyr & Frazee, 2017) with an entirely new look, no longer slavishly conforming to the Bailey Downs aesthetic or to her mother\u2019s expectations\u2014her hair is cut short and has purple streaks, her clothes are flowing and floral rather than buttoned-up preppy or athletic, she wears chunky jewelry and she has gotten a tattoo saying \u201cLive Deep.\u201d She\u2019s gone on a Jungian retreat in Mendocino, learned about individuation and her shadow-self, and is intent on pursuing a life that is as \u201ccreative and free\u201d as her new hairdo (DeCandido 140). For Alison, rejecting the uniformity and the surveillance culture of Bailey Downs is in essence also a rejection of the intended sameness of the clones; she claims her individuality in spirit, and the tattoo is a permanent marker of individuation of her body as well.[4]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nShe packs most of the contents of her craft room to donate to charity with Donnie\u2019s assistance (he winces as the glue gun goes into the bag), saying:<\/p>\n
\nALISON: I am DONE with crafts. [\u2026] The point of art is to lose control, Donnie. To reveal your inner chaos. I\u2019m uncovering my shadow self. […]. The things, subconscious desires that aren\u2019t necessarily good. [If kept in the dark] then they manifest in behavior. In my drinking, in my need to control everything. […] Drinking is the effect of the unexplored shadow self. (St. Cyr & Frazee, 2017)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
On the cleared-off craft room table, she places an electronic keyboard and plugs it in, nodding in satisfaction as she plays a phrase. In the final episode, we see this space transformed into a music room; there are music posters on the walls, Alison is composing on the keyboard, and notably there is also a drum set and a second music stand for a partner. Donnie enters the room and begins a strip-tease to the music and Alison responds by changing the tempo; music has become a means for them to share and create together.<\/p>\n
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Alison is frequently seen in her craft room, a highly organized and regimented space straight out of a Martha Stewart magazine. This is the expected craft room of the stereotypical suburban soccer mom, but in going through the episodes one by one, we discover that she is rarely shown actually crafting in this space.<\/span><\/p>\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Content Block” _builder_version=”3.27.3″ background_image=”https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/paper-square.png” custom_margin=”0px||0px||true|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” saved_tabs=”all” fb_built=”1″ _i=”4″ _address=”4″][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_5,3_5,1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.7″ _i=”0″ _address=”4.0″][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”0″ _address=”4.0.0″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.29.2″ header_2_font=”|700|||||||” _i=”0″ _address=”4.0.0.0″]<\/p>\n
Gallerie Rimbaud: \u201cIt\u2019s my process and you have no influence on it\u201d<\/h2>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”1″ _address=”4.0.1″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Felix Dawkins in the adopted brother” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” _i=”0″ _address=”4.0.1.0″]<\/p>\n
Felix Dawkins (Jordan Gavaris) is the adopted foster brother of our central viewpoint character for the series, clone Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany). He is an artist (and occasional rent-boy and petty criminal) who lives and works in a loft in a seedy section of downtown Toronto. Before the events of the television series, he is known to have had a gallery show titled Visions of Judgment<\/em> featuring collages, some of which can still be seen in his loft (DeCandido, 2017, p.36), and he claims to have dabbled in performance art (\u201cThe Collapse of Nature\u201d [Manson & Fawcett, 2016a]). His educational background in the arts is not revealed, but Fee exhibits mastery of multiple techniques, is serious about his work, and wants it to \u201c[make] people think\u201d (DeCandido, 2017, p.36).<\/p>\nHis studio at the beginning of the series is undisciplined, a bit of a rat\u2019s nest. Felix needs loud music (usually opera) and alcohol to create, and is frequently seen painting while wearing nothing more than an apron and boots. The art we see at this stage is wild, raw, and unpolished, large-scale, slashed with color, overtly sexual, and often disturbing.\u00a0 One piece we see in progress is a large painting of Sarah, surrounded by flames (that read in some lights as a halo), embellished with an erect penis and a banner reading \u201cIn Loving Memory\u201d and with its eyes heavily crossed out in black. He paints clones Cosima and Alison as he meets them as well; Cosima, the scientist and lesbian, is strongly sexualized and shown wearing a lab coat open over a black bra, while beakers foam and overflow in front of her; Alison\u2019s portrait features her surrounded by a mandorla<\/em> or full-body halo like the Virgin of Guadalupe, cradling a soccer ball and a wine bottle, with a minivan and a gun with wings floating in the background. This portrait work is almost masturbatory\u2014painting in the nude emphasizes this\u2014as he is essentially painting his reactions to the people he portrays, not revealing anything in particular about their inner qualities, and we don\u2019t see any of the three women sitting for this triptych.[5]<\/sup><\/a> They are all posed much the same: face-on to the viewer, shown from about the waist up and surrounded in some sort of symbolic frame: a visual echo of cloning that expresses Felix\u2019s inner disquiet with both the concept and the conspiracy he\u2019s being pulled into.<\/p>\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”2″ _address=”4.0.2″][et_pb_text disabled_on=”on|on|off” module_class=”noindent” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_enable_color=”off” custom_padding=”4px|4px|4px|4px|true|true” border_radii=”on|6px|6px|6px|6px” border_width_all=”2px” border_color_all=”#bf1a46″ _i=”0″ _address=”4.0.2.0″]<\/p>\n
Felix needs loud music (usually opera) and alcohol to create, and is frequently seen painting while wearing nothing more than an apron and boots. The art we see at this stage is wild, raw, and unpolished, large-scale, slashed with color, overtly sexual, and often disturbing.<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Content Block” _builder_version=”3.27.3″ background_image=”https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/paper-square.png” custom_margin=”0px||0px||true|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” saved_tabs=”all” fb_built=”1″ _i=”5″ _address=”5″][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_5,3_5,1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.7″ _i=”0″ _address=”5.0″][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”0″ _address=”5.0.0″][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”1″ _address=”5.0.1″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Felix is highly conscious” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” _i=”0″ _address=”5.0.1.0″]<\/p>\n
Felix is highly conscious of his own need to translate his emotions into art. When he learns of Dyad agent Daniel\u2019s death at the hands of clone Helena while a terrified Sarah, tied up in the shower, looks on, his reaction is, \u201cYou do realize I\u2019m going to have to paint this in order to come to terms with it?\u201d (\u201cIpsa Scientia Potestas Est<\/em>\u201d [Elliott & Shaver, 2014]).\u00a0 An evocative portrait of Helena in her torn wedding gown from this scene, surrounded by imagery of her own na\u00efve artistic expression (of which more below) on a blood-red background, is the eventual result. In the next episode we see him painting in a rage in reaction to an attempt to frame him for murder\u2014loud heavy metal music playing (not his usual opera), drinking straight from the bottle, flinging and hurling paint at a large canvas (\u201cTo Hound Nature in Her Wanderings\u201d [Roberts & Sullivan, 2014]).<\/p>\nSeason 3 shows Felix at work on several different projects, including a piece with two identical headless male torsos facing each other (a reference to the Castor group of male clones so central to this season, as well as his own homosexuality) and a self-portrait. Felix\u2019s ability to work in many media is referenced to comic effect when he tries to explain away a puddle of blood on the floor as \u201ca new project. Really fresh\u201d (\u201cFormalized, Complex, and Costly\u201d [Roberts & Fawcett, 2015]).<\/p>\n
In season 4, Felix takes a new direction in both his life and his art. The complicated family connections of the Leda and Castor clones and their genetic original have brought his own biologically orphaned state home to him, and he begins a search for his blood family, finally finding a surviving step-sister, Adele (Lauren Hammersley). He has also set his portrait painting aside and taken up stenciling\u2014again, frequently in the nude with opera music blaring at high volume. The stencils are a mix: pictorial stencils like a flying rocket-winged phallus, a postage stamp, and a self-portrait; phrases and sayings like \u201cNo gods no parents,\u201d \u201cI Miss RentBoy,\u201d and \u201cBe Fucking Gay.\u201d This work is far more directly autobiographical than anything we have seen before. Overlaying and behind it all, layer after layer of hard-edged, precise, carefully-aligned repetitive patterns evoke craft stenciling for home d\u00e9cor. We may on the one hand see here a strong craft influence from his sympathetic association with Alison, married to the punk\/urban aesthetic of graffiti that pervades the studio\u2019s neighborhood. But while the essential craft-iness of stenciling evokes Alison, it also references the cloning process: endless repetition without variation, a sort of sterile fecundity without end. Felix deals with his sense of displacement and unease both overtly, through his genealogical quest, and more indirectly through his art.<\/p>\n
As the season progresses, nearly every wall surface in the loft is covered with overlapping layers of stencils. The stenciled phrases, while somewhat ambiguous, communicate directly to the reader, and the inclusion of the self-portrait underlines the relationship of this artistic phase to his personal search for family and meaning and his coming to terms with cloning, what he calls \u201ca profound moment for me\u201d (\u201cThe Stigmata of Progress\u201d [Nelson & Girotti, 2016]). His friends pay attention to his artistic development; Alison observes \u201cWell, it\u2019s really coming along, this thing\u201d (\u201cTransgressive Border Crossing\u201d [Cochrane & Fawcett, 2016]), little Kira (Skyler Wexler) asks \u201cDid you paint all this?\u201d and particularly notices the rocket\/phallus (\u201cHuman Raw Material\u201d [Melville & Wellington, 2016]), and police detective Art Bell (Kevin Hanchard) comments \u201cI have to say, this is some of your finest work, Felix\u201d as he adds the finishing touch: a stencil of four of the clone-sisters, a recursive copying of copies (\u201cFrom Dancing Mice to Psychopaths\u201d [Manson & Fawcett, 2016b]).<\/p>\n
Felix\u2019s art in season 5 shows the success of this \u2018coming to terms,\u2019 as we see Felix interacting personally with sitting subjects as he works on their portraits and plans for a gallery opening. On a day when Sarah has to stay hidden at the loft, Fee decides to \u201cdo something constructive\u201d with the time and begin a painting of her. \u201cWhy do you insist on painting naked?\u201d she complains, and he replies airily \u201cIt\u2019s my process and you have no influence on it,\u201d a comment on their teasing brother-sister relationship as much as his artistic rituals. He begins this portrait by applying gobs of paint directly to the canvas with his bare hands (\u201cBeneath Her Heart\u201d [Levine & Wellington, 2017]). In the next episode, he keeps his clothes on while working on a pencil sketch of Sarah\u2019s daughter Kira; she comments on how much he\u2019s made her look like her mom, a conscious choice as Felix notes her growing maturity (\u201cLet the Children and Childbearers Toil\u201d [Nelson & Wellington, 2017]). Other sittings are not shown but implied.<\/p>\n
The art opening is wildly successful. The gallery is utterly transformed; we discover that the stenciling on the walls was just practice for the final autobiographical piece on the sliding door, and everything else has been painted over in flat white. The furniture has been removed and each portrait lit with a single lamp. When we see them in a slow pan shot around the gallery, it\u2019s clear that Felix has turned back outwards from his self-regarding phase and is now painting his muse in all her different forms, as he announces to the crowd (\u201cGuillotines Decide\u201d [Porter-Christie, Manson, & Morton, 2017]).<\/p>\n
Jordan Gavaris, the actor who portrays Felix, commented (2017) that the canvases provided by the art department were \u201call so perfect\u2014all so character oriented. Even the color palettes for each character.\u201d The paintings of the clone-sisters are in a variety of techniques: for example, the dual portrait of M.K., with and without her mask, harks back to his earlier collage work, while Beth\u2019s face is abstracted to a stencil. Krystal\u2019s portrait is comic-book influenced, and icy villain Rachel is represented by a fashion illustration-like line drawing on linoleum, displayed on the floor as a dance surface. Siobhan\u2019s portrait-with-gun is practically photo-realistic and Kira is surrounded by her signature origami butterfly\/angels in 3-D. In each, the technique used and the symbols incorporated help to communicate the character of the sitter to the viewer: not just what they mean to Felix, but what they are or were in the world, for good and for ill. They are not all feel-good portraits by any means, but capture and communicate an essence. Notably, the poses are also now all as different as the media and styles, unlike the season 1 triptych\u2014Felix is painting the women as individuals now, not as existentially disturbing copies of his sister.<\/p>\n
