October 2013 Review draft

I have had a massive 'work spurt' this month! I seem to have periods of frantic activity where I get a lot done. This is the start of my Final Project and I have lots of ideas to explore and exhibitions to visit.
Having the targets for each individual week mapped out in front of me in the planning table is quite a good way of motivating myself to get stuff done.
I have looked at insects as another elicitor of disgust and made some images. I visited museums and galleries. I have discovered that some methods of learning do not work for me!! (post: Photoshop Session) I have learnt from a student the proper way to flip a section of image either vertically or horizontally. He explained slowly while I was doing it.This will make a big difference in the accuracy of my images.

Flipping horizontally and vertically

I studied Gymnastics at college and learnt to do all kinds of flips  and vaults over the horse-'long arm over-swing', 'neck spring', 'forward and back flips'…
 When I learnt to manipulate sections of images to make the kaleidoscopic effect, I related the steps back to learning to vault. This sounds crazy, but must be connected to my Kinaesthetic learning style!

I have a set of hand written notes next to me while I am doing this and work very slowly, with lots of mistakes!

To start with, I select a section from the original image that 'has a lot going on in it'. By that I mean interesting shapes, contrasting light and colours.

The area in the centre with a combination of dark and pale branches and some grass in the background looks interesting.
 I cut a section using the select tool, create a new page,  and drop the new section onto it.

Then I copy that layer 6 times. Sometimes I do up to 22 sections, but I start with 6.
Using command and 'T' I select a copied section and line it up exactly alongside the original section.

Then using Edit,- Transform,- flip Vertical or Horizontal, I start to create symmetry.

I build up the image in blocks, making the pattern radiate out from the centre. At this stage I have to make choices about how I want the pattern to develop. I try to imagine the finished shapes once all the sections have been lined up and flipped. I can choose to create a flower-like structure, with the shaped radiating from the centre, or I can focus on drawing shapes out to the borders of the image, to frame it.

As the image builds up, I either get excited or disappointed as I can see how it is going to look when complete. I finish it anyway just to see if my prediction is right. here I stopped at 4 sections as I thought there was enough detail in it to make a strong and interesting image that draws you into the centre, then leads your eyes along the coral like, intertwined branches.

I can either make the final image bigger and more complex by continuing to build up the tiles, or I reach a stage when I think it is finished. Sometimes it is hard to stop, as I want to see what happens when I keep adding!
Then I flatten the image and apply any colour and contrast adjustments. (again using my scribbled notes)

The final Image:

I added a black frame and have increased the black level using curves, this darkens the background, bringing the organic shapes into sharper contrast. The black from the frame has crept into the image at the top and bottom. Although this is unintentional, I quite like the effect. But I will have to find out how to stop this happening. I will ask one of my Creative Arts students.
I try to save each piece of work with a memorable name and number in series as I have found it hard sometimes to find images again. My filing needs more attention, but I am getting there! I now have a collection of themed folders on my desktop like 'Twigs' and 'Gothic'

The Mutter Museum

This is a medical Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia which displays preserved, bottled, stuffed, polished bodies, organs, skulls, growths all illustrating the effects of deformity and disease. A woman called Gretchen Worden was the curator from 1982 and increased the number of visitor dramatically, from hundreds to thousands by T.V appearances where she showed off some choice exhibits. After her death, a room was named after her.

An article in the New York Times describes the room that was opened in September 2005.
‘There are jars of preserved human kidneys and livers, a man’s skull so eaten away by syphilis that it looks like a pounded rock. There are dried severed hands shiny as lacquered wood, showing their veins like leaves...and Jim and Jo the green-tinted corpse of a two headed baby, sleeping in a bath of formaldehyde’

I think if I had given birth to Jim and Jo I would not let them be pickled and put on display to horrify and titillate the visitors! I wonder how these specimens were procured? Mothers were probably told that they would not want to see their dead baby as it was 'horribly deformed.'
But you would think that the parents would want to have a proper burial. I don't think they were given the choice.

