Pictures of my first final piece. The first one shows it hanging up with a little light behind it and the second shows it lying flat. I love the difference it makes - it's almost like two different pictures! Very exciting.
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Below are some pictures of the experiments I've been doing for this project.
I've been making a 3d tree to go with the pictures, as an interactive part of the exhibition. The tree is made from my Nanna's old extension lead wrapped in thread. Of course her extension lead is the same as anyone else's extension lead, so when I spoke to tutor Jonny about it, he wanted to know the significance and asked whether my nanna wanted to be an electrician, which she didn't. I've justified it by the fact that you can't tell it's an extension lead now it's finished. After all, no one's questioning whether the paper or paints I use for my final pictures belonged to her (which of course it didn't). I just used it because it was a good choice of medium to get the effect I wanted. In fact I've just convinced myself that it's perfectly reasonable!
Just remembered also, I've taken some lovely (though I say so myself) photos of my collection. I'd like to share those, so see below!
Today I've been working very hard research stained glass windows as part of my final piece. The book I've been looking at is obviously copyrighted so I didn't want to include any images on here.
I've also got round to putting pictures of my collage picture I made to be part of the 2nd year illustrators Zine - pilot issue, based on our collections project. I spent a day playing and experimenting. I made them using acrylic paint, masking tape, a rubber window scraper, a potato stamp and photocopies of lots of my nana's documents, plus some ink drawings that I did of my nana. Oh, and some canvas that I painted on to print the texture onto the paper - it's not so easy to see on web quality jpegs, but it definitely adds some depth and layering to the final image. This is a spreadsheet I created to catalogue all of Nana's objects for my collections project. I get the impression my tutor thinks I'm a little bit crazy, but that's a compliment, I think in the strange and mystical land that is illustration.
I've been very confused through much of this degree, wondering when they were going to teach me how to draw like an illustrator, but they never did. I'm nearly at the end of my second year and I've just realised they're trying to teach me how to think like an illustrator. Wish I'd realised this a year ago.
Due to the time require to get to know the residents I wasn't able to caryy out my previous idea in the time available. I will continue to do this but in my own time. I've now unearthed a box full of my nanna's old things and will be using this as my collection. One of the things I found was a beautiful autograph book belonging to my great grandmother Violet Taylor (nee Ball). I'm thinking of doing something with this for my exhibtion and have included some images below. The book was started in 1900.
This post is just to introduce my latest project brief which is developing a Personal Identity using collections. Although there are a number of things I already collect, most of them aren't intentional (odd socks for example - I keep hoping the other will turn up) and don't inspire me. I'm more inspired by living things and growth. I thought that everytime I went to someone's house I could ask if they had a plant that I could take a cutting from, then make a record of the date it was given and it's size etc.
Although I still like the idea, I decided to follow up something I'd wanted to do for quite some time, which was to collect snippets of wisdom or anecdotes from the elderly. Yesterday I went to visit a residential home in Leamington to discuss my ideas with Mark, the assistant manager. He was incredibly helpful and enthusiastic, and now I have the outline of plan to begin sketching and interviewing these people. When I was explaining the project to one gentleman, he told me that I must remember that when you're old you forget and that he didn't know if he'd collected any wisdom because he'd forgotten! |