What makes the art show truly soar is the incorporation of performance art; in a series of clone swaps, Felix introduces Alison, Cosima, and Sarah, who speak and dance in representation of the goddesses with whom Felix identifies them: respectively, Hestia, goddess of the hearth, Metis, goddess of wisdom, and Athena, goddess of war. To the casual party attendee, these are all the same woman in different costumes; those in the know, know better, and see a deeper celebration of diversity. At the high point, Felix offers heartfelt gratitude to the \u201cgalaxy of women\u201d who have inspired him in his art and life. Cosima tells him \u201cYou\u2019ve done something wonderful\u201d and foster mother Siobhan says he was always \u201ca little fighting creative spirit\u201d (\u201cGuillotines Decide\u201d [Porter-Christie, Manson, & Morton, 2017]).<\/p>\n
Felix has found his proper path as an artist\u2014this show leads directly to a New York gallery exhibit which he characterizes as \u201cdrunkenly successful\u201d (\u201cTo Right the Wrongs of Many\u201d [St. Cyr, Manson, & Fawcett, 2017]). In the final scenes of the series, a lovingly slow pan of the home Sarah now shares with her daughter reveals a number of Felix\u2019s pieces, in particular the portrait of Siobhan over the mantel and the second portrait of Sarah over the piano.<\/p>\n
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But while the essential craft-iness of stenciling evokes Alison, it also references the cloning process: endless repetition without variation, a sort of sterile fecundity without end. Felix deals with his sense of displacement and unease both overtly, through his genealogical quest, and more indirectly through his art.<\/p>\n
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Helena: Ritual\/Art<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”1″ _address=”6.0.1″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Helena: Ritual and Art” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” _i=”0″ _address=”6.0.1.0″]<\/p>\n
Helena (Tatiana Maslany), Sarah\u2019s twin, was raised in a convent until located by members of the Prolethean religious cult, removed, and trained to assassinate the other clones. Her religious fervor, and her internal conflict over killing the other young women who share her face, manifest in ritualistic bouts of creative expression: drawings of stick figures, altered Barbie doll heads, body modification. She might be understood as an example of a na\u00efve, outsider artist, driven to express herself in a primitive, non-verbal, or child-like manner and not thinking of what she produces as art. While her artistic expression seems to be without conscious reflection or even volition, it does satisfy some urge within her and evolves in tandem with her character arc.<\/p>\n
We see this artistic expression of self in the face of trauma from an early age, in a flashback to her childhood in the convent in the final season (\u201cOne Fettered Slave\u201d [Levine & Frazee, 2017]). Locked in a closet for her voyeuristic infractions, she scratches stick figures and a church on the walls. Later, under the watchful eye of her Prolethean mentor Tomas, she role-plays with Barbie dolls in a house she has built and decorated for them. The initial episodes of the first season show what these early habits have evolved into: She leaves Barbie doll heads at the scenes of her crimes, with their hair cut and colored to match that of her victims and their eyes blacked out (\u201cVariation Under Nature\u201d [Manson & Frazee, 2013], \u201cIpsa Scientia Potestas Est<\/em>\u201d [Elliott & Shaver, 2014]). She scratches or blacks out the eyes in photographs, a chilling threat once we learn that she goes for the eyes in fighting. She draws stick figures on the walls of the places she lives and elsewhere, repeating a figure representing a female clone, identically drawn and posed, over and over (\u201cEffects of External Conditions\u201d [Manson & Fawcett, 2013b], \u201cIpsa Scientia Potestas Est<\/em>\u201d [Elliott & Shaver, 2014]); like Felix, she expresses an existential discomfort with cloning and these endless mirror-images of herself in her art practice.<\/p>\nAnd she cuts herself, generally after a kill or at times when she needs the comforting distraction of physical pain. Her cutting takes the form of body modification art, angel wings she has carved into her back, something she started doing after her very first assassination (\u201cGuillotines Decide\u201d [Porter-Christie, Manson, & Morton, 2017]). After her first kill, she was told her targets were \u201cdirty copies\u201d of herself, the pure original; the wings distinguish her body at a physical level from those of her victims (as Alison\u2019s tattoo distinguishers her body from the other clones) and reinforce her self-conception as an avenging and purifying angel.<\/p>\n
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Also notable are fancy boxes of soap concealing illegal drugs, and a flowchart of the nefarious business connections of the Dyad Institute, decorated with computer clip art against a pink ticking-stripe background. This room is a place where both dirty laundry and secrets are cleaned up and smoothed out and tidied away neatly in boxes and bins.<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Content Block” _builder_version=”3.27.3″ background_image=”https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/paper-square.png” custom_margin=”0px||0px||true|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” saved_tabs=”all” fb_built=”1″ _i=”7″ _address=”7″][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_5,3_5,1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.7″ _i=”0″ _address=”7.0″][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”0″ _address=”7.0.0″][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”1″ _address=”7.0.1″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Helena undergoes” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” _i=”0″ _address=”7.0.1.0″]<\/p>\n
Helena undergoes a long process of rehabilitation that eventually brings her over to the side of the other Leda clones aligned against Dyad and Neolution, a process beginning with her acknowledgement of Sarah as a human and a sister rather than a \u201cdirty copy\u201d and an abomination, a parallel to the way Felix\u2019s art evolves to celebrate the uniqueness rather than sameness of the clone sisters. \u00a0This is indicated in her artistic expression in 2.4 (\u201cGoverned as it Were by Chance\u201d [Cochrane & Frazee, 2014]) when, after being impregnated by and escaping the New Order Prolethian cult leader, she kills Rachel\u2019s agent Daniel and rescues Sarah. The stick figures she draws in Rachel\u2019s apartment with Daniel\u2019s blood are now individuated: she draws herself with her wild mane of hair and a distinct baby bump, and herself and Sarah as a family unit with Sarah\u2019s daughter Kira. Rushing (2018) observes that the story the figures tell now and from this point forward is \u201cabout becoming an individual, acquiring interiority, and bonding with others as family\u201d and that the figures no longer represent a code but \u201cconcrete and embodied individuals\u201d (160-161).<\/p>\n
In season 4, pregnant and in hiding with Alison\u2019s family, Helena is banished from Alison\u2019s craft room as mentioned earlier, but takes her project to the family room, where she is seen at work on a collage of baby pictures\u2014a scene of artistic chaos that will surely annoy Alison to no end. This period of using mainstream craft materials and techniques ends with her retreat to a camp in the woods There we see her feather-strewn altar which pairs an icon of the Virgin and Child with a photo of Sarah and Kira on either side of an Eastern Orthodox cross constructed from bones and hide thongs.<\/p>\n
The final stage of Helena\u2019s artistic development begins with her going into hiding in a convent\u2014no longer a place of terror and torment for the more mature Helena (Croft, 2019, p.107), here she has a period of safety to reflect on her life and her impending motherhood.\u00a0 She has made drawings of stick figures again, but this time on paper, not directly on the walls, and they are displayed on a wall of her room where others can see them. Another difference is that they are clearly in family groups, taller and shorter figures holding hands, all \u201cconcrete and embodied individuals\u201d (Rushing, 2018, 160-161); the urge for family has been a motivation all of Helena\u2019s life, and here we see specific rather than generic individuals as family.<\/p>\n
Most importantly, though, Helena has turned to journaling as a means of expression. In a leather-bound diary she writes out and illustrates her story for her babies, telling of \u201cmy joys, my pain and sorrows, so they will walk a brighter path\u201d (\u201cLet the Children and Childbearers Toil\u201d [Nelson & Wellington, 2017]). The drawings we see on the title page are a line of stick figures holding hands (clearly individuated as Sarah, Alison, Helena, and Cosima) and dark and light figures curled in a yin-yang-like circle, representing Sarah and Helena as twins in the womb and perhaps the twins she herself carries as well.<\/p>\n
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Helena undergoes a long process of rehabilitation that eventually brings her over to the side of the other Leda clones aligned against Dyad and Neolution, a process beginning with her acknowledgement of Sarah as a human and a sister rather than a \u201cdirty copy\u201d and an abomination, a parallel to the way Felix\u2019s art evolves to celebrate the uniqueness rather than sameness of the clone sisters.<\/p>\n
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The final episode of the series shows Helena, like Felix and Alison, transformed as an artist by using her art to communicate and to foster community. Above the bassinets of her twin babies dangle stick-figure angels, male and female, constructed of twigs and feathers, and the room they share in the Hendrix\u2019s garage is full of light and art. The almost-final scene shows Helena surrounded by her sisters and reading to them from her memoir, her \u201cembroidery with many beginnings and no end\u201d (\u201cTo Right the Wrongs of Many\u201d [St. Cyr, Manson, & Fawcett, 2017]). As Alyson Buckman (2019, p.142) points out about this scene, \u201cIn order to heal and to return the social order to normalcy, survivors must both remember and<\/em> speak the truth about their trauma. [\u2026] When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery.\u201d Helena\u2019s recovery has been, in part, a process of discovering the way in which she can best speak her truth and to whom she should speak it. For Helena, a combination of visual and literary art becomes \u201ca means through which [she] can define [her] values and produce a positive identity based on these rather than [\u2026] simply on rejection of the Other\u201d (Webb, 2014, p.106).<\/p>\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”2″ _address=”8.0.2″][et_pb_text disabled_on=”on|on|off” module_class=”noindent” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_enable_color=”off” custom_padding=”4px|4px|4px|4px|true|true” border_radii=”on|6px|6px|6px|6px” border_width_all=”2px” border_color_all=”#bf1a46″ _i=”0″ _address=”8.0.2.0″]<\/p>\n
For Helena, a combination of visual and literary art becomes \u201ca means through which [she] can define [her] values and produce a positive identity based on these rather than [\u2026] simply on rejection of the Other\u201d (Webb, 2014, p.106).<\/p>\n
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Conclusions, Comparisons, Connections<\/h2>\n
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What connects all of these threads is the underlying \u201cstronger together\u201d theme of the whole series, manifesting particularly in the evolutionarily sound corollaries that connection and cross-fertilization are essential for growth, and that progress\u2014and even mere survival\u2014requires connection and cooperation. The artistic practices of these three characters are used to demonstrate these themes in a physically and emotionally compelling manner.<\/p>\n
Alison\u2019s art is less sterile when it is done honestly\u2014to express herself, not to fit in or to hide her sins\u2014and even more so when created in community with her husband. In exploring a mode of expression that feels truer to her, she frees herself from the overwhelming influence of her passive-aggressive mother and the pressure to fit in to the judgmental suburb of Bailey Downs. Alison\u2019s outright rejection of \u201cbeing crafty\u201d has to be read with this nuance in mind, and in the context of her own individual development; it is not a blanket condemnation of craft.[6]<\/sup><\/a> But it is an acknowledgement that the sort of crafting expected of her as a suburban soccer mom was not serving the deeper needs she discovered in her Jungian retreat\u2014her needs to \u201close control,\u201d to confront her own inner chaos and shadow self, and to free herself as an individual from the conformity of the suburbs and the nightmare side of cloning. The roles she played in the musicals Blood Ties<\/em> and Jesus Christ Superstar<\/em> were far better pointers to the shadowy areas of her psyche that she needs to explore.<\/p>\nIt is in part the influence of Felix on Alison that gives her the impetus to go on her voyage of self-exploration. While Fee is a \u2018real artist,\u2019 he does not sneer at her; he sees value in her as a person, he supports her in her fight with addiction, helps her with her stage performances, and so on. And her craft arguably influences the stenciling phase of his art.\u00a0 He provides a model of how she can free herself to be an artist.<\/p>\n
