February 2022 – A DEAD LETTER

DMU Local Volunteering – Session 6

19 February 20226 April 2022Dead Roses

volunteering

This session was a bit different and was more free for the children to use what they had learnt within the sessions prier. therefore the set up for this session was just to put out all of our materials, this mainly included colouring pencils, pens, paints and collaring materials. we gave all the children their sketchbooks as they came in and then let them sit down so we could explain to them what they were doing that session.

we also covered the floor in plastic wrap, this would give then children a choice of a larger and more messy space to use. due to children’s nature this worked out very well and they all started to sit on the floor. i thought this was a really good idea as this gave them the opportunity to sit and talk about each others works and we could see them starting to interact with each other and bounce ideas off each other.

this sessions was our first session after a week break, so when the children got back they where really exited to tell us about their 2 weeks and to do their own art. this meant they used every material that they could to create their works and they were very messy. this included splashing paint around to see its effect. once given paint and a paint brush the floor was soon covered in paint, as they started to see how if you put a smaller piece of paper over a bigger one and start splashing paint on it, it leaves an image of the smaller paper.

within the session there was not much the volerenteers could help with as it was more of letting the children explore the materials. i wanted to use this post to talk about what I have learnt and my experiences that I have had so far with in volunteering. When I first started I was more shy with talking to the children because their parents where sitting with them. With in the second session the children moved away from their parents to make the sculptures therefore l sat down with them and this made it easier to talk to them to be more involved with in the works.

i feel that this has really helped me to be more conftable with teaching people how to do things but also helped me learn how to talk with children on a better level of understanding. to be able to teach children a harder terminology of art, in a langue that they would understand is really important within art but within the normal launge and life.

i really enjoy this session and want to do more once this 10 are over, next year i will be looking into doing more for volunteering but possible teaching as well. i feel i really like volunteering more thought as it helps other people but also i love getting in touch with people and learning more about them.

next week i will not be attending as i have something that is happening but i will be joining the week after and that will be about women artists, so they children will make art around their favoutie female artist.

year 2 exhibition – pub quiz night

19 February 20226 March 2022Dead Roses

as we have already raised around £500-£600, we decided that doing another fundraiser on top of the bad art compition will help us a little more. there for the committee held a pub quiz night.

this quiz is for all the art students and anyone they want to invite but mainly friends, the entrance fee was decided to be £2. the quiz will be a range of questions plus some art ones so everyone can have a chance to know some stuff. i did not have as much input within the quiz as i was really busy with my own project, but the outcome seemed really good.

the quiz was set to happen on the 16th February starting at 7pm. the poster is below that we put around and on our social media to get people to know about it and to join in. below are some photos from the quiz.

Experimenting with growing flowers – studio practice

17 February 20222 May 2022Dead Roses

Studio practice

To advance my art, I want to experiment with live flower therefore i have researched some flowers and started growing them.

sunflowers

The sunflower means many things within different cultures, all good meanings. they are a bright colorful flower that grows with a lot of strength in their root, this signifies how they are blooming in themselves being there roots and self belief are strong like how people who get body modifications can feel when changing their body.

These flowers are show love, loyalty and ambition. the first meaning has a story behind it explaining its meanings.

https://www.ftd.com/blog/share/sunflower-meaning-and-symbolism

Sunflowers have been used within art many times in different ways;

‘Sunflowers’ – irma stern painted in 1942 (oil painting) (Sunflowers by Irma Stern | Obelisk Art History (arthistoryproject.com))
‘Sonnenblumen’ – Valentin Ruths lived 1825 – 1905 (oil painting) (Valentin Ruths | SONNENBLUMEN | MutualArt)
‘Sunflowers seeds’ – Ai Weiwei created in 2008 (porcelain) (Sunflower Seeds (artwork) – Wikipedia)
‘Sunflowers’- John Bratby made in 1969 (Sunflowers, 1969 – John Bratby – WikiArt.org)

Morning Glory

This plant comes in many different forms and colours, their meaning is love, life and death. This is due to the blooming cycle of the flower, with the morning light they bloom and slowly close as the day ends.

