#lsadyear1

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Tracey Emin is an English artist who is known for her autobiographical and confessional work. The work she produces is a mix of media which incudes: drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, neon text and sewn applique.

I chose Tracey Emin as one of my influences because I like how her work is mainly based on female views and I feel like nthis relates to my concept for the Assemble project as my work revolves around the Feminist Movement during the Troubles. I really like her series of quilts she has made as I feel like it tells a story through word and text but through textiles which I find interesting as it's an alternative way of story telling. I also decided to pull inspiration from her quilts as I felt this was something at the time the older generation would have been at home creating blankets and other knitted things for their families.

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WIRE SCULPTURE

So the sculpture is coming along quite nice, and I really like what the mask added to it. I really wanted to make copies of the mask using different materials but I’m limited not being able to use the facilities at LSAD so this will do for the time being. 

I’m really enjoying experimenting with light and I’m getting all sorts of ideas for a possible installation. Going to develop it more and get some more concrete ideas now, but I’m liking the idea of studying body language in animatronics and A.I. technology, or what it is to move like a human. 

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Concept art for the animation I'm making about scientists conducting an experiment on an apple that yields strange results

Going with simple shapes and colours to make animation easier.

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WIRE SCULPTURE

Playing with the figure and it’s shadow, experimenting with how movements in the shadow can manipulate the viewer into thinking the figure itself is moving. 

Going to get a video together to better express this idea. 

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PAINTING WITH FOUND MATERIALS: PART 4

Forgot to post a conclusion to the painting with food experiment so here it is. After almost incinerating the piece in the oven, I was able pull it back to life a bit, before completely destroying it again, and then kind of bringing it back, but not really.. 

Here’s how it went...

While cooking it too long in the oven brought out some very interesting textures on the page, the detail and depth of the image in regard to its lines and colours was greatly diminished. I applied a tumeric/toothpaste mixture to try and remedy the situation by lightening the face, however it dried and cracked leaving more of a mess than I started with. 

I was pretty much ready to throw it away until I realised that the toothpaste doesn’t need to be laid on so thick. The bright white effect actually becomes more prominent when the toothpaste dries, regardless to how thick it is on the page. I therefore started applying the toothpaste in little dabs using a chopstick and I managed to bring out the highlights in the face a again, giving the image more depth. 

It was starting to look interesting to me again, especially when I applied wet turmeric to the top of the figures head with thick streaks of toothpaste accompanying it. Once mixed and dried, this created a fantastic, wildfire type effect which gave the image more meaning, as the subject of the painting was after all expressing anger over losing a point in the tennis match he was playing.

It would have been a great idea to stop here for the night after arguably making the image even better after almost destroying it. However I had to push things and tried melting some hair into the piece for reasons that still escape me...

One thing lead to another and I ended up nearly toasting the whole image again. All the lovely, fiery bursts of colour had once again been reduced to tar. It now has an even grungier, darker tone to it which, while I don’t completely dislike it, doesn’t excite me like it had before. I drew out some of the highlights in the face and head again, but I wasn’t really willing or able for round 3. 

I suppose the intention to experiment with new materials was the ultimate goal so in that sense it was a success, however it was also a painful lesson in knowing when to hold back and stop while creating art. 

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PAINTING WITH FOUND MATERIALS: PART 3

I want to do a series of food paintings with the six images of tennis player faces from my previous post so I decided to start with the first one. The expression in this image is of a player losing a point and expressing frustration.

I started by making a layer of the shape of the face in turmeric, which gave a nice, bright yellow tone. I followed this up by adding soy sauce to map out where the facial features would go with darker tones and then used beetroot to bring out the red in the mouth/nose. 

It was coming together pretty well but I was missing white which I love using to bring out highlights to make things pop. White proved difficult to find around the house until I saw another students post in which they used toothpaste so I decided to give that ago. 

This is where things started to get weird…

Toothpaste is is pretty difficult to control on a page. Mixing it too much will give it a soapy/bubbly texture which doesn’t lend itself very well to painting. I initially wasn’t too impressed with how it was settling on the page so I decided to throw the image back into the oven and see what happens. 

Unfortunately the lack of patience I suffer from which led me to putting the painting into the oven in the first place came back to bite me in the ass when I walked away for too long while the oven was on and I burnt the bejeezus out of it. 

This was tragic in one sense because I lost all of the nice bright colours in the portrait, however I kind of liked the result after sitting with it for a while. The way certain ingredients on the page burnt was quite fascinating, particularly the soy sauce and toothpaste. 

The soy sauce turned into a sticky, tar- like colour and presented an array of new textures that weren’t as apparent before baking the piece. The toothpaste also reacted in a very interesting way, as the brightness of the white was accentuated by the heat upon drying, much like the way it scabs up on your bathroom sink if not rinsed properly. 

I decided to keep going with it and came up with even more interesting results as well as a powerful lesson that I’ll share in my next post. 

Spoiler alert: I ruin the painting…

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Jesse Kanda is a visual artist, animator and musician best known for his collaborations with experimental musical artists like Arca, FKA Twigs and Björk. 

Kanda was born in Japan on June 23 1987 to Canadian and Japanese parents. He was raised in Japan where from a young age his view of the world was deeply shaped by contemporary Japanese culture: 

“The biggest influence was growing up in Japan – in contemporary society it’s manga, anime, and video games – and all of this lies on the shoulders of a hugely rich tradition of ‘bi’ (beauty) and the effort toward it.”

These influences, along with a sense of isolation and not being understood as a child of mixed-race parents, would deeply inform Kanda’s art, which very often revolves around portraying humanoid figures in contorted, deformed shapes:

“I’m more interested in what’s perceived to be repulsive when there really is no reason for it… The inside of our body is much more beautiful than the skin that coats it, yet we’re afraid of it. When you see blood or organs, you sense pain and danger.”

“Part of my goal is to present ‘disgusting’ things as something beautiful… To question what is OK to call disgusting or ugly. It’s confrontation on a personal level.”

Though trained in 3D design and animation, Kanda is mostly a self-taught artist who has helped shape the aesthetic of some of the most forward thinking musicians of today. His work with long-time collaborator, ground-breaking Venezuelan producer/musical artist Arca, is considered his most personal work. He has created the visuals for all of Arca’s album artwork and accompanying music videos including ‘Front Load’ off the album ‘Mutant’, which portrayed extreme close-up’s of Kanda’s own genitals. 

Among Kanda’s most inspiring takes for me was his perspective on creative blocks: 

“A creative block is just fear getting in the way. Identifying it as a block doesn’t help, because then you’re visualising some scary wall and making it worse. I just remind myself that I enjoy creating, and that nothing horrible is going to happen if nothing ‘good’ comes out of the day. The hardest part is the initial jump… the rest is just falling. And that jump seems to stay a bit scary forever.”

You can read the full interview with Jesse Kanda HERE

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Last batch of collage for my biophilia project. 

To sum up, collage was a way for me to use different variables of skin tones, textures, and colours along with facial features of contrasting genders, shapes and sizes to discover alternative ideas of beauty in what society would deem “unnatural”.

While the idea of facial symmetry can be supported by evolutionary science, we must always remember that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Nature is fractal, messy and disorganised. If every tree was the same size and every flower had the same number of petals, we wouldn’t be as interested. 

Differences should be celebrated, always.