While the craft room often serves simply as character-defining shorthand and is not actually shown getting much use, this is in very sharp contrast with the way we see Felix at work creating art in his studio living space, where the tools and supplies of his art permeate the entire loft rather than being confined carefully to one room. Contrary to \u201cromantic stereotypes about creative people and mental illness\u201d (Feaver, 2019, p.13) it is when Felix manages to understand and constructively deal with his pain and his sense of isolation, when he begins seeing his sitters for who they are rather than painting how they make him feel, that his art becomes more successful. He finds blood family and purpose, and matures and explores a mythic framework for the women in his life that helps him to see them as individuals rather than copies of his sister. Felix\u2019s art is more meaningful when it is not simply about his own identity, when it is more accessible symbolically and involves his \u201cgalaxy of women\u201d as co-performers and celebrators: when it is created in community with his sitters.[7]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n![\"Tatiana](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Orphan-Black-Tatiana-Maslany.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1\")
<\/a>Tatiana Maslany as Helena and Sarah Manning.<\/p><\/div>Helena\u2019s ritualistic artistic expression in the early seasons is a psychologically necessary way for her to express her pain, guilt, and inner conflict over her assassination missions in a personally meaningful form. However, it communicates nothing but confusion and disquiet to those who view it. An artist interviewed for the project Troubled: The Myth of the Mad Creative<\/em> revealed that her photography, deeply personal and full of ambiguity, was her way of exploring her depression; when her mental health was in better balance, she found it more fulfilling to communicate more directly and tap into \u201cuniversal experience\u201d through written collage and lyrical essays (Feaver, 2019, pp. 58-64).\u00a0 Helena\u2019s art, similarly, is spiritually healthier when it is produced to communicate directly and create bonds with and inspire her family\u2014to show her love and care for her babies, and to reflect their own strengths and bonds back to her sestras<\/em> by turning their adventures into a coherent story.[8]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nOrphan Black<\/em> uses expectations about craft versus art and about gender and craft to make a point about art and personal connection\u2014one that is kindred to points made by the \u201cstreet craft\u201d movement, with its emphasis on \u201caccessibility and communality,\u201d its \u201cextension of the private\u201d as \u201ca kind of gift to the community\u201d (Kuittinen, 2015, pp.12-13). Through art and craft, we \u201ccan confront and critique the notion of the Other and the tensions [\u2026] that obscure the commonality of the human\u201d (Webb, 2014, p.93)\u2014and yet at the same time celebrate the individual within that commonality. With Alison, we see that craft is sterile and a source of frustration when it is just a matter of meeting social and gender expectations and there is no heart or connection in it. In Felix\u2019s case, Orphan Black<\/em> implies that art lacks power when craft, discipline, and the power of art to communicate are neglected, and the art is only about the artist himself. Helena\u2019s arc shows that art does not support community when it is purely a personal ritual and an expression of a private symbol system. Finding one\u2019s true voice and means of expression are important, but even more important in Orphan Black<\/em> is the power of art to strengthen group bonds and create connections of sympathy, understanding, and growth between individuals.<\/p>\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”2″ _address=”9.0.2″][et_pb_text disabled_on=”on|on|off” module_class=”noindent” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_enable_color=”off” custom_padding=”4px|4px|4px|4px|true|true” border_radii=”on|6px|6px|6px|6px” border_width_all=”2px” border_color_all=”#bf1a46″ _i=”0″ _address=”9.0.2.0″]<\/p>\n
Here \u201cAlison uses the very props that signify her repression [to reveal] her unruliness. Whereas the props originally implied Alison\u2019s repression, they transform into literal enactments of her latent desires\u201d (Stutsman, 2016, p.92).<\/span><\/p>\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Content Block” _builder_version=”3.27.3″ background_image=”https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/paper-square.png” custom_margin=”0px||0px||true|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” saved_tabs=”all” fb_built=”1″ _i=”10″ _address=”10″][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_5,3_5,1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.7″ _i=”0″ _address=”10.0″][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”0″ _address=”10.0.0″][et_pb_text admin_label=”section head” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ header_font=”Almendra SC||||||||” header_2_font=”Eczar|700|||||||” header_2_text_align=”right” header_2_letter_spacing=”2px” _i=”0″ _address=”10.0.0.0″]<\/p>\n
References<\/h2>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”1″ _address=”10.0.1″][et_pb_text module_class=”reference” _builder_version=”3.29.2″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” _i=”0″ _address=”10.0.1.0″]<\/p>\n
\nAuther, E. (2010). String, Felt, Thread: the Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art. <\/em>Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.<\/p>\nBell, E. (2019, forthcoming). \u2018To Hound Nature in Her Wanderings\u2019: Understanding Cloned Mothers as Postfeminists and Posthumans on Orphan Black<\/em>. In J. B. Croft & A. Buckman (Eds.), Sisterhood, Science, and Surveillance in <\/em>Orphan Black: Critical Essays <\/em>(pp. 41-57). <\/em>Jefferson, NC: McFarland.<\/p>\nBuckman, A. (2019, forthcoming). \u2018My Story is an Embroidery\u2019: Representing Trauma Within the World of Orphan Black<\/em>. In J. B. Croft & A. Buckman (Eds.), Sisterhood, Science, and Surveillance in <\/em>Orphan Black: Critical Essays\u00a0<\/em>(pp.128-150). Jefferson, NC: McFarland.<\/p>\nCochrane, R. (Writer) & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2016, 21 April). Transgressive Border Crossing [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 4, episode 2).<\/p>\nCochrane, R. (Writer) & Frazee, D. (Director). (2014, 10 May). Governed as It Were by Chance. [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 2, episode 4).<\/p>\nCroft, J. B. (2019, forthcoming). Hell and Back: Helena as Kore and Shaman in Orphan Black<\/em>. In J. B. Croft & A. Buckman (Eds.), Sisterhood, Science, and Surveillance in <\/em>Orphan Black: Critical Essays <\/em>(pp. 95-112).<\/em> Jefferson, NC: McFarland.<\/p>\nCroft, J. B. (2020, forthcoming). \u2018Now You Don\u2019t Have to Use This Color Anymore\u2019: Art Therapy in Orphan Black<\/em> and Dollhouse<\/em>. In A. R. Buckman, J.C. Kitchens, & K.A. Troyer (Eds.), Trauma, Memory, and Disability in the Whedonverse.<\/em> Jefferson, NC: McFarland.<\/p>\nDeCandido, K. R. A. (2017). Orphan Black: Classified Clone Reports: Confidential<\/em>. New York, NY: Harper Design, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers.<\/p>\nElliott, T. (Writer), & Shaver, H. (Director). (2014, 17 May). Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est<\/em> [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 2, episode 5).<\/p>\nElliott. T. (Writer), & Sullivan, B. (Director). (2013, 11 May). Parts Developed in an Unusual Manner [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 1, episode 7).<\/p>\nFeaver, J. (2019). Troubled: The Myth of the Mad Creative<\/em>. University of the Arts Senior Studio project. Philadelphia PA.<\/p>\nFisk, A. (2012). \u2018To Make, and Make Again\u2019: Feminism, Craft and Spirituality. Feminist Theology, 20<\/em>(2), 160-174. doi:10.1177\/0966735011425302<\/p>\nGavaris, J. (Interviewee) (2017). Closer Look: Party at Gallerie Rimbaud [Blu-Ray bonus feature]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 5 Blu-Ray bonus feature).<\/p>\nKuittinen, R. (2015). Street Craft: Guerrilla Gardening,Yarnbombing, Light Graffiti, Street Sculpture, and More<\/em>. London: Thames & Hudson.<\/p>\nLevine, A. (Writer), & Frazee, D. (Director). (2017, 5 August). One Fettered Slave [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 5, episode 9).<\/p>\nLevine, A. (Writer), & Scott, T.J. (Director). (2014, 3 May). Mingling Its Own Nature With It [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 2, episode 3).<\/p>\nLevine, A. (Writer), & Stebbings, P. (Director). (2016, 5 May). From Instinct to Rational Control [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 4, episode 4).<\/p>\nLevine, A. (Writer), & Wellington, D. (Director). (2017, 24 June). Beneath Her Heart [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 5, episode 3).<\/p>\nManson, G. (Writer) & Frazee, D. (Director). (2013, 13 April). Variation Under Nature [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 1, episode 3).<\/p>\nManson, G. (Writer), & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2013a, 6 April). Instinct [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 1, episode 2).<\/p>\nManson, G. (Writer), & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2013b, 20 April). Effects of External Conditions [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 1, episode 4).<\/p>\nManson, G. (Writer), & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2013c, 1 June). Endless Forms Most Beautiful [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 1, episode 10).<\/p>\nManson, G. (Writer), & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2014a, 19 April). Nature Under Constraint and Vexed [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 2, episode 1).<\/p>\nManson, G. (Writer), & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2014b, 21 June). By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 2, episode 10).<\/p>\nManson, G. (Writer), & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2016a, 14 April). The Collapse of Nature [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 4, episode 1).<\/p>\nManson, G. (Writer), & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2016b, 16 June). From Dancing Mice to Psychopaths [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 4, episode 10).<\/p>\nMelville, K. (Writer), & Wellington, D. (Director). (2016, 12 May). Human Raw Material [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 4, episode 5).<\/p>\nMohan, P. (Writer), & Morton, A. (Director). (2016, 2 June). The Redesign of Natural Objects [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 4, episode 8).<\/p>\nNealon, A. (Writer), & Girotti, K. (Director). (2016, 28 April). The Stigmata of Progress [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 4, episode 3).<\/p>\nNelson, G. (Writer), & Wellington, D. (Director). (2017, 1 July). Let the Children and Childbearers Toil [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 5, episode 4).<\/p>\nPascoe, W. (Writer) & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2013, 4 May). Variations Under Domestication [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 1, episode 6).<\/p>\nPorter-Christie, A. (Writer), Manson, G. (Writer) & Morton, A. (Director). (2017, 5 August). Guillotines Decide [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 5, episode 8).<\/p>\nRoberts, C. (Writer), & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2015, 2 May). Formalized, Complex, and Costly [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 3, episode 3).<\/p>\nRoberts, C. (Writer), & Harvey, G. (Director). (2016, 19 May). The Scandal of Altruism [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 4, episode 6).<\/p>\nRoberts, C. (Writer), & Sullivan, B. (Director). (2014, 24 May). To Hound Nature in Her Wanderings [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 2, episode 6).<\/p>\nRushing, R. A. (2018). The Dancing Women: Decoding Biopolitical Fantasy. In A. Goulet & R. A. Rushing (Eds.), Orphan Black: Performance, Gender, Biopolitics<\/em> (pp. 145-165). Bristol: Intellect.<\/p>\nSt. Cyr, R. (Writer), & Frazee, C. (Director). (2017, 22 July). Gag or Throttle [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 5, episode 7).<\/p>\nSt. Cyr, R. (Writer), Manson, G. (Writer), & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2017, 12 August). To Right the Wrongs of Many [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 5, episode 10).<\/p>\nStutsman, S. (2016). The Unruly Clones: Tatiana Maslany\u2019s Melodramatic Masquerades in Orphan Black. Journal of Film and Video, 68<\/em>(3-4), 83-103.<\/p>\nTarmy, J. (2015, 15 Nov). Getting Your Portrait Painted is Trendy Again, and It\u2019ll Only Cost You $15,000. Bloomberg News<\/em>.<\/p>\nTroubetzkoy, N. (Writer), Manson, G. (Writer), & Frazee, D. (Director). (2016, 26 May). The Antisocialism of Sex [Television series episode].\u00a0 In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 4, episode 7.)<\/p>\nWalton, K. (Writer) & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2014, 7 June). Variable and Full of Perturbation [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 2, episode 8).<\/p>\nWalton, K. (Writer), Manson, G. (Writer) & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2014, 26 April). Governed by Sound Reason and True Religion [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 2, episode 2).<\/p>\nWebb, C. (2014). The Watchman and the Hippopotamus: Art, Play, and Otherness in Thud<\/em>! In A. H. Alton & W. C. Spruiell (Eds.), Discworld and the Disciplines: Critical Approaches to the Terry Pratchett Works<\/em> (pp. 92-107). Jefferson, NC: McFarland.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”2″ _address=”10.0.2″][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Content Block” _builder_version=”3.27.3″ background_image=”https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/paper-square.png” custom_margin=”0px||0px||true|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” saved_tabs=”all” fb_built=”1″ _i=”11″ _address=”11″][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_5,3_5,1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.7″ _i=”0″ _address=”11.0″][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”0″ _address=”11.0.0″][et_pb_text admin_label=”section head” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ header_font=”Almendra SC||||||||” header_2_font=”Eczar|700|||||||” header_2_text_align=”right” header_2_letter_spacing=”2px” _i=”0″ _address=”11.0.0.0″]<\/p>\n
