semester 2 - Bottles

I found some nice old bottles in a charity shop and started putting the prints and the scraps I had collected from the prints into the bottles as if they were 'pickled'. I wanted the memories that people had written down and given to me to be preserved so I put the acetate photocopies of them in with the prints and acetate photographs. I also put melted wax in the top of the bottle to represent a seal so that the memories were kept sealed inside the bottles. It was like a sort of experiment as i used things such as vinegar and nail varnish remover inside the bottles to see what effect they would have on the prints and acetate.

Photographs of the bottles with some acetates in the background.

This is a photograph of the bottles on top of a light box. Although it is not a great photograph, this is the best way to see what is in the bottles as the light shines through the ascetates and prints so that you can see the density of different layers inside the bottles. The purple-ish bottle on the right is filled with nailvarnish remover which of course disolves the ink used to make the prints.The ink that i used for this bottle was purple! Although some of the ink came off of the prints when they were put in the nail varnish bottle some of the ink still stayed on the paper. I liked the fact it was as though the memories inside were disolving as time went on and fading away untill they are almost totally gone.

Here i put ascetate copies of the old photgraphs onto a projector and projected them onto a wall. I also put the bottles on the projector , and took these photographs from an angle where it looks as though the bottles are in the foreground of the picture and the image in the background is sort of ghostly. I like the contrast of the solidity of the bottles with the permeability of the projection in the background.

Close up of a bottle with a light behind.

Close up 2

Bottle with 'Push lights ' lights behind it.. I was thinking about how to present these bottles as they need light to look their best. I was considering making shelves or light boxes to stand them on with lights behind.

Close up or bottle on projecter. I think the colour of the light from the projector better than
the light from the 'push lights'

close up of neck of a bottle with wax inside.

I love the colours in this image. This bottle contains both purple and black ink prints along woth wax and ascetate.

Semester 2- ascetate and shadow

This is an ascetate photocopy of me overlapped with a memory that my mum wrote. The ascetate is pinned to a white wall, however it is not pinned flat to the wall it is curved round so that it stands out from the wall. i shone a light onto the surface creating a shaddow on the wall behind. when photographed the image looks blurry and slightly deformed.

I often associate my own identity with my memories and my experiences. I wanted this image to be unclear and blurred for the purpose of reflecting my opinion on identity.

These images (although not the clearest) are ascetates which are mounted on the wall and manipulated and curved so that they do not sit flat against the wall. There is small push lights behind them and i put them in the corner of a room so that when the lights are on and the room is dark the image from the ascetate is projected onto the wall. The projected image curves due to the way the ascetate has been pinned on the wall.

These are ascetate copies of my uncles grave during the war with a memory that another of my uncles wrote about a time in his life when he achived something. I thought this image and the writing went well together. Here i have photographed the ascetates on the wall with shaddows behind them. The ascetates are curved on the wall making the whole image and its shadow curved also and creating a different look in each photograph.

These are again ascetates and shadows. I like the contrast of solidity (the ascetate) and permiability (the shaddow of the ascetate.)

With these images i was thinking about the way in which a memory - a moment which existed at some point in time becomes something that can never exist as an object. It is always just a moment in time that can become unclear and forgotten about. For me these images represent life as it happens (the ascetate itself) and life as it passes in a memory (the shadow of the ascetate)

Semester two-Collecting Memories

Over Christmas I went home again and asked my family and friends to write down some memories. I wanted anything they could think of, big or small, just as long as it was something that stuck out in their memory.

I started playing about with the photographs using the photocopier to put them onto ascetate and over lap them with the "memories" i had collected.

This is an image of my grampa when he was young..I photocopied it onto ascetate and overlapped it with an ascetate copy of a letter that my gran had written about some memories from the war and the Clydebank Blitz.

A close up of the last image. i reversed the text on puropse as i didnt want the underlying story to be too obvious.

I really like this image. it is a photograph of two ascetates overlapped, one which had been made on the colour photocopier, and the other black and white. I was aiming to have this ghostly effect.

This is a positive and negitive ascetate copy of an image of my uncle who I have never met before. He died at war aged 18 and was buiried in Germany at one of the cemeteries.

I put these images onto a light box and photographed them.

I like the way that in this image the features are slightly altered by the positioning of the negative ascetate behind.

Semester one- Printmaking

During reading week in the first semester I decided to take my work in a more personal direction. I begain looking for some artist inspiration and came across Christian Boltanski who's main focuses were memory, identity and loss, topics which throughout the last two years i have continued to touch upon in my work. I began to think about my identity, my memories, life experiences and upbringing and realised that i dont know very much about my family's past so I decided to take a trip back home to see my family. I visited my grandparents and asked them if i could have a look at some old photographs. We came accross a box of old photographs of lots of relitives, many of whom i had never seen or heard of before, and most of whom died a long time ago. I wondered about the identity of the people, even my grandparents couldnt name some of them off hand!