Contextually this shows the longing of a person just wanting to be who they, by having tattoos and piercings. Having these coming through a body is a representation of the tattoos/ wanting of them coming out the body. another representation is how each person would feel different, this can be seen through the colours.

What Is the Meaning of Morning Glory Flowers? Symbolism & Fun Facts (trulyexperiences.com)

Lavender

The purple flower can mean purity, devotion and serenity but also the colour mean royalty.

Crown Chakra is a place on the body where we can be connected with higher power.

Know Your Crown Chakra And How To Tap Into Its Power (chakras.info)

This could be seen as how some people are more connected to themselves than others, by this they are different to the perfect person. the colour purple then bring a question of are the people who are themselves better than everyone else making them royalty as they are themselves or not?

Lavender Meaning: History, Symbolism, Facts About Lavender | Petal Talk (1800flowers.com)

photos of flowers being used in history Timeline newest to oldest.

This website has an amazing timeline of flowers painted throughout history, these are the photos from this website. (the websites photos are the ones labelled 1-12 (i added the rest).

12 Famous Flower Paintings, from Monet to Mondrian (mymodernmet.com)

Red Anthurium Flower by Alfia Koral (2020)

Meaning of flowers vidoes

In these two videos are different meanings of flowers, although there will be many different meanings for flowers within different cultures these videos are more historical meanings. Even thought my interest is more cultural than historical , I wanted to do research into both to gain a better understanding.

My beginning of growing my own flowers#

Below are photos of me growing my plants and moving them into the art, i will make another post to see how this experiment goes. I don’t think it will work but I wanted to try anyway, I will need to water these ever other day and record how long they take to grow and show in order to know timings for my final body of work..

Contextually the flowers all have their own context that are shown by their colours, stories and their culture. but also their physical presents, this is by how they are within the body and they grow out of the skin in order to bloom. Showing how some people feel they need to alter/ add to their bodies to see like their inner self.

there are millions of flowers that have meanings and that i could use, therefore if i do use another flower or find another meaningful flower i will add another post to add research and understanding to my project.

Julia Hadji – Stylianou – Artist Talk

15 February 20223 May 2022Dead Roses

Who Is Julia Hadji Stylianou

Her Website: http://juliahs.photography/

Juloia is a artist who has work in many different jobs through her life, commissions, wedding photographer, lecturer in DMU but is currently working as a image retoucher. she has a BA (bachelors) and a MA (masters) degree.

Context Behind Her Art

For a major part of her artistic life she was fascinated within the concept of dreams, she wanted to explore the ways in which she could show this with art. she did so in many different ways and different aspects of dreaming like dreams being reflections of the conscious mind, how dreams are fractioned when we are awake and dreams being glitches. As time going on she started o morph her context and interests into connections within location, identity and sense of self.

The drive to find her sense of self was from her family history, she is half British and half from Cyprus, this meant she would travel between the two often as she wanted to learn more about both sides.

Projects She Has Worked On

Chasing Dreams

within this project she researched in to dream theory, this gave her a lot of information about the ideas around dreams. she started to look into the idea of dreams being a reflection of the awake mind. This was represented through bodies of water. The reflection in the water would create a dream like reality.

She started looking into long exposer within photography to explore how our sense of self changed when in our dreams, she then found inspiration from a music videos and started looking into two different ways to create glitch art.

she would put a copy of her photo onto the computer and open it as a text edit document, she would then add or take out code and save it to create the glitch but as a dream is when we wake up, sometimes the image will never open again and will become corrupted.
she would send a photo to a monitor from her laptop, then the wire that is connecting the two would be cut. slowly they would put the wire back together creating parts of the images to come back.

Non Compos Mentis

The context behind this was thoughts, feeling and memories. she wanted to focus more on the awake mind. A big inspiration within this project was Cindy Sherman, but also her mental health. During this time she was really struggling with anxiety so she wanted to use her art to help it as it was the only thing that helped. there fore her first images was of herself. yet she felt something was missing, this is when she decided to look into locations. within this found the connection between the past locations that are meaningful to her and herself in this day.

she started to involved herself within the photos and they felt more complete, she used this to also ‘talk’ about her anxiety, another context she showed was in the images she would be very small, this shows how she felt within that location that she has a memory she was only a small part to that location. these were then featured in black river in 2020.