Endnotes<\/h2>\n
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[1]<\/a>\u00a0The show is also noteworthy for \u201cquoting\u201d familiar art from time to time in its scene composition. The back-room operation by the Proletheans to remove the \u201cbot\u201d from Aaron\u2019s cheek is lit as exquisitely as a Dutch master in \u201cThe Collapse of Nature\u201d (Manson & Fawcett, 2016a); Ira\u2019s attempted suicide recreates Jacques-Louis David\u2019s Death of Marat<\/em> in \u201cThe Scandal of Altruism\u201d (Roberts & Harvey, 2016); and Sarah\u2019s emergency blood transfusion to Helena references Frida Kahlo\u2019s The Two Fridas<\/em> in the final episode (\u201cTo Right the Wrongs of Many\u201d [St. Cyr, Manson & Fawcett, 2017]), a painting which is explicitly sampled in publicity materials for the fifth season.<\/p>\n[2]<\/a> Elissa Auther\u2019s String, Felt, Thread <\/em>(2010) is an excellent source on the devaluation of certain areas of craft, particularly fiber crafts, on the basis of gender association. But as Auther points out, \u201cPainters forget they paint on fabric\u201d (p.23). I feel there is also an interesting parallel to be drawn with the exoticizing of ethnographic specimens of utilitarian craft objects as art, separate from their social use (p.38), and attempts to distance contemporary fiber work from its gendered history so that it can be contemplated in isolation as high art. A certain balance is needed in perspectives on this issue. Anna Fisk\u2019s (2012) article delves into everyday craft as a form of spiritual expression, asserting that \u201cacademic theology fails to appreciate the value of small, \u2018feminine\u2019 acts of making\u201d (p.162).<\/p>\n[3]<\/a> As far as nature vs. nurture is related to artistic talent, our central viewpoint clone and Felix\u2019s foster sister Sarah has absolutely none\u2014she was not able to pick up the piano when young, as noted in \u201cParts Developed in an Unusual Manner\u201d (Elliott & Sullivan, 2013), wishes she had Aunty Alison available to help with Kira\u2019s mobile in \u201cVariable and Full of Perturbation\u201d (Walton & Fawcett, 2014), and tells Kira \u201cI don\u2019t even know how to look at art. Don\u2019t tell Felix\u201d in \u201cBy Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried\u201d (Manson & Fawcett, 2014b). She can at least carry a tune a bit better than Helena. M.K. doodles and Cosima is very expressive in her appearance, tattoos, and d\u00e9cor, but aside from Alison, another clone who died young, and Rachel\u2019s forays into art therapy, the clones show no particular aptitude for art.<\/p>\n[4]<\/a> Alison is not the only clone with a tattoo; Cosima has several visible from the first time we see her, as does transgender clone Tony. But Cosima has never had the same sort of problem Alison has with seeing herself as an individual, coming down strongly on the side of nurture in the nature-nurture debate, and Tony makes a point of his hard-won comfort with his identity in \u201cVariable and Full of Perturbation\u201d (Walton & Fawcett, 2014).<\/p>\n[5]<\/a> We do at one point see one of Felix\u2019s sexual partners sitting for a portrait, but it is simply a straightforward painting of the person as he is posed, and it is implied to be a commission (\u201cGoverned by Sound Reason and True Religion\u201d [Walton & Manson, 2014]).<\/p>\n[6]<\/a> However, it is troubling that none of the other adult women is shown participating in any traditional female crafts, aside from Siobhan arranging flowers.<\/p>\n
KEYWORDS: Orphan Black<\/em>, art, craft, gender in art and craft, cloning, stencilling, art as communication<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”2″ _address=”1.0.2″][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Content Block” _builder_version=”3.27.3″ background_image=”https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/paper-square.png” custom_margin=”0px||0px||true|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” saved_tabs=”all” fb_built=”1″ _i=”2″ _address=”2″][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_5,3_5,1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.7″ _i=”0″ _address=”2.0″][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”0″ _address=”2.0.0″][et_pb_text admin_label=”section head” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ header_font=”Almendra SC||||||||” header_2_font=”Eczar|700|||||||” header_2_text_align=”right” header_2_letter_spacing=”2px” _i=”0″ _address=”2.0.0.0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”1″ _address=”2.0.1″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Introduction ” _builder_version=”3.29.2″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” _i=”0″ _address=”2.0.1.0″]The BBC America television series Orphan Black<\/em> (2013-2017), set primarily in contemporary Toronto, tells the story of a group of young women who discover that they are clones. They learn that they are experimental subjects bred by the Dyad Institute for the wealthy and shadowy Neolution organization as part of its project to secure immortality for the powerful elite of the world, while eventually sterilizing and eliminating everyone else. Over the course of five seasons, the women form alliances with each other — and with their families, loved ones, and colleagues — to expose and defeat Neolution, cure the fatal self-limiting diseases built into their own genetic structures, and free themselves to live their lives as they wish. Themes of self-determination, motherhood and sisterhood, trust, the influence of nature and nurture, and strength in community are central to the show. In a tour de force<\/em> of acting skill and technical camera work, all of the female clones are played by Tatiana Maslany.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tatiana Maslany as Sarah Manning, Alison Hendrix, Cosima Niehaus, Rachel Duncan, and Helena.<\/p><\/div>\n Representations of art and craft are essential to several major character arcs and subplots of the series.\u00a0 These representations demonstrate the development and evolution of multiple characters and their relationships with the world, underline the show\u2019s concern with the competing effects of nature and nurture on the skills and life-paths the clones pursue, and emphasize the strengths they gain from communication with and connection to each other.\u00a0[1]<\/sup><\/a> At a meta-level, depicting a character engaged in art practice is an excellent way to show — rather than tell — important information, including the characters\u2019 coming to greater mutual understanding of each other\u2019s emotions, history, and psychological concerns. Art practices of the characters in Orphan Black<\/em> may variously demonstrate: an overwhelming need to fit into a societally determined role, existential discomfort with the very concept of cloning, the search for biological family, personal guilt and spiritual growth, developmental phases of childhood, recovery from trauma, overt and covert communication, family and community healing, or the achievement of mental balance and joy in life. This essay will explore several of these functions of art for three of the main characters.<\/p>\n One potentially problematic aspect of some ways the show represents art practice is its gender alignment of art<\/em> with higher value and a male practitioner, and craft<\/em> with lower value and a female practitioner.\u00a0 Certain areas of craft, particularly fiber crafts, have long been devalued on the basis of gender association; Auther (2010), for example, discusses \u201cprejudices against fiber\u201d due to \u201chistorical associations to the \u2018decorative,\u2019 \u2018craft,\u2019 or \u2018women\u2019s work\u2019\u201d (p.xii). Fiber art has long been dismissed because of its utilitarian or decorative nature; it does not partake of \u201cthe heroic struggle between the artist and the blank canvas\u201d (Greenberg qtd. in Auther, 2010, p.xvi) and is not designed solely for \u201cdisinterested, hands-off contemplation\u201d but also appeals to touch and handling (Mays qtd. in Auther, 2010, p.xviii). An uncritical use of this stereotypical distinction could easily be read as undermining the centrally important struggle of the young women against the gender structures of society and of Dyad\u2019s female cloning project.<\/p>\n However, there is a certain intersectionality at play here in the fact that the male artist is gay, and respect is shown to the female crafter as she discovers a medium better suited to her talents and starts to mature as an artist. Additionally, her craft activities are never shown as something she feels driven to do so that she can express her inner self or experience artistic satisfaction; they serve more to align her with social expectations within her community and class, and give her a means to measure and position herself vis \u00e0 vis<\/em> her mother and other women in her social circle. Her craft work is definitively not what Fisk (2012) describes as a practice of spiritual expression and discourse, a way of relating to the world, being at home in the world, and creating meaning in the everyday. So when she ultimately rejects \u201ccraftiness\u201d in the search for truly meaningful personal expression, it is not as much of a value judgment against female-identified \u201ccraft\u201d as it might seem. What we are seeing rejected is not craft that borders on or challenges definitions of art (Auther, 2010), or craft seriously pursued, but \u201cbeing crafty\u201d as a means for a stay-at-home mom to occupy her time and signal her virtue, and her accompanying feeling of a life lived uselessly and pointlessly.[2]<\/sup><\/a>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”2″ _address=”2.0.2″][et_pb_text disabled_on=”on|on|off” module_class=”noindent” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_enable_color=”off” custom_padding=”4px|4px|4px|4px|true|true” border_radii=”on|6px|6px|6px|6px” border_width_all=”2px” border_color_all=”#bf1a46″ _i=”0″ _address=”2.0.2.0″]<\/p>\n One potentially problematic aspect of some ways the show represents art practice is its gender alignment of <\/span>art<\/span><\/i> with higher value and a male practitioner, and <\/span>craft<\/span><\/i> with lower value and a female practitioner.<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Content Block” _builder_version=”3.27.3″ background_image=”https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/paper-square.png” custom_margin=”0px||0px||true|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” saved_tabs=”all” fb_built=”1″ _i=”3″ _address=”3″][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_5,3_5,1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.7″ _i=”0″ _address=”3.0″][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”0″ _address=”3.0.0″][et_pb_text admin_label=”section head” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ text_font=”Eczar||||||||” header_font=”Eczar||||||||” header_2_font=”Eczar|700|||||||” header_2_text_align=”right” header_2_letter_spacing=”2px” _i=”0″ _address=”3.0.0.0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”1″ _address=”3.0.1″][et_pb_text admin_label=”What Happens in Alison’s Room” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” _i=”0″ _address=”3.0.1.0″]<\/p>\n Alison Hendrix (Tatiana Maslany), the crafter referred to above, is one of the first clone-sisters we meet and remains central to the story until the very end. Alison appears to be a typical suburban housewife; she lives in a large and well-appointed house in a densely-packed suburban housing development near Toronto with her husband and their two adopted children. Bailey Downs is the town where she grew up and where her mother still lives and runs a bath and beauty product store. Alison is deeply involved in her community: active in coaching children\u2019s sports, community theatre, local politics, and her church.<\/p>\n Alison is frequently seen in her craft room, a highly organized and regimented space straight out of a Martha Stewart magazine. This is the expected craft room of the stereotypical suburban soccer mom, but in going through the episodes one by one, we discover that she is rarely shown actually crafting in this space. \u00a0 More frequently, she folds laundry there, has clandestine meetings with the \u201cclone club\u201d by webcam or in person, or manages and organizes her family\u2019s lives. The constrained Instagram-perfect tidiness of Alison\u2019s craft room is a thin veneer over her desperation and moral failings; it is the scene of tense confrontations, self-medication, and secrecy, the room where she hides her pills, booze, and guns. Others are discouraged from using this room or her supplies; we never see her children crafting with her (though their art is displayed on a bulletin board), and at one point fellow clone Helena makes it clear that she has been forbidden to work in this room because of the chaos she creates in Alison\u2019s \u201csystem\u201d (\u201cTransgressive Border Crossing\u201d [Cochrane & Fawcett, 2016], \u201cFrom Instinct to Rational Control\u201d [Levine & Stebbings, 2016]). This is in contrast with another central clone character, Sarah Manning, who, though not artistically talented herself, is shown spending unstructured time coloring, painting, and doing various paper crafts with her daughter Kira. [3]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Examples of some of the craft products we do see come out of this room are two floral arrangements, one hiding a gun (in \u201cNature Under Constraint and Vexed\u201d [Manson & Fawcett, 2014a]) and the other pills and a false urine sample (\u201cThe Collapse of Nature\u201d [Manson and Fawcett, 2016a]), both complete with hand-made glitter-embellished cards (\u201cThese are SO Alison,\u201d as another character says of one of these arrangements [Manson & Fawcett, 2014a]). Also notable are fancy boxes of soap concealing illegal drugs, and a flowchart of the nefarious business connections of the Dyad Institute, decorated with computer clip art against a pink ticking-stripe background. This room is a place where both dirty laundry and secrets are cleaned up and smoothed out and tidied away neatly in boxes and bins.