Deer Blog,

 The deer are progressing nicely. I've made attempts at an animation using leaves and push pins without a whole load of follow through. The leaves were very smelly and wouldn't last much more than a few days the way they were, which meant I needed a new way of creating the animation. So I tried push pins instead. But this time it was my ability to make a clean animation that failed me. It was rather erratic. So instead of doing a close up shot then zoom like I originally planned, I tried a much smaller scale deer in full view. Drawing in each new frame in pencil before I I used the push pins. This drawing turned out to be just as nice. Great sense of movement from it. Looks like a mad, deer rave.

I like how these actually left an after image AS WELL, in the form of the holes from the pins

I wanted to try my hand at stencleing and spray painting. So, after trying one for my own personal fun (which is now going in the canteen), I made a progression of a deer running using acetate. But I also noticed how cool the bits I cut out were and decided to hang them in sequence.
Unfortunately, I feel the stencils may be a little too static to describe movement. But I'm not quitting it yet.

Nothing to do with the project. Just for shits and giggles.

Oh DEERy Me!

Again I've continued recording people and trying to recreate this action in several materials. Some of the results of this, this week are these:

I like how this one describes the action of the figure. The heavier black spots being where he stops for a few moments

These are just simple hand done stitches. I wanted to use a machine, but ya know, health and safety takes the fun out of everything.

1st years got the chance to do print lately. Had to take the opportunity

I noticed patterns I liked on a larger piece, so I stuck my favorites together. 

 But as with anything I've become bored with people and need to step things up a gear. I'm going to look at deer (hence the title). With not a lot of time on my hands I haven't been able to get to the woods near my house to view the deer there, so as a substitute I've been watching You-Tube videos to study them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WskPDhUJ_Ho

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FflhoyV9EvA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgI0jU6dgvM&list=PLSuvJtq7Sw7e83tXXQnWAc1cybWy-ekte&index=20&feature=plpp_video

They can duck, dodge and dive oh so well. They can sense their space much better than people. Makes for much more interesting pieces as well. I've made a small flip book depicting a short burst of a deer. 

The Magdalene Sister's Magdalene Laundries

 

I have taken part in a project that is both collaborative AND individual, that looks at the history of our College. Specifically the Magdalene Laundries that once existed here. In our studio group we watched several films about the Laundary and the women who were imprisoned here. Some by David, the man who began us on this project, and other films that he has accumilated over the years. Most of these films are striking and emotional as they focus on the struggle these women went through. We also discovered how the Art College is slowly trying to cover up what once happened here. Slowly removing any remaining traces of it. We can still see it happening today. New paint, refurbishment and removal of religious iconic statues.

 

The removal of those statues is what the photo above is about. As part of this project we also had to produce a piece of film or photo that focuses on this particular part of history of the college. I noticded that there was a pedastal and grotto at the bottom of the garden, void of a statue. This pedastal can be seen in the archived photo's of Evelyn Glynn's website Breaking The Rule Of Silence.

http://www.magdalenelaundrylimerick.com/archival.html

The one in between the two rows of trees is the one I looked at. The one on the right is gone without a single trace of it ever having been there. I decided to replace this statue with a live model, A.K.A. my friend Mollie. I couldn't find out exactly what used to be there so I gave an educated guess that it was a statue of Mary. But unforetunatly it crossed my mind that it could have been a depiction of the Mother and Child. Without any children to pose with, it had to be ignored. But I think this worked out as a nice symbol for how the mothers of the laundries were also left without their children. Especially in this particular place. Often the children would be taken from the mothers and placed into the orphanage right next door. The two groups weren't allowed any contact with one another what so ever.

It's a sad truth that this hrrible treatment of women was ever present in our society. Especially when we remember a lot of women were put in there only o suspicion of sexual conduct. Punished for something they didn't do, or for something that's perfectly natural and human.

Ghosts in the College

After first trying out the new method of describing people moving through space on the smaller tracing paper I immediately wanted to go bigger. Lets admit it, size matters. So I borrowed my dads projector and kept the same technique of slowing down the video just on a much larger canvas. It got an awful lot more fun very quickly. With this bigger screen it's easier to let my arm go wild and move naturally and swiftly, which produced some of my favorite work so far.

This is one person, coming in from outside and standing, for a moment, right beside my camera.

This is several people as they walk by the camera. Not all at once. But over a period of about 10 minutes.

These ghost like figures are much more interesting than the arrows as they actually describe the space without the space being present. Distance can be seen as the figures get smaller, direction and even speed can be seen by how far apart the lines become. I like how it's all one figure but they're all seperate at the same time. One leg often becomes apart of two figures, connecting the two. I also love how versatile they are. It's very simple to depict a line in many different ways. So far I'v used wire and rope as a line. But I want to try using a sewing machine on fabric, electrical tape and even try making some 3D pieces. 

2 continuous pieces of rope. Going in opposite directions. I like how it seems they were just laid there in  quick pattern.

A basic attempt at a 3D, wire version.

These are wire sort of stitched into the cardboard to show someone going down a stairs.

Today I had the privilege to take part in a life drawing class looking at movement. It seemed to perfectly fit into my project so well I just had to try. it focused on what the model (a dancer) was doing more than what she looked like. The longest pose we did lasted just 1 minutes. The shortest was 10 seconds. So in those lengths there really wasn't time for detail.

This is one of the first I did, there's a few poses there. Each erased  then another is added on top.  I think the poses lasted a minute.

This is more a representation of what she's doing, each pose lasted 10 seconds each (i think). One foot would stay in the same place as it was in in the last pose and that was our starting off point. 

This is the last one I did for the day. Again the foot stayed in the same position, connecting the bodies, but we had a minute for each pose. It was difficult to get back into including any kind of detail after scribbling for an hour and a half. 

Arrows, Ghosts and Lights

For a while I've been trying to bring my movement through space concept in a new direction. To some but little avail.

The first attempt brought e back to a very basic version of the afterimage plan, where I took a sparkler into a dark car park and slowed the shutter speed of my camera right down to create the trail of light. I wanted to go over and back to make one long continos line, but I must have had it at the wrong setting because it took much shorter snipits of a line that reminded me of something like glow worms.

This was just something I really wanted to try and really has little do do with anything now but it's still a little relevant.

Eventually I managed to get hold of some acetate for the frame. They turned out largely simialar to the originals. But I prefer them, partially because of the colour and the face they're versitile in the way they can be hung and displayed. The first is the 2 sheets placed one on top of the other. Then the other photos are the sheets individually. Bpey right they should be side to side, but hey, experimintation I guess.

 And finally to take the whole arrow and watching where people walk thing in a new direction by actually attempting to draw the people as they walk past. But trying this in my sketcchbook, I didn't have any time to add in much detail, so I recorded the hallway for a few minutes and edited the film to slow it down. Then using tracing paper I drew over the people with one continuos line, kind of like the Walk The Dog drawings from my childhood. I much prefer these to the arrows and they still give a sense of direction AND of momntum and distance.