CPS – A DEAD LETTER

Honey Williams – Artist Talk

30 March 20223 May 2022Dead Roses

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

StudionAme – visiting a practicing studio

14 March 20223 May 2022Dead Roses

professional study

Who Are Studio Name

StudionAme is a studio with practicing artists of all ages and skills. Located at 2 Brougham Street (1st floor) Leicestershire England LE1 2BA. Within this community there are around 28 artists, some using the space as a place for hobby and other using it for a living.

Steve Sadler	Phil Hackett	Tim Fowler	Emmer Peers	Willow Stacey	Hannah Pillai
Tazim Hamed	Indrė Rimšelytė	Tom Van Herrewewge	Jack Casey	Loz Atkinson	Beth Bell
Lucy Stevens	Lorna Grey	Adam Khalifa	Matt Macken	Beccy Benedict	Christopher Samuel
Emma – Jane Rule	Graeme Hawes	Joe Moran	Nic Evans	Mark Boot	Steven Allbutt
Yuka Namekawa	Northside Bikes	Susan Knox

these are the artists

Within the studio are several different sized studio spaces, the sized of the space you are given is dependent on how much rent you pay, bigger size= more rent. They have a common room area but also an exhibition room the artist can use for free when wanted. This gives them great opportunity to hold exhibitions and to see how their work look together.

studioname.co

Business Cards And Exhibition Leaflets From The Studio:

My Visit To StudionAme

After a volunteering session I was invited to see the studio by practicing artist Emmer Peers, on the Sunday after I went to visit the studio. This was a great experience as we got to look around each of the artists areas, their works and thoughts. While looking around the studios I was able to see work in progress, finished works and even machines that help the artists.

These are photos I took through the studio, this was great inspiration both professionally and contextually. Looking around the studio it gave great example of how they live and help each others art.

Artists We Spoke To

While at the studio I talked to 3 artists being Emmer Peers, Jack Casey and another I can not remember the name of. Once we had looked around we where able to talk to them about any recommendation they have for us to be able to become artist. Jack Casey was really helpful within a professional light, due to explaining to us his journey from becoming part time artist with a job, into a full time artist.

Talking to Emma I found out that there are grants artist can apply for to help them produce their work, from looking i have found one that could be useful within my future projects. The link below is a website from the Leicester Art And Museum Gallery, where they have information about how to get grants and about different grants that are possible to get.

https://www.leicestermuseums.org/arts/funding-grants/#:~:text=Cultural%20Ambition%20Fund%20%28CAF%29%20We%20have%20a%20small,our%20Cultural%20Ambition%20Fund%20page%20for%20more%20information.

To be able to talk professionally to the artists was a really important step, this gave me a really strong insight to understand the next moves I will need to make after I leave DMU. Where if I do not have a studio at home I should look for one. I am fortunate enough to be able to create a studio at home ( I am currently in progress of this). I feel this has been one of the most beneficial experiences I have had this year.

Valie Export – Artist Research

2 March 20222 May 2022Dead Roses

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.

George Segal – Artist Research

2 March 20223 May 2022Dead Roses

George Segal is an artist that lived between 1924-2000, although at first he was a painter, he soon found interest within sculpture. He was mainly related to the pop art movement and was mostly known for his, human sized, sculptures.

method

The method Segal uses to create these casts are, to have a model within the position he wishes then with some Modroc strips (Modroc is a bandage like materials that is impregnated with plaster so when dampened it hardens while drying). He covers his model with the Modroc straps in different sections of the body and waits for the to dry, once dry he takes them off. from this he has the shape of the body. he then uses more strips to put the pieces together again.

example of the method used

This will be similar to the technique that Segal uses, expect at first Segal did not paint his sculptures.

Feeling Of His Work/ Where It Is Placed

As Modroc dries white this lead to his sculptures having a ghostly feel to them. this made an uneasy feeling around the works but also a reinsuring one as they are something we know, humans. His works where presented within public and urban places (e.g streets).

The Context Of The Work

Within this website is a timeline of Segals works, this goes through the sculptures and talks about their meanings and looks. I found this so interesting to read as it gave me a better understanding that his works at first was investigating how humans are venerable creatures, but also the position of his work is as though it is waiting for something that will never happen.

Another topic he looked at was human rights issues, were one of his sculptors was a monument towards gay rights. Although he was straight he created the four figures two males standing together and two females sitting together within a public park. These where taking in good ways and bad, as some thought it was inappropriate for him as a straight man to be making this art.

Other than gay rights, he spoke out about many different issue within the world through his art.

George Segal Sculptures, Bio, Ideas | TheArtStory

George Segal sculptures

Contextually this work relates to mine and I feel it is a very strong way to show it. as within my project i am trying to speak out on issues within society and movements that are being held back. Even thought i could face the same criticism as Segal as a straight women, who supports gay rights.

Though i have been experimenting with string, using Modroc would be a great development due to the quicker time it would take to complete the works. string takes about a week to make a full body, yet Modroc would take around 2-3 days. the ending result would be changed dreamily but possibly for the best due to it being quicker and stronger.

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.