<\/p>\n Our first look at the craft room is in the second episode of the first season, and tellingly, Alison is not crafting; she is clipping coupons and filing them in a loose-leaf binder (\u201cInstinct\u201d [Manson & Fawcett, 2013a]). In a scene set a short time later, where she and fellow clones Cosima and Sarah meet in person, she retreats from the family room into her craft room when upset (\u201cVariation Under Nature\u201d [Manson & Frazee, 2013]). In \u201cEffects of External Conditions\u201d (Manson & Fawcett, 2013b), while standing by in case Sarah needs backup, we see her set yarn, a gun, car keys, and a \u201cclone phone\u201d on the table (\u201cclone phones\u201d are untraceable burner phones the \u201cClone Club\u201d uses for communication); a completed pair of mittens indicates the passage of time in a later scene.<\/p>\n One of the most important scenes set in this room occurs in episode 1.6 (\u201cVariations Under Domestication\u201d [Pascoe & Fawcett, 2013]). As Staci Stutsman (2016) observes, Alison\u2019s \u201ccraft room serves as one of the more interesting indicators of her repressed unruliness. At first, it operates as a clear signifier of Alison\u2019s obsessive need to order her life,\u201d but in this episode, \u201cthis craft room and Alison\u2019s props within it begin to signify her anger\u201d (p.91). More and more paranoid about the identity of her \u2018monitor,\u2019 the person assigned by the Dyad Institute to observe and report on each clone, she knocks her husband Donnie (Kristian Bruun) unconscious with one of his own golf clubs and ties him to a chair in the craft room using yarn, tape, and other craft supplies. Not taking her threats seriously at first, he says \u201cwhat\u2014you\u2019re going to stick sequins on me?\u201d but he soon finds out exactly how painful hot glue dripped on bare skin can be. \u201cAs Alison presses Donnie for information, she menacingly twirls a caddy of scissors around, rendering the tools of domesticity into instruments of terror. While the scissors imply violence, they also offer a moment of parodic commentary on Alison\u2019s \u2018perfect world,\u2019 forcing viewers to ask why would one person need more than a dozen pairs of craft scissors?\u201d\u00a0 (Bell, 2019, p.53). Here \u201cAlison uses the very props that signify her repression [to reveal] her unruliness. Whereas the props originally implied Alison\u2019s repression, they transform into literal enactments of her latent desires\u201d (Stutsman, 2016, p.92).<\/p>\n Another of her craft projects is involved in a later act of violence. When Alison turns her attention to neighbor Aynsley (Natalie Lisinska) as a possible monitor, a fight leads to Aynsley stuffing a Christmas angel Alison made for her down her garbage disposal. As Aynsley\u2019s scarf becomes entangled with the doll, she strangles to death while Alison looks on (\u201cEndless Forms Most Beautiful\u201d [Manson & Fawcett, 2013c]).<\/p>\n Thematically interwoven with this ambivalent imagery about craft is the truth about where Alison\u2019s real artistic talents and interests lie: in music, theatre, and musical theatre in particular. Very early, in 1.4 (\u201cEffects of External Conditions\u201d [Manson & Fawcett, 2013b]), Alison reveals her pride in her acting to Felix as he coaches her to impersonate Sarah, and in the early episodes of season 2 we watch her rehearse for, and take the lead role in, a musical entitled Blood Ties<\/em>. But her meltdown in 2.3 (\u201cMingling Its Own Nature With It\u201d [Levine & Scott, 2014]) results in a fall from the stage and a stay in rehab\u2014where she also does crafts, embellishing nametags for family day and knitting nine-fingered gloves for fellow inmate Vic.<\/p>\n It is in season 3 that Alison and Donnie, now firmly partners in crime, come up with the idea to finance her run for a seat on the school board by becoming drug dealers, first hiding drugs in the fancy packages of home-made soap they hand out to potential supporters, and then buying out her mother\u2019s store, Bubbles, as a front for larger-scale operations. The soap store gives us a vital clue to Alison\u2019s character: her mother is revealed to be a passive-aggressive yet domineering personality for whom Alison has always been a disappointment, and the aesthetic of Bubbles\u2014Barbie-pink, bedazzled, uber-feminine, glittery and frilly, even the products for men fragranced with feminine mint\u2014is the aesthetic that has clearly dominated Alison\u2019s attempts at self-expression. Her confrontation with her mother, who subsequently retires to Florida, helps create a space for Alison to assert her own personality.<\/p>\n In season 4, as the drug dealing sideline spirals out of control and events get more serious in the clone conspiracy, we begin to see more sincere and heartfelt expressions of Alison\u2019s own artistic self. For example, when Kendall Malone is killed, Alison sends a simple, straightforward floral arrangement and a handwritten note to Kendall\u2019s daughter Siobhan (Maria Doyle Kennedy)\u2014no hidden agenda, no glitter, just honest sympathy (\u201cThe Antisocialism of Sex\u201d [Troubetzkoy, Manson, & Frazee, 2016]). And when she is anxiously awaiting news about a death threat against Donnie during a rehearsal for Jesus Christ Superstar<\/em>, her relief at his reprieve triggers her to truly open up and belt out her part (Judas Iscariot) with heartfelt emotion (\u201cThe Redesign of Natural Objects\u201d [Mohan & Morton, 2016]).<\/p>\n The climax of Alison\u2019s character arc begins in episode 5.3 (\u201cBeneath Her Heart\u201d [Levine & Wellington, 2017]). At the end of this Alison-focused episode, where a series of flashbacks are intercut with scenes of her attending an online wake after the violent death of yet another clone-sister, falling off the wagon, facing serious challenges to her pride and self-image, and finally confronting Dyad-aligned clone Rachel in person, she resolves that she has to \u201cgo away for a while.\u201d \u201cYou mean like a yoga retreat?\u201d Donnie asks, but her idea is something much more free-form and unplanned. Together they sing \u201cAin\u2019t No Mountain High Enough\u201d before she disappears for three episodes.<\/p>\n Alison returns in \u201cGag or Throttle\u201d (St. Cyr & Frazee, 2017) with an entirely new look, no longer slavishly conforming to the Bailey Downs aesthetic or to her mother\u2019s expectations\u2014her hair is cut short and has purple streaks, her clothes are flowing and floral rather than buttoned-up preppy or athletic, she wears chunky jewelry and she has gotten a tattoo saying \u201cLive Deep.\u201d She\u2019s gone on a Jungian retreat in Mendocino, learned about individuation and her shadow-self, and is intent on pursuing a life that is as \u201ccreative and free\u201d as her new hairdo (DeCandido 140). For Alison, rejecting the uniformity and the surveillance culture of Bailey Downs is in essence also a rejection of the intended sameness of the clones; she claims her individuality in spirit, and the tattoo is a permanent marker of individuation of her body as well.[4]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n She packs most of the contents of her craft room to donate to charity with Donnie\u2019s assistance (he winces as the glue gun goes into the bag), saying:<\/p>\n ALISON: I am DONE with crafts. [\u2026] The point of art is to lose control, Donnie. To reveal your inner chaos. I\u2019m uncovering my shadow self. […]. The things, subconscious desires that aren\u2019t necessarily good. [If kept in the dark] then they manifest in behavior. In my drinking, in my need to control everything. […] Drinking is the effect of the unexplored shadow self. (St. Cyr & Frazee, 2017)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n On the cleared-off craft room table, she places an electronic keyboard and plugs it in, nodding in satisfaction as she plays a phrase. In the final episode, we see this space transformed into a music room; there are music posters on the walls, Alison is composing on the keyboard, and notably there is also a drum set and a second music stand for a partner. Donnie enters the room and begins a strip-tease to the music and Alison responds by changing the tempo; music has become a means for them to share and create together.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”2″ _address=”3.0.2″][et_pb_text disabled_on=”on|on|off” module_class=”noindent” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_enable_color=”off” custom_padding=”4px|4px|4px|4px|true|true” border_radii=”on|6px|6px|6px|6px” border_width_all=”2px” border_color_all=”#bf1a46″ _i=”0″ _address=”3.0.2.0″]<\/p>\n Alison is frequently seen in her craft room, a highly organized and regimented space straight out of a Martha Stewart magazine. This is the expected craft room of the stereotypical suburban soccer mom, but in going through the episodes one by one, we discover that she is rarely shown actually crafting in this space.<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Content Block” _builder_version=”3.27.3″ background_image=”https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/paper-square.png” custom_margin=”0px||0px||true|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” saved_tabs=”all” fb_built=”1″ _i=”4″ _address=”4″][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_5,3_5,1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.7″ _i=”0″ _address=”4.0″][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”0″ _address=”4.0.0″][et_pb_text _builder_version=”3.29.2″ header_2_font=”|700|||||||” _i=”0″ _address=”4.0.0.0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”1″ _address=”4.0.1″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Felix Dawkins in the adopted brother” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” _i=”0″ _address=”4.0.1.0″]<\/p>\n Felix Dawkins (Jordan Gavaris) is the adopted foster brother of our central viewpoint character for the series, clone Sarah Manning (Tatiana Maslany). He is an artist (and occasional rent-boy and petty criminal) who lives and works in a loft in a seedy section of downtown Toronto. Before the events of the television series, he is known to have had a gallery show titled Visions of Judgment<\/em> featuring collages, some of which can still be seen in his loft (DeCandido, 2017, p.36), and he claims to have dabbled in performance art (\u201cThe Collapse of Nature\u201d [Manson & Fawcett, 2016a]). His educational background in the arts is not revealed, but Fee exhibits mastery of multiple techniques, is serious about his work, and wants it to \u201c[make] people think\u201d (DeCandido, 2017, p.36).<\/p>\n His studio at the beginning of the series is undisciplined, a bit of a rat\u2019s nest. Felix needs loud music (usually opera) and alcohol to create, and is frequently seen painting while wearing nothing more than an apron and boots. The art we see at this stage is wild, raw, and unpolished, large-scale, slashed with color, overtly sexual, and often disturbing.\u00a0 One piece we see in progress is a large painting of Sarah, surrounded by flames (that read in some lights as a halo), embellished with an erect penis and a banner reading \u201cIn Loving Memory\u201d and with its eyes heavily crossed out in black. He paints clones Cosima and Alison as he meets them as well; Cosima, the scientist and lesbian, is strongly sexualized and shown wearing a lab coat open over a black bra, while beakers foam and overflow in front of her; Alison\u2019s portrait features her surrounded by a mandorla<\/em> or full-body halo like the Virgin of Guadalupe, cradling a soccer ball and a wine bottle, with a minivan and a gun with wings floating in the background. This portrait work is almost masturbatory\u2014painting in the nude emphasizes this\u2014as he is essentially painting his reactions to the people he portrays, not revealing anything in particular about their inner qualities, and we don\u2019t see any of the three women sitting for this triptych.[5]<\/sup><\/a> They are all posed much the same: face-on to the viewer, shown from about the waist up and surrounded in some sort of symbolic frame: a visual echo of cloning that expresses Felix\u2019s inner disquiet with both the concept and the conspiracy he\u2019s being pulled into.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”2″ _address=”4.0.2″][et_pb_text disabled_on=”on|on|off” module_class=”noindent” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_enable_color=”off” custom_padding=”4px|4px|4px|4px|true|true” border_radii=”on|6px|6px|6px|6px” border_width_all=”2px” border_color_all=”#bf1a46″ _i=”0″ _address=”4.0.2.0″]<\/p>\n Felix needs loud music (usually opera) and alcohol to create, and is frequently seen painting while wearing nothing more than an apron and boots. The art we see at this stage is wild, raw, and unpolished, large-scale, slashed with color, overtly sexual, and often disturbing.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Content Block” _builder_version=”3.27.3″ background_image=”https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/paper-square.png” custom_margin=”0px||0px||true|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” saved_tabs=”all” fb_built=”1″ _i=”5″ _address=”5″][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_5,3_5,1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.7″ _i=”0″ _address=”5.0″][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”0″ _address=”5.0.0″][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”1″ _address=”5.0.1″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Felix is highly conscious” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” _i=”0″ _address=”5.0.1.0″]<\/p>\n Felix is highly conscious of his own need to translate his emotions into art. When he learns of Dyad agent Daniel\u2019s death at the hands of clone Helena while a terrified Sarah, tied up in the shower, looks on, his reaction is, \u201cYou do realize I\u2019m going to have to paint this in order to come to terms with it?\u201d (\u201cIpsa Scientia Potestas Est<\/em>\u201d [Elliott & Shaver, 2014]).