The Abject

The art I am looking at could be described as ‘Abject’ because it is made in response to or to evoke a sense of disgust and even fear like decay, death, bodily waste and so on. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines Abject as ‘... craven, self- debasing, degraded, despicable’

Kristeva, (1982)  in her essay on Abjection suggests that we are repelled and draw to it at the same time. It is all the things that threaten our own cleanliness and sense of propriety. So seeing vomit or blood, an open wound, an oozing sore are abject. She says that seeing a dead body is repulsive to us as we are forced to face someone who has been ‘cast out’ of our cultural world. It reminds us that we are all just organic matter and will rot away.

The biological recognition of the Abject is nausea, panic and fear. I did feel a sense of mild disgust when I looked at Sherman’s  work depicting discarded food and vomit. But I also wondered how she made the vomit and imagined her setting up the shoot in her home studio. My practical side blocked the disgust.

Kristeva, J. Powers Of Horror: An Essay On Abjection. Columbia University Press, 1982

Vomit

During my research I have discovered that there is a globally felt repulsion at bodily fluids-things from the inside of our bodies that have come outside. There is a sense of 'wrongness' about this. We don't want to be reminded that we are made up of sometimes smelly and unpleasant substances. That we are organic beings that can rot and die.

Cindy Sherman ‘Untitled – 175′ (1987)

This photo from the ‘Disaster Series’ is firstly a constructed beach setting with sand, sun cream, sunglasses and a towel. But then there are food remains and vomit strewn over the scene and a worried looking woman reflected in the sunglasses. Sherman seems to be commenting on the sad phenomenon of bulimia where food is gorged, then vomited. It suggests loneliness and self- revulsion. The woman has removed herself and seems to be looking in disgust at what she has done to herself.

I like the landscape composition created by shooting the image at a low level. This has stretched and warped the objects making them into lakes and hills. The predominance of green adds to the decomposed and repulsive effect. According to Ruth White (2009) in her blog ‘Sherman shows her audience that women who take part in these performative acts are killing their own identity and eventually perhaps their physical selves’

I was looking at this series of images as research for my kaleidoscopes based on sections of images of rotten meat, blood, bones, flies and a dying orchid. My comment was in response to the old combination of beauty and decay existing side by side in our lives.

disgust in signs of deformity or disease

Had to make a visual note of these three images all showing growths on the face. I suppose the face is the first and most obvious visual feature that represents who we are and shows our personality and changing moods. That is why any deformity here is most startling as we have to walk around showing it to the world every day.

 Julie Cockburn

LucyandBart

Huntarian Museum, Glasgow University.


Disgust at signs of physical deformity and disease is a global reaction, as researched and discussed by Rachel Herz, a lecturer at Browns University.

Herz, R. (2012) 'That's Disgusting:Unravelling the Mysteries of Disgust' NewYork:W.W. Norton & Co. Inc

The Huntarian Museum

Continuing with the theme of display of objects but also looking at the seduction/repulsion effect, I visited this museum in Lincoln's Inn Field. It was opposite the John Soans Museum that I visited a few months ago.

John Hunter was a surgeon in the 18^th Century who was a pioneer of the systematic and scientific approach to the study of anatomy. He amassed a collection of specimens giving examples of diseases and deformities including preserved embryos and giant skeletons. It is believed that Hunter obtained the 7’7” skeleton of the giant Charles Byrne, having it delivered to the back of his house by grave robbers. (‘Inside Out London’ BBC Oct.2013) I wonder if his family knew about this? The specimens were collected for study by new surgeons and the furthering of knowledge and understanding. However as was probably the case with 19^th Century visitors, you cannot help but experience a strange shivery thrill of wonder and horror at the same time. This is the clash and jolt experience I would like to create in my work.

The crystal room Huntarian Museum

 

Female Skull. Huntarian Museum

 

This is the skull of a 19th century woman who had a terrible bony tumour growing on her face for the period of 3 years. I presume it finally cut off her airways and killed her.

 The red 'Dymo' label attached to the glass case seems to mock and somehow diminish the skull, putting  it into the category of specimen number 72A.1- divorcing it from the living woman who existed in that skull.

There is close resemblance to this original deformity and the created deformities of both  Lucy and Bart and other one.