Some Of Her Other Projects

Other Notes I Took

Orlan – Artist Research

10 February 202211 March 2022Dead Roses

Artist Research

Orlan is a french artist how mainly works with her body, although she has used many different mediums within art. Orlan uses her body to make art, but she would not consider herself as an body artist. ‘She says that her art is not body art, but rather ‘carnal art,’ which lacks the suffering aspect of body art.’ I found this quote on Wikipedia. this shows her intent was not just to create art with her body but to really show something new, another creative choice she made was to changed her appearance from a website called Artnet I found a quote they have of orlan talking about this modification ‘ “I have been the first artist to use aesthetic surgery in another context—not to appear younger or better according to the designated pattern. I wanted to disrupt the standards of beauty,” she explained ‘. i found this quote interesting as it shows how she wants to push standers instead of becoming one.

orlan’s works are similar to cindy shirman a photographer whos main subject to photograph is herself, her works look closely at herself

her motivations can be seen as the same as a person who gets body modifications, some people do it to get out of the everyday beauty standards while others do it to become more of their selves, society as a whole tries to drag us into being the ‘perfect normal’ standard of beauty, but some people want to get out of that and do their own thing. therefore tattoos are still seen as completely acceptable and looked down on just not as much. in my project i want to move on from just looking at tattoos to looking how tattoos are in society and how people with body modifications can feel with society, also how i feel.

within this video, orlan talks about the concept of her works and why she did them, not all her works are like mine but the way she thinks about her works and wants other people to think about it is like mine. she talks about how people find talking about body modifications can make you ‘unfuckable’ but if you meet her or the person that can change. this is like my works, how society wants everyone to be alike and if you change yourself to be more you it can make you ‘unfuckable’. equally this can be completely the other way around, with fake boobs and bbl (but lifts). another thing she speaks on is how women where more open to kiss her than men, i found this quite an interesting point, and possible shows how women find it easier to open up rather than men.

although i wont be taking inspiration from her actually work i wanted to look more into another artist concept around body modifications, i feel its really interesting about how she uses her whole body and her art to try and convey her ideas.

Finishing the full body in Perspex – Studio Practice

9 February 202211 March 2022Dead Roses

Studio Practice

from the last post and this one, there was a major shift within my insight in this project and my ideas, i am making another post to explain this. this post is very chaotic so i want to make another one to clear things up and also explain what my thoughts are right now.

When slowly adding the pieces to the Perspex it was a lot of planning and then last min just doing it instead of trying to be so controlling over it. this really helped me to take more risks and in the end gave a better result, for example last minute i decided to cut the front of the chest piece off so it could be partly though the sheet. when gluing it on i had to move the whole sheet and hold it while glueing it, this lead to the chest being put on slightly wrong but in the end made it look even more like it was being pulled. when i noticed ti was on wrong i decided to take the chance and left it on wrong and it worked really well.

i decided i wanted this piece and the foot within perspex to go into the second year galley, this really helped me develop this piece more as i knew i wouldn’t have the time to make a full body so i started to look for a way to complete the piece in a more interesting way than just a body. this led to me looking for more artist inspiration and i also thought about Greek sculptures and how they are presented in gallery’s. (when they are missing limbs).

this lead to a really interesting turn to this piece and i feel made it better in terms of fine art than my original plan. i love this piece as i feel it what’s has started my new development and what has really made my project better, but it needs work as its too heavy for itself so over time it breaks itself (although this is an interesting this that it breaks itself over time and i will possible look into this more as well). as i have looked at this work more i will be looking into more living plants but also more interesting ways to present the work other than just having a full body, this will include single limbs, smaller limbs and planting in the limbs.

