Month: March 2022

Who Is Honey Williams

Her website: www.thehoneyeffect.wordpress.com/

Honey Williams is a very diversified artist within a lot of mediums. Illustration, painting, singing, songwriting, djing and mural making these are all of her talents. while growing up within Nottingham Saint Anns she was surrounded by a black dominating community. Within her Jamaican family she went to church a lot and got involved within many choirs.

Where Her Love For Art Came From

On her first day at school they where told to draw so she did, thinking it was stupid she didn’t want people seeing her work. yet the teacher did, she was amazed by the work and congratulated honey. This made honey thrilled and her love of are grew.

Education

Through out Honey’s education she was bullied and miss understood, by student and teacher. Due to think bullying the teacher kicked honey out of the art glass within GCSE, to get her away from the bullies. later in life she realized the teacher was in the wrong for doing that. She then went on to study art and design, media and pop music in collage, within this period she applied to universities with her teachers telling her that no student from her collage has ever got into the university of Central Saint Martins London. she got into the university. Below is a link to the university and its courses.

https://www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/central-saint-martins

Her strong contextual meaning behind her work really started while she was in university when she left misunderstood by the teacher for not understanding her anit-racial driven work. the work, Hair Politics (2004), that was focused towards the texture and shape of natural black hair, within this she wrote words that have been used to describe the hair, these words acting as the hair of the model within the painting.

As a black women herself Honey felt her message to the world was very important. At first this was just about the stigma around natural black hair and how wearing it natural lead to being fired from jobs or sent out of school. She used her art to make people understand but no one did, this lead to her mainly focusing in music within her university years (she worked with lots of people within the industry), even thought she did come out with a degree within graphic design. This lead to her not doing art for around 8 years.

One day she wanted to start doing art again but this really gained her flow back when everyday she would do art within her diary, this at first was random art but soon became a personal thing to her where it would be able what she did that day, this lead to art becoming a massive part of her life again.

websites and commission

Once Honey had left a university, she set up a website dedicate to appreciating natural black beauty, at first being called Contemporary Natural Hair then later on the website name changed to The pickyheads.

https://thehoneyeffect.wordpress.com/tag/the-pickyheads/

In the photos above are some of the works she has been commissioned to make, ranging from winning in a competition so she got to paint a mural in Jamaica to helping teacher people to appreciate black women more this became her main context within her works. One commission she was asked to make was a collaboration, photos of black coal miners where cut up and collages by a group of people who all suffer with different disabilities, then she painted a coil miner on top of the collage.

The Rest Of My Notes About Honey

Valie Exoport born in 1940 is an austrian artist who works in several different mediums, he most famous works are her provocative public performances.

Context behind her works

As a feminist it was only natural for her art to show this, behind her art was a meaningful message about women’s bodies and the attitude people had towards women. her art would flip what we would see as something sexualizing women into the women’s body sexualizing’s that object. she did this through many different ways, including pain and damage to her body.

Body Sign Action (1970)

Within 1970, artist Valie Export did a had a live performance , Body Sign Action, where she was tattooed on the top of her thigh. The tattoos was a image of a garter and the top of a stocking. Although the tattoo maybe seem meaningless to some, this is a massively empowering tattoo, I have found a website explaining the context below the photo. it is suggested that this is the first time a tattoo has been used within fine art.

By showing a physical meaning to how she feels, objectified and sexlized by men she has taken a stand in one of the most permanent ways possible. This then makes it an em-powering movement and taking control of her own body. within the text is a quote from herself.

This shows how even though she wants to fight the sense that women are repressed both within a sexual way but also sexulized for being a women.

This videos explains her works, but also about ‘Body Sign Action and what it is and the meaning behind it and her works. within this videos is also a deeper exploration of feminism at the time and how much of an impact Export brought to art as she was the only female in the movement at the time.

Within this video Export talks about the reasoning behind why she choose her name, that export was a way for her to push everything away and be who she is with no one else name. creating her own identity and image, this would soon become her own brand. within her art use uses herself and her name is herself there for her art and herself became one.

Valie Export’s works

Contextually my art and hers does not have much in common, expect both wanting to change common social issues that are around us. But i still find inspiration within her work, and how she has completed it. As i have used my body for my art and in order to get it to where i want to be i have brought physical harm to myself in order to fight these issues.

Another contextual matter that it develops on from my own, is the right to be fighting for everyone to be equal no matter who, what or where you have come from. just as she is fighting for women to be equal and not objectified.