\u00a0 An evocative portrait of Helena in her torn wedding gown from this scene, surrounded by imagery of her own na\u00efve artistic expression (of which more below) on a blood-red background, is the eventual result. In the next episode we see him painting in a rage in reaction to an attempt to frame him for murder\u2014loud heavy metal music playing (not his usual opera), drinking straight from the bottle, flinging and hurling paint at a large canvas (\u201cTo Hound Nature in Her Wanderings\u201d [Roberts & Sullivan, 2014]).<\/p>\n Season 3 shows Felix at work on several different projects, including a piece with two identical headless male torsos facing each other (a reference to the Castor group of male clones so central to this season, as well as his own homosexuality) and a self-portrait. Felix\u2019s ability to work in many media is referenced to comic effect when he tries to explain away a puddle of blood on the floor as \u201ca new project. Really fresh\u201d (\u201cFormalized, Complex, and Costly\u201d [Roberts & Fawcett, 2015]).<\/p>\n In season 4, Felix takes a new direction in both his life and his art. The complicated family connections of the Leda and Castor clones and their genetic original have brought his own biologically orphaned state home to him, and he begins a search for his blood family, finally finding a surviving step-sister, Adele (Lauren Hammersley). He has also set his portrait painting aside and taken up stenciling\u2014again, frequently in the nude with opera music blaring at high volume. The stencils are a mix: pictorial stencils like a flying rocket-winged phallus, a postage stamp, and a self-portrait; phrases and sayings like \u201cNo gods no parents,\u201d \u201cI Miss RentBoy,\u201d and \u201cBe Fucking Gay.\u201d This work is far more directly autobiographical than anything we have seen before. Overlaying and behind it all, layer after layer of hard-edged, precise, carefully-aligned repetitive patterns evoke craft stenciling for home d\u00e9cor. We may on the one hand see here a strong craft influence from his sympathetic association with Alison, married to the punk\/urban aesthetic of graffiti that pervades the studio\u2019s neighborhood. But while the essential craft-iness of stenciling evokes Alison, it also references the cloning process: endless repetition without variation, a sort of sterile fecundity without end. Felix deals with his sense of displacement and unease both overtly, through his genealogical quest, and more indirectly through his art.<\/p>\n As the season progresses, nearly every wall surface in the loft is covered with overlapping layers of stencils. The stenciled phrases, while somewhat ambiguous, communicate directly to the reader, and the inclusion of the self-portrait underlines the relationship of this artistic phase to his personal search for family and meaning and his coming to terms with cloning, what he calls \u201ca profound moment for me\u201d (\u201cThe Stigmata of Progress\u201d [Nelson & Girotti, 2016]). His friends pay attention to his artistic development; Alison observes \u201cWell, it\u2019s really coming along, this thing\u201d (\u201cTransgressive Border Crossing\u201d [Cochrane & Fawcett, 2016]), little Kira (Skyler Wexler) asks \u201cDid you paint all this?\u201d and particularly notices the rocket\/phallus (\u201cHuman Raw Material\u201d [Melville & Wellington, 2016]), and police detective Art Bell (Kevin Hanchard) comments \u201cI have to say, this is some of your finest work, Felix\u201d as he adds the finishing touch: a stencil of four of the clone-sisters, a recursive copying of copies (\u201cFrom Dancing Mice to Psychopaths\u201d [Manson & Fawcett, 2016b]).<\/p>\n Felix\u2019s art in season 5 shows the success of this \u2018coming to terms,\u2019 as we see Felix interacting personally with sitting subjects as he works on their portraits and plans for a gallery opening. On a day when Sarah has to stay hidden at the loft, Fee decides to \u201cdo something constructive\u201d with the time and begin a painting of her. \u201cWhy do you insist on painting naked?\u201d she complains, and he replies airily \u201cIt\u2019s my process and you have no influence on it,\u201d a comment on their teasing brother-sister relationship as much as his artistic rituals. He begins this portrait by applying gobs of paint directly to the canvas with his bare hands (\u201cBeneath Her Heart\u201d [Levine & Wellington, 2017]). In the next episode, he keeps his clothes on while working on a pencil sketch of Sarah\u2019s daughter Kira; she comments on how much he\u2019s made her look like her mom, a conscious choice as Felix notes her growing maturity (\u201cLet the Children and Childbearers Toil\u201d [Nelson & Wellington, 2017]). Other sittings are not shown but implied.<\/p>\n The art opening is wildly successful. The gallery is utterly transformed; we discover that the stenciling on the walls was just practice for the final autobiographical piece on the sliding door, and everything else has been painted over in flat white. The furniture has been removed and each portrait lit with a single lamp. When we see them in a slow pan shot around the gallery, it\u2019s clear that Felix has turned back outwards from his self-regarding phase and is now painting his muse in all her different forms, as he announces to the crowd (\u201cGuillotines Decide\u201d [Porter-Christie, Manson, & Morton, 2017]).<\/p>\n Jordan Gavaris, the actor who portrays Felix, commented (2017) that the canvases provided by the art department were \u201call so perfect\u2014all so character oriented. Even the color palettes for each character.\u201d The paintings of the clone-sisters are in a variety of techniques: for example, the dual portrait of M.K., with and without her mask, harks back to his earlier collage work, while Beth\u2019s face is abstracted to a stencil. Krystal\u2019s portrait is comic-book influenced, and icy villain Rachel is represented by a fashion illustration-like line drawing on linoleum, displayed on the floor as a dance surface. Siobhan\u2019s portrait-with-gun is practically photo-realistic and Kira is surrounded by her signature origami butterfly\/angels in 3-D. In each, the technique used and the symbols incorporated help to communicate the character of the sitter to the viewer: not just what they mean to Felix, but what they are or were in the world, for good and for ill. They are not all feel-good portraits by any means, but capture and communicate an essence. Notably, the poses are also now all as different as the media and styles, unlike the season 1 triptych\u2014Felix is painting the women as individuals now, not as existentially disturbing copies of his sister.<\/p>\n What makes the art show truly soar is the incorporation of performance art; in a series of clone swaps, Felix introduces Alison, Cosima, and Sarah, who speak and dance in representation of the goddesses with whom Felix identifies them: respectively, Hestia, goddess of the hearth, Metis, goddess of wisdom, and Athena, goddess of war. To the casual party attendee, these are all the same woman in different costumes; those in the know, know better, and see a deeper celebration of diversity. At the high point, Felix offers heartfelt gratitude to the \u201cgalaxy of women\u201d who have inspired him in his art and life. Cosima tells him \u201cYou\u2019ve done something wonderful\u201d and foster mother Siobhan says he was always \u201ca little fighting creative spirit\u201d (\u201cGuillotines Decide\u201d [Porter-Christie, Manson, & Morton, 2017]).<\/p>\n Felix has found his proper path as an artist\u2014this show leads directly to a New York gallery exhibit which he characterizes as \u201cdrunkenly successful\u201d (\u201cTo Right the Wrongs of Many\u201d [St. Cyr, Manson, & Fawcett, 2017]). In the final scenes of the series, a lovingly slow pan of the home Sarah now shares with her daughter reveals a number of Felix\u2019s pieces, in particular the portrait of Siobhan over the mantel and the second portrait of Sarah over the piano.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”2″ _address=”5.0.2″][et_pb_text disabled_on=”on|on|off” module_class=”noindent” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_enable_color=”off” custom_padding=”4px|4px|4px|4px|true|true” border_radii=”on|6px|6px|6px|6px” border_width_all=”2px” border_color_all=”#bf1a46″ _i=”0″ _address=”5.0.2.0″]<\/p>\n But while the essential craft-iness of stenciling evokes Alison, it also references the cloning process: endless repetition without variation, a sort of sterile fecundity without end. Felix deals with his sense of displacement and unease both overtly, through his genealogical quest, and more indirectly through his art.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Content Block” _builder_version=”3.27.3″ background_image=”https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/paper-square.png” custom_margin=”0px||0px||true|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” saved_tabs=”all” fb_built=”1″ _i=”6″ _address=”6″][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_5,3_5,1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.7″ _i=”0″ _address=”6.0″][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”0″ _address=”6.0.0″][et_pb_text admin_label=”section head” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ header_font=”Almendra SC||||||||” header_2_font=”Eczar|700|||||||” header_2_text_align=”right” header_2_letter_spacing=”2px” _i=”0″ _address=”6.0.0.0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”1″ _address=”6.0.1″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Helena: Ritual and Art” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” _i=”0″ _address=”6.0.1.0″]<\/p>\n Helena (Tatiana Maslany), Sarah\u2019s twin, was raised in a convent until located by members of the Prolethean religious cult, removed, and trained to assassinate the other clones. Her religious fervor, and her internal conflict over killing the other young women who share her face, manifest in ritualistic bouts of creative expression: drawings of stick figures, altered Barbie doll heads, body modification. She might be understood as an example of a na\u00efve, outsider artist, driven to express herself in a primitive, non-verbal, or child-like manner and not thinking of what she produces as art. While her artistic expression seems to be without conscious reflection or even volition, it does satisfy some urge within her and evolves in tandem with her character arc.<\/p>\n We see this artistic expression of self in the face of trauma from an early age, in a flashback to her childhood in the convent in the final season (\u201cOne Fettered Slave\u201d [Levine & Frazee, 2017]). Locked in a closet for her voyeuristic infractions, she scratches stick figures and a church on the walls. Later, under the watchful eye of her Prolethean mentor Tomas, she role-plays with Barbie dolls in a house she has built and decorated for them. The initial episodes of the first season show what these early habits have evolved into: She leaves Barbie doll heads at the scenes of her crimes, with their hair cut and colored to match that of her victims and their eyes blacked out (\u201cVariation Under Nature\u201d [Manson & Frazee, 2013], \u201cIpsa Scientia Potestas Est<\/em>\u201d [Elliott & Shaver, 2014]). She scratches or blacks out the eyes in photographs, a chilling threat once we learn that she goes for the eyes in fighting. She draws stick figures on the walls of the places she lives and elsewhere, repeating a figure representing a female clone, identically drawn and posed, over and over (\u201cEffects of External Conditions\u201d [Manson & Fawcett, 2013b], \u201cIpsa Scientia Potestas Est<\/em>\u201d [Elliott & Shaver, 2014]); like Felix, she expresses an existential discomfort with cloning and these endless mirror-images of herself in her art practice.<\/p>\n And she cuts herself, generally after a kill or at times when she needs the comforting distraction of physical pain. Her cutting takes the form of body modification art, angel wings she has carved into her back, something she started doing after her very first assassination (\u201cGuillotines Decide\u201d [Porter-Christie, Manson, & Morton, 2017]). After her first kill, she was told her targets were \u201cdirty copies\u201d of herself, the pure original; the wings distinguish her body at a physical level from those of her victims (as Alison\u2019s tattoo distinguishers her body from the other clones) and reinforce her self-conception as an avenging and purifying angel.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”2″ _address=”6.0.2″][et_pb_text disabled_on=”on|on|off” module_class=”noindent” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_enable_color=”off” custom_padding=”4px|4px|4px|4px|true|true” border_radii=”on|6px|6px|6px|6px” border_width_all=”2px” border_color_all=”#e02b20″ saved_tabs=”all” _i=”0″ _address=”6.0.2.0″]<\/p>\n Also notable are fancy boxes of soap concealing illegal drugs, and a flowchart of the nefarious business connections of the Dyad Institute, decorated with computer clip art against a pink ticking-stripe background. This room is a place where both dirty laundry and secrets are cleaned up and smoothed out and tidied away neatly in boxes and bins.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Content Block” _builder_version=”3.27.3″ background_image=”https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/paper-square.png” custom_margin=”0px||0px||true|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” saved_tabs=”all” fb_built=”1″ _i=”7″ _address=”7″][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_5,3_5,1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.7″ _i=”0″ _address=”7.0″][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”0″ _address=”7.0.0″][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”1″ _address=”7.0.1″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Helena undergoes” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” _i=”0″ _address=”7.0.1.0″]<\/p>\n Helena undergoes a long process of rehabilitation that eventually brings her over to the side of the other Leda clones aligned against Dyad and Neolution, a process beginning with her acknowledgement of Sarah as a human and a sister rather than a \u201cdirty copy\u201d and an abomination, a parallel to the way Felix\u2019s art evolves to celebrate the uniqueness rather than sameness of the clone sisters. \u00a0This is indicated in her artistic expression in 2.4 (\u201cGoverned as it Were by Chance\u201d [Cochrane & Frazee, 2014]) when, after being impregnated by and escaping the New Order Prolethian cult leader, she kills Rachel\u2019s agent Daniel and rescues Sarah. The stick figures she draws in Rachel\u2019s apartment with Daniel\u2019s blood are now individuated: she draws herself with her wild mane of hair and a distinct baby bump, and herself and Sarah as a family unit with Sarah\u2019s daughter Kira. Rushing (2018) observes that the story the figures tell now and from this point forward is \u201cabout becoming an individual, acquiring interiority, and bonding with others as family\u201d and that the figures no longer represent a code but \u201cconcrete and embodied individuals\u201d (160-161).