Whole Body in Perspex – Studio Practice

8 February 202211 March 2022Dead Roses

Studio Practice

when in the process of making this piece, there was a lot of challenges that forced me to take risks. this meant losing control and as much as i hated it, but in the end this meant i had a lot more fun making the piece but i also treated it much more experimental and just did what i felt was right at the time. the plans really did help with the making of this piece as even thought it was experimenting it was still a big task. below is the process of making this piece.

before i started to add any casts to the perspex i planed how the shape and positions i want the limbs to be on the protecting sheets, this was a mistke as mush as it wasn’t. i forgot once i take the sheets off i wont be able to see it but it still did help. once i had learnt that taking the sheets off lost the plan i made the plans on the wall at the back so they would be there constantly just not physically on the Perspex. i messured the plan with my own body as the limbs were sized to my own body this mean i stood infront and behind the prospect messured where my limbs where when in the perstion i liked.

the way i found a position i liked was by getting another student to pull me over so i would fall, giving my body the natural positions of being pulled. he pulled me the same way i want this person to look this was the best way to get the positioned i wanted and i filmed it. below is photos to get the positions.

after i decided how i wanted the limbs taking inspiration off the photos above, i started to create the limbs using my own. how i create the limbs is i position my legs how they are in the photos and then put the cast around my legs in the positions, i then cut down one side of the legs and glue it back together as this is the easiest way to get it off. below are some photos of how i make the casts.

i also did hot glue gun the parts so far to the perspex and it has been working, so i am going o carry it on. there was a problem with using the fishing wire as the art work is slowly becoming to heavy for the wire to hold it so i am going to have to find better way to hold the art work up. this will slwoly become more of a problem but there will be a way to fix it even if i have to make a stand for it rather than hanging it.

there was so many thing i had to over come with this peiec yet it has also given me alot more ideas on how i can deveplo this more, even thought i haven’t finished i do feel the rectangle perspex is still contraiting the piece so when i am finished with this i feel i will move away from hacing a strict shape with the materials or just completely get ride of them, and possibly have the limbs free hanging. there will be a part 2 for making this piece.

Developing Foot cast with Perspex – Studio Practices

7 February 202211 March 2022Dead Roses

studio practice – plan

as the foot worked so well i wanted to take this idea feather, so i decided to try and do a whole body to see how it would look and hang, for this i needed to plan alot so below are the photos of the planning before starting. the only thing that i did before planning was to go to the workshop and get the Perspex i wanted it to be just bigger than me so around 160cm in size. I want to hot glue gun the works to the Perspex but its another thing i don’t know about as im not sure if the work will be to heavy but i am going to try and do it anyway.

these are the plans for the next experiment i want to try, i have decided to try a whole body as it gives me a change to see how i could cast all of my body and add it to the Perspex but also how i could hang the piece more.

the first page of planning was the enisle how I could show my concept, all of these ideas i would love to try and i might try and create small sculptures to recreate the ideas. i wanted to see how different positioning could change how it looks, as i really like the Perspex idea but also do see it as constricting due to it being just a rectangle, but im still going to carry on and see how it works and then develop if needed. i want to also hang this in the same way so i can see if i want to hang my work or not, i like the idea of the work being hung due to the idea of it being timeless and how society’s view on body modifications and the ‘perfect’ body is a problem stuck in time due to it not being ‘ modern’ .

For these plans i need to think about how i could cast my whole body and this included my face, therefore i needed to plan it carefully in order to not hurt myself while doing so. so i decided to number my body parts on where it would be the most suitable to make the casts but also the most appropriate way to make the full body. although this will take a long time with drying the actual process of creating the cast does not take that long to make.

DMU Local Volunteering – Session 4 (life drawing)

5 February 202211 March 2022Dead Roses

volunteering

turned up at 9:30am to help set up, they had already set up the most of the work but we added some little bits to it. the set up was a table in the middle with loads of different materials and objects for the children to draw. we then places 30 chairs around the table.

in terms of teaching children i feel this was the most boring for them, but this is equally a really important technique in art to learn as it helps you to develop the basis of observations and drawing, within the session the parents also did not help as much so we really got to see how the children where thinking and seeing the objects we where showing them.