 

Vines

I took some images of old grape vines that were clinging to the ancient walls of the kitchen garden at Waddeston Manor in Buckinghamshire. The little suckers that had held the vine fast were still stuck fast to the wall even though they were not supporting anything any longer. There were shrivelled red leaves and stems still clinging to the vine, but any grapes had been picked of had dried and dropped to the ground.

For some reason, this image had a sense of gothic melancholy.

 I love the texture of the ancient wall behind it and the fact that even though it looked decayed and dried up, it would flourish and bear fruit again next spring.

This was in the same garden but on a different wall which was much warmer and more golden.
I carefully sliced a section out of the image and multiplied and manipulated it to create a truly Gothic
 image. I was thinking about the themes of life and death and how they are side by side in our daily lives. We know that we are all going to die but don't really want to talk about it or be reminded of it. The dried out vine looks dead but retains beauty in its stretching tendrils and curving stems.

I wanted to create symmetry and a sense of harmony from the dead- looking vine.
This has a SteamPunk look and I love the delicate little red tendrils like veins carrying blood to the dried up, parched twigs.

Whilst reading The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kinsolver, I found this passage that fits well with this series of images. She was describing the forest of the Congo.

'Vines strangling their kin in the wrestle for sunlight...
'A choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. The forest eats itself and lives forever' (Kinsolver 607/8)

I hope I have created a sense of that wrestling and a hint of evil lurking in the twisted stems.
But the bright red stalks represent the vibrancy existing alongside the dead.

The sandstone that the vine is clinging to has interesting marks and scratches on it which have added to the texture of the background, making it look like pale grained wood.

Cabinet of Curiosities

I found an old tool box that my neighbour had thrown out and thought it might be a useful way of displaying my work.








I decided to leave the cobwebs and accumulated dust on it as an extra skin.
Cabinets of Curiosities were used to display valuable collections of Natural Science objects, valuable jewels or ores, and even objects from tribes or ancient civilisations whose use was unknown.

I tried laying out a kaleidoscope image that had been made from shells and flowers, then I added the component parts that had made up the image along the little shelf. It was like saying this is what life is made of, a collection of  little, inconsequential experiences, joys and sorrows. But how you use those incoscequences and weave them together to make a firm and substantial life is up to each individual.

I continued by filling the box with artefacts of curiosity and interest which may or may not have been used to create the final image above them. These need to be much more carefully and symmetrically laid out and perhaps labeled with little brown tags like in a museum. I would also like to test out building a perspex lid on the lower section and introducing cockroaches, spiders or perhaps ants or flies to that section. Damian Hurst cow's head and flies-death and rebirth. to add

Planning

I need to log, record and reflect on my progress and planning for my final Project. However,
it needs to be evaluative, and reflective on my final piece as an aesthetic cultural artefact and its relationship to work in the forefront. I have to comment on links drawn between other innovative work and my own.

I plan to continue researching and studying the work of other artists who use fragmentation, refraction, reflection, repetition and symmetry in their work. I will also seek out also those artists who convey horror, repulsion, ugliness or the convergence or juxtaposition of those senses and their opposites; pleasure, attraction, beauty. I am interested in installation and the use of sound and motion combined with my photography. I would like to collaborate with creatives from other disciplines within the Creative Arts. I have ideas about creating something that an audience can participate in and interact with; perhaps setting off unpleasant or unsettling reactions.
Psychology deals with bringing to light those fears, experiences, thoughts we would rather keep hidden. The 'Trickster' according to Freud or Jung's 'Shadows'. In order to become whole, we need to get those fears out into the light and confront them.
My work reflects a need to create order and beauty; to smooth things over and make bad or frightening experiences and objects more palatable and aesthetically pleasing. Louise Bourgeois described  creating work as being her therapy. Yayio Kosama stated that without her art she would go mad. There seems to be a fine line between creativity and madness. Perhaps by confronting my fears and accepting  that life is never ordered and 'perfect'  I am administering my own therapy and portraying a sense of calm as  created by a mesmerising symmetrical image.
 Am I trying to say ' Horror and fear and misery exist in life, but you can avoid them, hide them, ignore them' But I am beginning to look back at the edges of my shadows and perhaps beginning to peep into their depths. I have not been brave enough to confront them face to face, let them fall across me and take my light...
 I am subdued by other peoples expectations, needs and demands. I have the role of the glue that holds my family and friends together. Just as I want to manipulate images into a more perfect, detailed and balanced whole, I am forever trying to do the same for people.