<\/p>\n In season 4, pregnant and in hiding with Alison\u2019s family, Helena is banished from Alison\u2019s craft room as mentioned earlier, but takes her project to the family room, where she is seen at work on a collage of baby pictures\u2014a scene of artistic chaos that will surely annoy Alison to no end. This period of using mainstream craft materials and techniques ends with her retreat to a camp in the woods There we see her feather-strewn altar which pairs an icon of the Virgin and Child with a photo of Sarah and Kira on either side of an Eastern Orthodox cross constructed from bones and hide thongs.<\/p>\n The final stage of Helena\u2019s artistic development begins with her going into hiding in a convent\u2014no longer a place of terror and torment for the more mature Helena (Croft, 2019, p.107), here she has a period of safety to reflect on her life and her impending motherhood.\u00a0 She has made drawings of stick figures again, but this time on paper, not directly on the walls, and they are displayed on a wall of her room where others can see them. Another difference is that they are clearly in family groups, taller and shorter figures holding hands, all \u201cconcrete and embodied individuals\u201d (Rushing, 2018, 160-161); the urge for family has been a motivation all of Helena\u2019s life, and here we see specific rather than generic individuals as family.<\/p>\n Most importantly, though, Helena has turned to journaling as a means of expression. In a leather-bound diary she writes out and illustrates her story for her babies, telling of \u201cmy joys, my pain and sorrows, so they will walk a brighter path\u201d (\u201cLet the Children and Childbearers Toil\u201d [Nelson & Wellington, 2017]). The drawings we see on the title page are a line of stick figures holding hands (clearly individuated as Sarah, Alison, Helena, and Cosima) and dark and light figures curled in a yin-yang-like circle, representing Sarah and Helena as twins in the womb and perhaps the twins she herself carries as well.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”2″ _address=”7.0.2″][et_pb_text disabled_on=”on|on|off” module_class=”noindent” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_enable_color=”off” custom_padding=”4px|4px|4px|4px|true|true” border_radii=”on|6px|6px|6px|6px” border_width_all=”2px” border_color_all=”#bf1a46″ _i=”0″ _address=”7.0.2.0″]<\/p>\n Helena undergoes a long process of rehabilitation that eventually brings her over to the side of the other Leda clones aligned against Dyad and Neolution, a process beginning with her acknowledgement of Sarah as a human and a sister rather than a \u201cdirty copy\u201d and an abomination, a parallel to the way Felix\u2019s art evolves to celebrate the uniqueness rather than sameness of the clone sisters.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Content Block” _builder_version=”3.27.3″ background_image=”https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/paper-square.png” custom_margin=”0px||0px||true|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” saved_tabs=”all” fb_built=”1″ _i=”8″ _address=”8″][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_5,3_5,1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.7″ _i=”0″ _address=”8.0″][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”0″ _address=”8.0.0″][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”1″ _address=”8.0.1″][et_pb_text admin_label=”the final episode” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” _i=”0″ _address=”8.0.1.0″]<\/p>\n The final episode of the series shows Helena, like Felix and Alison, transformed as an artist by using her art to communicate and to foster community. Above the bassinets of her twin babies dangle stick-figure angels, male and female, constructed of twigs and feathers, and the room they share in the Hendrix\u2019s garage is full of light and art. The almost-final scene shows Helena surrounded by her sisters and reading to them from her memoir, her \u201cembroidery with many beginnings and no end\u201d (\u201cTo Right the Wrongs of Many\u201d [St. Cyr, Manson, & Fawcett, 2017]). As Alyson Buckman (2019, p.142) points out about this scene, \u201cIn order to heal and to return the social order to normalcy, survivors must both remember and<\/em> speak the truth about their trauma. [\u2026] When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery.\u201d Helena\u2019s recovery has been, in part, a process of discovering the way in which she can best speak her truth and to whom she should speak it. For Helena, a combination of visual and literary art becomes \u201ca means through which [she] can define [her] values and produce a positive identity based on these rather than [\u2026] simply on rejection of the Other\u201d (Webb, 2014, p.106).<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”2″ _address=”8.0.2″][et_pb_text disabled_on=”on|on|off” module_class=”noindent” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_enable_color=”off” custom_padding=”4px|4px|4px|4px|true|true” border_radii=”on|6px|6px|6px|6px” border_width_all=”2px” border_color_all=”#bf1a46″ _i=”0″ _address=”8.0.2.0″]<\/p>\n For Helena, a combination of visual and literary art becomes \u201ca means through which [she] can define [her] values and produce a positive identity based on these rather than [\u2026] simply on rejection of the Other\u201d (Webb, 2014, p.106).<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Content Block” _builder_version=”3.27.3″ background_image=”https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/paper-square.png” custom_margin=”0px||0px||true|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” saved_tabs=”all” fb_built=”1″ _i=”9″ _address=”9″][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_5,3_5,1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.7″ _i=”0″ _address=”9.0″][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”0″ _address=”9.0.0″][et_pb_text admin_label=”section head” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ header_font=”Almendra SC||||||||” header_2_font=”Eczar|700|||||||” header_2_text_align=”right” header_2_letter_spacing=”2px” _i=”0″ _address=”9.0.0.0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”1″ _address=”9.0.1″][et_pb_text admin_label=”conclusions” _builder_version=”3.29.2″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” _i=”0″ _address=”9.0.1.0″]<\/p>\n What connects all of these threads is the underlying \u201cstronger together\u201d theme of the whole series, manifesting particularly in the evolutionarily sound corollaries that connection and cross-fertilization are essential for growth, and that progress\u2014and even mere survival\u2014requires connection and cooperation. The artistic practices of these three characters are used to demonstrate these themes in a physically and emotionally compelling manner.<\/p>\n Alison\u2019s art is less sterile when it is done honestly\u2014to express herself, not to fit in or to hide her sins\u2014and even more so when created in community with her husband. In exploring a mode of expression that feels truer to her, she frees herself from the overwhelming influence of her passive-aggressive mother and the pressure to fit in to the judgmental suburb of Bailey Downs. Alison\u2019s outright rejection of \u201cbeing crafty\u201d has to be read with this nuance in mind, and in the context of her own individual development; it is not a blanket condemnation of craft.[6]<\/sup><\/a> But it is an acknowledgement that the sort of crafting expected of her as a suburban soccer mom was not serving the deeper needs she discovered in her Jungian retreat\u2014her needs to \u201close control,\u201d to confront her own inner chaos and shadow self, and to free herself as an individual from the conformity of the suburbs and the nightmare side of cloning. The roles she played in the musicals Blood Ties<\/em> and Jesus Christ Superstar<\/em> were far better pointers to the shadowy areas of her psyche that she needs to explore.<\/p>\n It is in part the influence of Felix on Alison that gives her the impetus to go on her voyage of self-exploration. While Fee is a \u2018real artist,\u2019 he does not sneer at her; he sees value in her as a person, he supports her in her fight with addiction, helps her with her stage performances, and so on. And her craft arguably influences the stenciling phase of his art.\u00a0 He provides a model of how she can free herself to be an artist.<\/p>\n While the craft room often serves simply as character-defining shorthand and is not actually shown getting much use, this is in very sharp contrast with the way we see Felix at work creating art in his studio living space, where the tools and supplies of his art permeate the entire loft rather than being confined carefully to one room. Contrary to \u201cromantic stereotypes about creative people and mental illness\u201d (Feaver, 2019, p.13) it is when Felix manages to understand and constructively deal with his pain and his sense of isolation, when he begins seeing his sitters for who they are rather than painting how they make him feel, that his art becomes more successful. He finds blood family and purpose, and matures and explores a mythic framework for the women in his life that helps him to see them as individuals rather than copies of his sister. Felix\u2019s art is more meaningful when it is not simply about his own identity, when it is more accessible symbolically and involves his \u201cgalaxy of women\u201d as co-performers and celebrators: when it is created in community with his sitters.[7]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Tatiana Maslany as Helena and Sarah Manning.<\/p><\/div>Helena\u2019s ritualistic artistic expression in the early seasons is a psychologically necessary way for her to express her pain, guilt, and inner conflict over her assassination missions in a personally meaningful form. However, it communicates nothing but confusion and disquiet to those who view it. An artist interviewed for the project Troubled: The Myth of the Mad Creative<\/em> revealed that her photography, deeply personal and full of ambiguity, was her way of exploring her depression; when her mental health was in better balance, she found it more fulfilling to communicate more directly and tap into \u201cuniversal experience\u201d through written collage and lyrical essays (Feaver, 2019, pp. 58-64).\u00a0 Helena\u2019s art, similarly, is spiritually healthier when it is produced to communicate directly and create bonds with and inspire her family\u2014to show her love and care for her babies, and to reflect their own strengths and bonds back to her sestras<\/em> by turning their adventures into a coherent story.[8]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Orphan Black<\/em> uses expectations about craft versus art and about gender and craft to make a point about art and personal connection\u2014one that is kindred to points made by the \u201cstreet craft\u201d movement, with its emphasis on \u201caccessibility and communality,\u201d its \u201cextension of the private\u201d as \u201ca kind of gift to the community\u201d (Kuittinen, 2015, pp.12-13). Through art and craft, we \u201ccan confront and critique the notion of the Other and the tensions [\u2026] that obscure the commonality of the human\u201d (Webb, 2014, p.93)\u2014and yet at the same time celebrate the individual within that commonality. With Alison, we see that craft is sterile and a source of frustration when it is just a matter of meeting social and gender expectations and there is no heart or connection in it. In Felix\u2019s case, Orphan Black<\/em> implies that art lacks power when craft, discipline, and the power of art to communicate are neglected, and the art is only about the artist himself. Helena\u2019s arc shows that art does not support community when it is purely a personal ritual and an expression of a private symbol system. Finding one\u2019s true voice and means of expression are important, but even more important in Orphan Black<\/em> is the power of art to strengthen group bonds and create connections of sympathy, understanding, and growth between individuals.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”2″ _address=”9.0.2″][et_pb_text disabled_on=”on|on|off” module_class=”noindent” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ background_enable_color=”off” custom_padding=”4px|4px|4px|4px|true|true” border_radii=”on|6px|6px|6px|6px” border_width_all=”2px” border_color_all=”#bf1a46″ _i=”0″ _address=”9.0.2.0″]<\/p>\n Here \u201cAlison uses the very props that signify her repression [to reveal] her unruliness. Whereas the props originally implied Alison\u2019s repression, they transform into literal enactments of her latent desires\u201d (Stutsman, 2016, p.92).