15 mins
5 mins
3 mins
1 mins
and more

the longer times made the children a bit bored but as they sped up the children started to enjoy it a lot as it got more exiting and they felt the need to do more.

when looking around at what the children’s have and where drawing, it became apparent that they all preferred the colorful objects like the rubix’s cube. as these were more exciting and drew their attention faster than the black objects or steps. this shows how in art people tend to be drawn closer to the fun colours and things that pop out rather than nature colours, even though used well these can work just as well.

i feel out of all the sessions this one really helped me in art sense, not directly to my work but more as a aid to show me art can be more than an illustration of a realistic object. As they have a move instinct to play with the materials without worry of error this could be a good project to look into of how artist should play with the materials more.

after a while i got more use to helping the children and really started to enjoy it, this really showed me how to help people from the very beginning. when drawing the set up in a bigger form a lot of them lost focus and drew what they wanted, even thought they were not ament to but if they had drew a good amount from the set up i let them draw what they wanted as they still gave the life drawing a try.

Anthony Gormley – Artist Research

5 February 20223 May 2022Dead Roses

Artist Research

As my works is closely focusing on the ideas of humans bodies and i am creating bodies with my own, Anthony Gormley’s work is very instresing in how he uses the human figure within his art.

In Gormley’s work he investigates the human body and space, a lot of his work involves nature, I wanted to look at his work for more detailed inspiration as I had already started making casts of my own body before I found out that he makes some of his work by casting his own body. In my project I was mainly focusing on full bodies. Unlike some of Gormley’s work where he will cast parts of his body and put them together with a beam to make them seem whole.

quotes from websites

‘Increasingly, in the early 1980s Gormley was drawn to examine questions of humanity in relation to the environment. He made his first whole-body casts for Three Ways: Mould, Hole and Passage in 1981. As he continued, he varied materials and positions (crouching, standing, kneeling, lying down), sometimes distorting the human figure (as by elongating the arms) or replacing human features with other objects (as by putting a cast beam where the head should be). As gallery goers paused to examine the sculptures, they themselves seemed to be both the observers and the observed.’

Antony Gormley | Biography, Art, Sculpture, Angel of the North, & Facts | Britannica

Above is a quote I got from the Britannica about Gormley’s works and especially about his first body cast and his journey through them. Although I have been focusing on whole body it has crossed my mind to do body parts of half a body. His works is about the human body not as an object but as an experience and a place. Below is a quote about the meaning of his art found on wiki but is his words.

quotes from websites

‘Gormley describes his work as “an attempt to materialise the place at the other side of appearance where we all live.”^[10] Many of his works are based on moulds taken from his own body, or “the closest experience of matter that I will ever have and the only part of the material world that I live inside.”^[10] His work attempts to treat the body not as an object, but as a place and in making works that enclose the space of a particular body to identify a condition common to all human beings. The work is not symbolic but indexical – a trace of a real event of a real body in time.’

This shows how he is trying to experience the human body in another way and like he is trying to understand its concept more rather than its biological presents, this could be the same for someone wanting to put art on their body or to change it in a way to make them feel more themselves. The idea on how he wants to explore the body and he uses his own makes me relate to his work about how I have tattoos to explore my body and grow myself and feel more myself.

There is a lot within this video about his works and how he makes them, I found this so interesting. Although I have made a lot of casts and I am using string, unlike how he is using mode rock, I was interested in seeing how he creates his casts as I have cut myself while making them. In all fairness he is creating them in the same way as I am. After seeing how he has used the Modroc and that it will create a much stronger sculpture I will start to experiment with using it to create a cast, I feel it will also be a quicker process.

The next step I want to take within my project is I want to look at using Modroc for parts of my body, then use these to develop my idea with having the fake flowers on the string. I might see if I can grow flowers in them as it will hold soil better but also have some holes and see if I can grow the flowers in an organic messy way to show self growth.

A DEAD LETTER – Dead Roses

Month: February 2022