I have always liked installations and art that lure you in, then give you a shock, a jolt, an unexpected, sometimes unpleasant discovery or realisation.
To Jar is a good way to describe this effect.
according to www.thefreedictionary.com
To jar is to:
 disturb or irritate
to startle, unsettle, shock
to have a harshly unpleasant or perturbing effect on one's nerves or feelings
To have a sudden unsettling effect upon the mind, feelings or senses.

I do not have an unnatural fascination with death or the macabre, but it seems that I am being drawn in that direction. From my earlier research into the Memento Mori in Dutch paintings to the use of insects, meat and animal parts in my own work I am moving on to the fascination with the contrast between death and beauty.
 In the Dutch still life, there are little winged or multi- legged reminders amidst the flowers that beauty will fade, disease will invade you and you will die. In the 16th century the continuation of that message may have been-so repent and be a good Christian and earn a better, never ending life in heaven. But today the message is more like-so do everything you want, have surgery to look young, you deserve to have experiences and adventures, lots of sex with whoever you choose, a bucket list to tick off,  an expensive lifestyle, watch, holiday, car... Death will still catch up with you though! I once heard a woman discussing her plastic surgery on the train. One fragment was:
'I want to be the best looking corpse in the grave yard' which struck me as a very sad and unusual ambition!

Panspermia

I was advised to look at the work of Simeon Nelson, a lecturer at UH.
I have seen him around the building, but never spoken to him. Now, since looking at his work, I feel I know him. He seems to be interested in creating a whole, detailed and beautiful image out of scraps and found or observed objects. His technical skill is much more advanced than mine.

     'Love will tear us apart'  (2002)

 I love the way he layers objects from disparate sources over each other, causing the viewer to hunch closer to the screen and examine the seemingly 3D patterns that draw you in until you feel you might fall  and go spiralling down through the leaves and electrical circuits and crash into the delicate skulls down below!
I want to create that sense of depth which I think my work lacks at the moment.
Nelson seems to have created a new world that crashes Science and Nature together.

Wasteland (2002)

 The roots and vines here are overlaid onto bright scraps and rubbish gathered from forgotten places.The effect is that of lace or fine embroidery.

In response to this work, I used an image I took on a walk, of branches and twigs covered completely with lichen. I like the green and yellow tones.

Coles (2013) Twigs

Lucy and Bart

These artists from Australia and The Netherlands collaborated on a project to 'Showcase a future where the search for beauty is altered with plastic surgery.'
There deformed and ridiculous human shapes poke fun at the extremes people will go to to be seen as 'beautiful' There is a fine line between beauty and ugliness. Too much of a good thing pushing and tipping the human form into a distortion and ridicule of nature.
This first image uses textiles to create exaggerated, colourful 'growths' on the face just as Cockburn created in the last post.

 Julie Cockburn

 LucyandBart

 The female form above seems to have been transformed into a kind if half woman half insect super hero. But the apparent strength and power as represented by the pose and the muscular shapes are deflated by the obvious use of tights to hold all the added lumps on! This adds a sense of the absurd.

The image above have been created by building soft sensuous forms almost like intestines or human organs that have been loaded and entwined round the  the body in deformed lumps and oozing soft layers like fat rolls. He looks like a baby encased in a giant insect lava. The clash of human/insect forms and the presentation of Humour and disgust at the same time are similar to what I am aiming to convey in my practice too. 

This work is truly at the forefront as the artists are considering  contemporary themes-of personal identity and body politics, but are representing them in a completely new way.

LucyandBart.co.uk 

www.flowersgallery.com/artists/julie-cockburn

Julie Cockburn

Cockburn works with found portraits from charity shops, car boot sales, 1950s studio shots of starlets. All the images below come from " Filling the Cracks with Ceiling Wax"/seesaw productions 2010
She manipulates, embellishes and 'spoils' the faces, creating misfits. On some she adds embroidery that looks like henna decoration or Maroi tattoos.