<\/span><\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Content Block” _builder_version=”3.27.3″ background_image=”https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/paper-square.png” custom_margin=”0px||0px||true|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” saved_tabs=”all” fb_built=”1″ _i=”10″ _address=”10″][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_5,3_5,1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.7″ _i=”0″ _address=”10.0″][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”0″ _address=”10.0.0″][et_pb_text admin_label=”section head” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ header_font=”Almendra SC||||||||” header_2_font=”Eczar|700|||||||” header_2_text_align=”right” header_2_letter_spacing=”2px” _i=”0″ _address=”10.0.0.0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”1″ _address=”10.0.1″][et_pb_text module_class=”reference” _builder_version=”3.29.2″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” _i=”0″ _address=”10.0.1.0″]<\/p>\n Auther, E. (2010). String, Felt, Thread: the Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art. <\/em>Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.<\/p>\n Bell, E. (2019, forthcoming). \u2018To Hound Nature in Her Wanderings\u2019: Understanding Cloned Mothers as Postfeminists and Posthumans on Orphan Black<\/em>. In J. B. Croft & A. Buckman (Eds.), Sisterhood, Science, and Surveillance in <\/em>Orphan Black: Critical Essays <\/em>(pp. 41-57). <\/em>Jefferson, NC: McFarland.<\/p>\n Buckman, A. (2019, forthcoming). \u2018My Story is an Embroidery\u2019: Representing Trauma Within the World of Orphan Black<\/em>. In J. B. Croft & A. Buckman (Eds.), Sisterhood, Science, and Surveillance in <\/em>Orphan Black: Critical Essays\u00a0<\/em>(pp.128-150). Jefferson, NC: McFarland.<\/p>\n Cochrane, R. (Writer) & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2016, 21 April). Transgressive Border Crossing [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 4, episode 2).<\/p>\n Cochrane, R. (Writer) & Frazee, D. (Director). (2014, 10 May). Governed as It Were by Chance. [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 2, episode 4).<\/p>\n Croft, J. B. (2019, forthcoming). Hell and Back: Helena as Kore and Shaman in Orphan Black<\/em>. In J. B. Croft & A. Buckman (Eds.), Sisterhood, Science, and Surveillance in <\/em>Orphan Black: Critical Essays <\/em>(pp. 95-112).<\/em> Jefferson, NC: McFarland.<\/p>\n Croft, J. B. (2020, forthcoming). \u2018Now You Don\u2019t Have to Use This Color Anymore\u2019: Art Therapy in Orphan Black<\/em> and Dollhouse<\/em>. In A. R. Buckman, J.C. Kitchens, & K.A. Troyer (Eds.), Trauma, Memory, and Disability in the Whedonverse.<\/em> Jefferson, NC: McFarland.<\/p>\n DeCandido, K. R. A. (2017). Orphan Black: Classified Clone Reports: Confidential<\/em>. New York, NY: Harper Design, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers.<\/p>\n Elliott, T. (Writer), & Shaver, H. (Director). (2014, 17 May). Ipsa Scientia Potestas Est<\/em> [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 2, episode 5).<\/p>\n Elliott. T. (Writer), & Sullivan, B. (Director). (2013, 11 May). Parts Developed in an Unusual Manner [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 1, episode 7).<\/p>\n Feaver, J. (2019). Troubled: The Myth of the Mad Creative<\/em>. University of the Arts Senior Studio project. Philadelphia PA.<\/p>\n Fisk, A. (2012). \u2018To Make, and Make Again\u2019: Feminism, Craft and Spirituality. Feminist Theology, 20<\/em>(2), 160-174. doi:10.1177\/0966735011425302<\/p>\n Gavaris, J. (Interviewee) (2017). Closer Look: Party at Gallerie Rimbaud [Blu-Ray bonus feature]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 5 Blu-Ray bonus feature).<\/p>\n Kuittinen, R. (2015). Street Craft: Guerrilla Gardening,Yarnbombing, Light Graffiti, Street Sculpture, and More<\/em>. London: Thames & Hudson.<\/p>\n Levine, A. (Writer), & Frazee, D. (Director). (2017, 5 August). One Fettered Slave [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 5, episode 9).<\/p>\n Levine, A. (Writer), & Scott, T.J. (Director). (2014, 3 May). Mingling Its Own Nature With It [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 2, episode 3).<\/p>\n Levine, A. (Writer), & Stebbings, P. (Director). (2016, 5 May). From Instinct to Rational Control [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 4, episode 4).<\/p>\n Levine, A. (Writer), & Wellington, D. (Director). (2017, 24 June). Beneath Her Heart [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 5, episode 3).<\/p>\n Manson, G. (Writer) & Frazee, D. (Director). (2013, 13 April). Variation Under Nature [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 1, episode 3).<\/p>\n Manson, G. (Writer), & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2013a, 6 April). Instinct [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 1, episode 2).<\/p>\n Manson, G. (Writer), & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2013b, 20 April). Effects of External Conditions [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 1, episode 4).<\/p>\n Manson, G. (Writer), & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2013c, 1 June). Endless Forms Most Beautiful [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 1, episode 10).<\/p>\n Manson, G. (Writer), & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2014a, 19 April). Nature Under Constraint and Vexed [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 2, episode 1).<\/p>\n Manson, G. (Writer), & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2014b, 21 June). By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 2, episode 10).<\/p>\n Manson, G. (Writer), & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2016a, 14 April). The Collapse of Nature [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 4, episode 1).<\/p>\n Manson, G. (Writer), & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2016b, 16 June). From Dancing Mice to Psychopaths [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 4, episode 10).<\/p>\n Melville, K. (Writer), & Wellington, D. (Director). (2016, 12 May). Human Raw Material [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 4, episode 5).<\/p>\n Mohan, P. (Writer), & Morton, A. (Director). (2016, 2 June). The Redesign of Natural Objects [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 4, episode 8).<\/p>\n Nealon, A. (Writer), & Girotti, K. (Director). (2016, 28 April). The Stigmata of Progress [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 4, episode 3).<\/p>\n Nelson, G. (Writer), & Wellington, D. (Director). (2017, 1 July). Let the Children and Childbearers Toil [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 5, episode 4).<\/p>\n Pascoe, W. (Writer) & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2013, 4 May). Variations Under Domestication [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 1, episode 6).<\/p>\n Porter-Christie, A. (Writer), Manson, G. (Writer) & Morton, A. (Director). (2017, 5 August). Guillotines Decide [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 5, episode 8).<\/p>\n Roberts, C. (Writer), & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2015, 2 May). Formalized, Complex, and Costly [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 3, episode 3).<\/p>\n Roberts, C. (Writer), & Harvey, G. (Director). (2016, 19 May). The Scandal of Altruism [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 4, episode 6).<\/p>\n Roberts, C. (Writer), & Sullivan, B. (Director). (2014, 24 May). To Hound Nature in Her Wanderings [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 2, episode 6).<\/p>\n Rushing, R. A. (2018). The Dancing Women: Decoding Biopolitical Fantasy. In A. Goulet & R. A. Rushing (Eds.), Orphan Black: Performance, Gender, Biopolitics<\/em> (pp. 145-165). Bristol: Intellect.<\/p>\n St. Cyr, R. (Writer), & Frazee, C. (Director). (2017, 22 July). Gag or Throttle [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 5, episode 7).<\/p>\n St. Cyr, R. (Writer), Manson, G. (Writer), & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2017, 12 August). To Right the Wrongs of Many [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 5, episode 10).<\/p>\n Stutsman, S. (2016). The Unruly Clones: Tatiana Maslany\u2019s Melodramatic Masquerades in Orphan Black. Journal of Film and Video, 68<\/em>(3-4), 83-103.<\/p>\n Tarmy, J. (2015, 15 Nov). Getting Your Portrait Painted is Trendy Again, and It\u2019ll Only Cost You $15,000. Bloomberg News<\/em>.<\/p>\n Troubetzkoy, N. (Writer), Manson, G. (Writer), & Frazee, D. (Director). (2016, 26 May). The Antisocialism of Sex [Television series episode].\u00a0 In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 4, episode 7.)<\/p>\n Walton, K. (Writer) & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2014, 7 June). Variable and Full of Perturbation [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 2, episode 8).<\/p>\n Walton, K. (Writer), Manson, G. (Writer) & Fawcett, J. (Director). (2014, 26 April). Governed by Sound Reason and True Religion [Television series episode]. In Fawcett, J., & Manson, G. (Producers), Orphan Black. <\/em>New York, NY: BBC America. (Season 2, episode 2).<\/p>\n Webb, C. (2014). The Watchman and the Hippopotamus: Art, Play, and Otherness in Thud<\/em>! In A. H. Alton & W. C. Spruiell (Eds.), Discworld and the Disciplines: Critical Approaches to the Terry Pratchett Works<\/em> (pp. 92-107). Jefferson, NC: McFarland.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”2″ _address=”10.0.2″][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Content Block” _builder_version=”3.27.3″ background_image=”https:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/paper-square.png” custom_margin=”0px||0px||true|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||true|false” saved_tabs=”all” fb_built=”1″ _i=”11″ _address=”11″][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_5,3_5,1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.7″ _i=”0″ _address=”11.0″][et_pb_column type=”1_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”0″ _address=”11.0.0″][et_pb_text admin_label=”section head” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ header_font=”Almendra SC||||||||” header_2_font=”Eczar|700|||||||” header_2_text_align=”right” header_2_letter_spacing=”2px” _i=”0″ _address=”11.0.0.0″]<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”3_5″ _builder_version=”3.26.6″ _i=”1″ _address=”11.0.1″][et_pb_text module_class=”noindent” _builder_version=”3.27.4″ custom_margin=”||||false|false” _i=”0″ _address=”11.0.1.0″]<\/p>\n [1]<\/a>\u00a0The show is also noteworthy for \u201cquoting\u201d familiar art from time to time in its scene composition. The back-room operation by the Proletheans to remove the \u201cbot\u201d from Aaron\u2019s cheek is lit as exquisitely as a Dutch master in \u201cThe Collapse of Nature\u201d (Manson & Fawcett, 2016a); Ira\u2019s attempted suicide recreates Jacques-Louis David\u2019s Death of Marat<\/em> in \u201cThe Scandal of Altruism\u201d (Roberts & Harvey, 2016); and Sarah\u2019s emergency blood transfusion to Helena references Frida Kahlo\u2019s The Two Fridas<\/em> in the final episode (\u201cTo Right the Wrongs of Many\u201d [St. Cyr, Manson & Fawcett, 2017]), a painting which is explicitly sampled in publicity materials for the fifth season.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Elissa Auther\u2019s String, Felt, Thread <\/em>(2010) is an excellent source on the devaluation of certain areas of craft, particularly fiber crafts, on the basis of gender association. But as Auther points out, \u201cPainters forget they paint on fabric\u201d (p.23). I feel there is also an interesting parallel to be drawn with the exoticizing of ethnographic specimens of utilitarian craft objects as art, separate from their social use (p.38), and attempts to distance contemporary fiber work from its gendered history so that it can be contemplated in isolation as high art. A certain balance is needed in perspectives on this issue. Anna Fisk\u2019s (2012) article delves into everyday craft as a form of spiritual expression, asserting that \u201cacademic theology fails to appreciate the value of small, \u2018feminine\u2019 acts of making\u201d (p.162).<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> As far as nature vs. nurture is related to artistic talent, our central viewpoint clone and Felix\u2019s foster sister Sarah has absolutely none\u2014she was not able to pick up the piano when young, as noted in \u201cParts Developed in an Unusual Manner\u201d (Elliott & Sullivan, 2013), wishes she had Aunty Alison available to help with Kira\u2019s mobile in \u201cVariable and Full of Perturbation\u201d (Walton & Fawcett, 2014), and tells Kira \u201cI don\u2019t even know how to look at art. Don\u2019t tell Felix\u201d in \u201cBy Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried\u201d (Manson & Fawcett, 2014b). She can at least carry a tune a bit better than Helena. M.K. doodles and Cosima is very expressive in her appearance, tattoos, and d\u00e9cor, but aside from Alison, another clone who died young, and Rachel\u2019s forays into art therapy, the clones show no particular aptitude for art.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Alison is not the only clone with a tattoo; Cosima has several visible from the first time we see her, as does transgender clone Tony. But Cosima has never had the same sort of problem Alison has with seeing herself as an individual, coming down strongly on the side of nurture in the nature-nurture debate, and Tony makes a point of his hard-won comfort with his identity in \u201cVariable and Full of Perturbation\u201d (Walton & Fawcett, 2014).<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> We do at one point see one of Felix\u2019s sexual partners sitting for a portrait, but it is simply a straightforward painting of the person as he is posed, and it is implied to be a commission (\u201cGoverned by Sound Reason and True Religion\u201d [Walton & Manson, 2014]).<\/p>\n [6]<\/a> However, it is troubling that none of the other adult women is shown participating in any traditional female crafts, aside from Siobhan arranging flowers.<\/p>\nIntroduction<\/h2>\n
![\"Tatiana](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/societyforritualarts.com\/coreopsis\/autumn-2019-issue\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/orphan-black-21-1200x640.jpg?ssl=1\")
<\/a>What Happens in Alison\u2019s Room: \u201cI\u2019m always different\u201d<\/h2>\n
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Gallerie Rimbaud: \u201cIt\u2019s my process and you have no influence on it\u201d<\/h2>\n
Helena: Ritual\/Art<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n
Conclusions, Comparisons, Connections<\/h2>\n
<\/a>References<\/h2>\n
Endnotes<\/h2>\n