Apart from being quite personal to me and my family the old photographs were beautiful, black and white and tinged with age, curling at the corners and covered in hair like creases. Some were more worn than other with tears and scratches-real evidence of time.

After reading week I had a printmaking module in uni.I learned the process of etching which i enjoyed, however i didnt feel that the end result worked very well with my ideas. I started working on some lithography prints using scans of the photgraphs i had taken from home. I really enjoyed litho as it is very productive and easily corrected if anything goes wrong! Here are a few of the lithography prints that i made (i have lots more still to upload) :

These are lithography prints of my uncle done in purple ink overlapped by lithography printsof some family title deeds done in grey ink . I inked up the litho plate of my uncle and scattered some ripped up pieces of newsprint over it before taking the initial print. I then inked the title deeds plate and took the scraps of news print off the first plate, reversed them and put them over the title deeds then printed this over the initial print to get this result.

I collected all of the scraps of paper and photographed them and then hung them from string in the studio (note to self:INSERT IMAGES HERE!)

This was the same technique only both prints were done in black ink. I prefer this result.

I then went on to experiment with different types of paper ; transparent papers like tissue and tracing paper, paper which had photocopies of the photographs and various drawings i had done which i then printed over and textured paper made from natural fibres. I also printed onto twigs and leaves that i found lying about and used these later to put into bottles (which you'll see on my next blog!)

This is a print made from tissue paper which i folded before printing onto and overlapping with another print. I put it on a light box before photographing so that you can see the different layers.

This is a print i made using three different types of paper folded and stuck together. Although you cant see the print in this photograph it is nice to see the different layers with the light shone through them. I then took the 3 pieces of paper apart and presented them as 3 seperate prints.

Semester One- Light Photographs

A walk Through Dundee at night-

I found that in the first part of the first semester my ideas were not focused at all, my work was all over the place and didnt have any solid meaning or emotion to it. I find that if my work has no depth it causes me to loose interest quickly . The night that i took these photos i had been getting annoyed with the work i has been attempting to make in the studio and decided to go for a walk. I took my camera with me to take some photos of light at night - since i was still focusing on the theme of "light" . My camera was on a sort of long exposure setting and when taking a photograph and moving the camera i got this effect:

Manipulating the light

The moon- i like how strong the line is here and the fact that the glow of the moon is still present.

Strange sensation!- The dundee 'sensation' building. good colours.

The moon on the tay- I really like this image. It is the view across the tay as never seen before! I was fascinated by the fact that these images would only ever happen once- that is to say that no matter how hard you tried, you could never take the same photograph again! I also thought about the fact that each light represented a person- a house, a car, a streetlight. when i looked at the view through my own eyes i could see the silhouettes of buildings and the landscape on the other side of the Tay, but through the camera all that remains is the light.

Manipulating light 2

Passing Traffic- I liked how this image is alive and moving, you can almost sense the cars going by and see their speed traveling accross the image without actually seeing the car itself. I think it is interesting how you can actually observe a passage of timethrough these photographs. You can see the jorney in which the car travelled infront of the camera. Like a documentation of time as it happens.

I had a lot of fun taking these photos and enjoyed the results too. I liked the unprecictibility and unique-ness of the images. However, they still lacked the depth i was needing.

Blog 2- 1st Semester light and shadow work

First Semester of Second year Work-

I feel like i should have started this blog right back in 1st year, however, you cant turn back time. So i am going to back track on the work i have done so far this year. I have made a promise to myself to upload even the stuff that i really hate.

Shadows and light:

I began the 1st semester of 2nd year studying shadows and light. I made a series of "shaddow + light drawings" done by tracing different patterns and shadows made on walls or surfaces by lightpatches (sort of like prism reflections) or objects which were being reflected and projected onto the surfaces by the natural light of the day.(i will try and scan those images onto here when i get to a scanner) light makes beautiful and unusual patterns that often go unnoticed. I wanted to document them.

I then went on to make a light box using a stencil i made from one of the shaddow drawings. the light box projected the image onto the wall (see above) and i was able to bend the light round corners and manipulate the way it looked. I thought it was really beautiful to see these amazing, natural shapes projected in large scale, this time using artificial light. I really liked the images i got from this shaddow box, however, due to technical difficulties, i ended up loosing all but this one image!

lightbulbs:

Since i was focusing on light i was using a lot of old lightbulbs, i began drawing the shaddow drawings onto the powder which is on the inside of most lightbulbs (i think it is called phosphor) and made these small sculptures using candles and the lightbulbs.

Some projections of the lightbulbs after they had been drawn on.

When i produced this work I didnt think it was very worthy of much as i was simply messing about with materials and ideas and there was no strong, underlying philosophy to my work.

I dont think the work that i did at this time was very strong or successful. However, looking back and with consideration of my current work, I think there are certain aspects which would work well with what i am focusing on now.