 Manipulated found image

Other faces have been chopped into small shapes and fitted back together in a strange kaleidoscope.

 Manipulated found image

 According to Ellie Harrison-Read (2010 Flowers Gallery)  'Cockburn's mode of attack is defacement... to both blemish(destroy or diminish the perfection of) and embellish(beautify by or as if by ornamentation)' These images have a sad aura to them as once probably cherished and treasured keepsakes of friends or family members that have been discarded  and neglected. Cockburn brings new life to them in the Dadaist tradition of Object Trouve.

Manipulated found image

This image reminds me of the work of LucyandBart It could be commenting on disease or deformity,which are areas I am researching-albeit reluctantly and timidly on occasions!

In all the works, Cockburn has taken a stylised ideal of beauty and correctness-best clothes, best smile and distorted it into something strange and 'ugly' in its imperfection. I am also experimenting with this positive/negative juxtapositioning.

The splicing, breaking up and re-assembling of the portraits feels like an irreverent  invasion which results in an image that is unexpected and unsettling to me. As mentioned earlier, the feeling evoked chimes with the themes I am exploring of attraction and repulsion, beauty and ugliness.
 The manipulation, the photographic graffiti jar on my sensibilities because I see the original, unsullied happy smiling poses of people full of life and hope, attractive, loved, who are all probably dead. Cockburn's work makes me wonder about her subjects-were they happy? did they enjoy their lives? Why were their images discarded?

Cockburn's work is at the forefront in the field of photography as she is taking very traditional staged studio portraits and subverting them to create something new and original.

But art has succeeded if it inspires a reaction in the viewer. Cockburn's work haunts me, so that's good-isn't it?

Photoshop Session

I went to a photoshop session with the photography undergraduates. My skills are very limited and I thought this would be a good way to start learning more. I sat next the visiting lecturer as he gave me a 1-2-1 session. he whizzed through all the 'basic' skills in a matter of minutes, just turning to me to confirm I was following by saying 'Right?' After the fourth or fifth 'Right?' I knew that I had taken NOTHING in. This was not the way I was going to learn Photoshop. I took copious notes, but it was all moving so fast, I didn't really understand any of it!

Later, I tried to follow the dashed off notes and scribbled sketches, but I couldn't.

I have learnt something from this experience, even if it is just how I DON'T learn! I do not have enough basic experience and understanding of Photoshop to be able to pick up new skills so quickly. 

I need to sit down with a patient person talking me through each step as I do it on my laptop. I have to go through this process several times to completely imbed it into my fraying memory! Then I will write myself a fool proof set of easy to follow, step-by step instructions. 

Creature Encounters

I had a holiday in the Mountains of La Manche in Italy. Didn't take my camera as I had decided to have a complete break. Then I regretted that decision. However, I took some images on an i-phone.
I documented my encounters with the many and varied creatures of this wild and fecund region and made images to illustrate them. I thought this would be useful research for the next stage of my Major Study as  I was facing my own fear and repulsion and then turning the result into something more palatable.

Encounter 1 Butterflies
These were giant rusty orange coloured with brown edges. They were so big it seemed an effort for them to flap their wings and stay in the air. They drunkenly lurched from plant to plant on a zig-zag path. I was fine with them from a distance, but they were alarmingly large as seemed out of control!

Encounter 2 Crickets

I encountered these as I walked across the grass in the garden. Crickets, much bigger than our little green grasshoppers, pinged off the ground from left to right of my feet. I was quite alarmed by this sudden fast movement. But was then fascinated to see that they also opened bright red, green or yellow WINGS which was why they pinged so high and far. I didn't even know these creatures had wings. On closer inspection, the little flashes on their sides told you what colour their wings would be.
Unfortunately, they moved far too fast for me to capture an image with the beautiful wings spread. The only time I was able to take a photo was when I fished a drowned one out of the pool. It was a bit bloated and I didn't want to examine it too closely-to see the wings.

Encounter 3 Lizards

These were of many different colours and sizes. I felt a bit uncomfortable as their heads were too much like snake's. The baby ones looked like broaches and they waddled about quite stiffly as if they had not got used to their little bodies yet. The adults posed motionless in the sun holding up their snake-like heads as if the get a tan. As soon as they sensed my movement they darted into the dry leaves under the bushes. If they had just stayed still I probably wouldn't have seen them, as it was they gave themselves away with their loud crunching and rustling in the leaves. One got quite brave and tried to show off by climbing straight up the wall behind our table, but he ran over the shutter, lost his grip and landed on a plate of tomato salad!  His panic made me panic!    
I like the print-like starkness of this image. Usually I would create about 22 separate sections to make one image, but with this one, I stopped at 4 as I liked the stark simplicity of it.

Encounter 4 Praying Mantis

This encounter was quite spectacular. I was in the pool doing my 30 minutes exercise, using the chicken egg-timer when this bright green insect launched himself from the tiles at the edge. I watched as it tried to get across to the other side, but seemed to be dragged down by the blue surface of the pool.
His wings stuck open on the surface, like a sailing boat that had semi-capsized. He was waving his scary leaf/claw/arms frantically. I wanted to rescue him , but was quite scared of him. So  got the football and used it to lift him out of the water. He stayed perched on the ball wiping his eyes and recovering before he hopped off and hobbled away using his praying arms  like an old man with two knarled, knobbly old walking sticks to help him.

Encounter 5 Giant Ants
Also quite alarming as they were so much bigger than I am used to and sometimes the grass under our sunbeds was undulating with hundreds of these creatures. One morning, after a windy night, there seemed to be new little leafy plants swaying in the short grass. On closer inspection I saw that the giant ants were each holding a seed pod from the trees like a widsurfing sail.

 www.dailymail.com

They tilted and bobbed in the breeze-I am amazed they were able to hang on to them as the pods were twice the size of the ants. They manipulated the pods to the entrance of their home hole and dumped them to go and get more. At the entrance to the hole there was just one ant who was trying to turn, fold, squeeze the pods down the narrow entrance. It reminded me of putting away the Christmas decorations which seem to get bulkier and more awkward every year!

 Interestingly, the ants did not walk into the pool like many other creatures. I rescued lots of bugs, ladybirds, bees, moths, crickets some of which were clinging on to seed pods or petals that were floating on the surface. They got rescued first as a reward for ingenuity.
Some seemed dead, but as soon as they hit dry land they walked off, sorted out their wings, wiped their eyes and flew off.

Below is a leaf beetle who I scooped out of the pool. He dried out for a bit then walked off.

I like the way this image has become quite painterly and soft through the  process of enlargement and

multiplication. 

Encounter 6 Dead Beetle?

I emptied the pool filter most days which was not a fun job as you never knew what you might look  down at as you hooked off the lid. One day there was a large black beetle with a blue sheen on its shiny back floating in the chlorinated container. I used a stick to catch on to one of its spiky legs and laid it on the outdoor table to examine and document it with the phone. The underside of its body was like Batman's suit, but more shiny. It was sealed like a black fibreglass dingy hull. The antennae were droopy and crooked and it was waterlogged.

This image seems to represent my dislike of big black beetles! The shadows created by the legs are sinister and add a 3D quality making the viewer imagine that it could scuttle off the page. The impression of depth is also enhanced by the pale kite-shaped section in the centre of each beetle shape.

After I had taken photos, I left it on the table and went for a swim. When I came back, I saw that a large pool of inky black water had formed round the head end of the beetle's body. As I watched it started to move... one leg, another leg, in a sort of trembly wiggle. I called Phil to witness this miracle. 

The beetle had been floating under the surface of the water, then lying lifeless for about an hour and now it was coming back to life!

I picked a flowering sprig and got the beetle onto it, then carried it onto the grass. (I still did not want to touch the thing as it had little spikes all down its black spindly legs.) As we watched, it straightened its antennae and tested out its legs some more. But I am afraid to say that it did not move away. The next day flies were laying eggs in its body.