Where I would've liked to go from here:

If I had the time, space and materials, I would have loved to experiment with a full body mannequin.

I am particularly interested in this headless, armless mannequin, as it is the opposite to what I have already worked with. I think it would make an interesting contrast to what I have already created.

I feel like the legs and torso could almost represent a tree trunk, by themselves, which would be another interesting idea if I was to repeat the idea with the axe.

I also enjoy the idea of covering an entire mannequin, head to toe with flowers (real or artificial). I think it would be amazing to see a human figure completely enveloped with flowers. Especially if they were real, so that you could monitor them as they slowly died.

Maybe if I constructed the frame out of wire, it would seem as if it was almost invisible once all the flowers died.

These are all very interesting concepts that I would have liked to look into if I had more time. ~

But maybe next time!

For now, I am more than satisfied with the work that I have created. I feel that it has brought me one step closer to the style of art that I was meant to create.

The Green Man (that never was)

This is the stage that my "green man" sculpture started at, and this is the way he has stayed. I had planned to develop him further, but in hindsight, I'm glad that I didn't. I love the effect he gives, exactly the way he is.

I began this module looking at colour and pattern in nature. -- Although, obviously, polystyrene is not natural, the porous, circular pattern that comes to light when internally lit, reminds me of many similar patterns that occur naturally.

Without the colour, I know that the polystyrene would look painfully artificial, and it would not have the same effect. 

Here, without colour, it almost looks like a concrete construction. Not the effect I was going for.

Although I had initially planned to create a lit sculpture, using the polystyrene head as a base. But the more I thought about covering the untouched surface, the less I wanted to.

I still feel that he is a good representation of the "green man", if you greet him with an open mind enough to interpret the green, porous surface as a natural one, rather than a false polystyrene one.

I have decided not to display the polystyrene head at all, and only to display the photograph. The magic of photography is that viewers that did not see my process, would have absolutely no idea what the head was made of, if they only saw this image.

Obviously, polystrene is not naturally green, which is very deceiving to the viewer, as the green filter over the torch makes it look very convincingly, naturally green.

I think that close up, the pores look similar to the surface of a leaf.

Polystyrene head

Close up photography of leaves.

In summary.

I did not finish the sculpture the way I intended to, but I think that in the end, less was more.

I think that adding any more to the sculpture would have dimmed the effect of the lighting, and would have taken away from the striking simplicity of the piece.

Reflection

The artist that I began this course looking at was Anj Smith - she was not a sculpture artist, but she captured my attention and inspired my current sculptures.

At the time, I was not a fan of the way that she captured nature. She captured the ugly side of nature, which I did not wish to replicate.

Oddly enough, I seem to have done a full circle, as my final sculpture very much represents the darker, uglier side of nature. (albeit accidentally!)

Referring back to a previous blog post:

http://sculpturebysian.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/researching-anj-smith-more-deeply-anj_27.html

Here, I looked at the way that Anj Smith looks at pollution. She mentions surf scum, and chemical smears in correlation with clouds and rainbows.
She speaks of them casually, as if there is only a thin line between them. I think that this relates to my sculpture, in a way. The beautiful plant grows from a horribly disfigured face, which could be the personification of pollution (perhaps an oil spill, because her face is shiny and black). There is no line to explain where the plant ends and the face begins, so there is no way to tell which part is beautiful and which part is not, because they come from one another.

Anj Smith's work is also very difficult to section, as each item/creature/thing weaves in and out of itself. The only thing that is always left untouched is the face.

Her work still doesn't necessarily appeal to me. But I do appreciate it in a new light, and enjoy it now especially because I can relate it so closely to my own work. 

Another especially influential artist was Jess Riva Cooper.

I feel that in a way, my final pieces are strange combinations of Anj Smith, and Riva Cooper's styles primarily, with additional influences along the way.

Cooper:

- Porcelain white skin

- White features (no detail in eyes)

- Empty face

- Colourful flowers

- Nature overtaking the face

Smith:

- Metaphors of suffering

- "Ugly"

- Deformed

- Disturbed

- the "darker" side of nature

- pollution

I think that both of my sculptures relate to these points in their own ways. As they both have their aesthetically pleasing sides, alongside the not quite so "pretty" parts.

How a Mother Bleeds

The idea of this piece was that she was a personification of Mother Nature,

and as Mother Nature, we are all her children

the axe represents how she suffers for us, and the blood illustrates that -

despite this, she stands firm, keeps a straight face, and continues to bear healthy flowers.

She is brave, like a real mother would be for her children.

This is why it came naturally to me to name this sculpture:

"How a Mother Bleeds"

Raymond Williams - Ideas of Nature

I was encouraged to look at Raymond Williams's essay, "Ideas of Nature."

The core of my project has been nature, through and through. There is no doubt about that and it is present in each piece of my work.

An important development of my work included Mother Nature, and Gaia. Nature personified into a benevolent woman.

In Williams' essay, he speaks of the personification of nature within religion.

"From many early cultures we have records of what we would now call nature spirits or nature gods: beings believed to embody or direct the wind or the sea or the forest or the moon. Under the weight of Christian interpretation we are accustomed to calling these gods or spirits pagan: diverse and variable manifestations before the revelation of the one true God. But just as in religion the moment of monotheism is a critical development, so, in human responses to the physical world, is the moment of a singular Nature"

I briefly looked at Paganism, and how they have personified nature into the Mother Goddess. I found this to be a very interesting concept, which fuelled my art to some extent. I would like to imagine that my sculptures are personifications of the 'nature gods' as one single, whole being. He speaks further on this subject in the next passage. 

"Singular, Abstracted and Personified
When Nature herself, as people learnt to say, became a goddess, a divine Mother, we had something very different from the spirits of wind and sea and forest and moon. And it is all the more striking that this singular I abstracted and often personified principle, based on responses to the physical world, had of course (if the expression may be allowed) a competitor, in the singular, abstracted and personified religious being: the monotheistic God."

He goes as far as to say that our personification of Mother Nature could be seen as a competitor to God. I can see that this would be a very gripping concept. Supposedly, God is a man that brought humanity to the Earth (and is biased towards humanity). The Earth is mother Gaia's homeland, and had been for billions of years before humans had even set foot here (this is, assuming that we throw creationism out of the window). I envision a subtle, celestial rivalry between the pair of deities, for each of their creations is forever destroying one another.
I can envision a love-hate relationship between Mother Earth, and our Father. Or perhaps a strange relationship between them.
This would be a very interesting concept to explore through art. Perhaps painting.


Although I found this very interesting, this was not the part of the essay that gripped me most. Williams goes on to explain our relationship with nature, and how it has evolved, or devolved, into a separation. I have included a passage from the essay below, which I have highlighted as to pinpoint the quotations that I found the most interesting.

"The point that has really to be made about the separation between man and nature which is characteristic of so many modern ideas is that however hard this may be to express-the separation is a function of an increasing real interaction. It is easy to feel a limited unity on the basis of limited relationships, whether in animism, in monotheism, or in modern forms of pantheism. It is only when the real relations are extremely active, diverse, self-conscious, and in effect continuous-as our relations with the physical world can be seen to be in our own day- that. the separation of human nature from nature becomes really problematic."

"In our complex dealings with the physical world, we find it very difficult to recognize all the products of our own activities. We recognize some of the products, and call others by-products; but the slagheap is as real a product as the coal, just as the river stinking with sewage and detergent is as much our product as the reservoir. The enclosed and fertile land is our product, but so are the waste moors from which the poor cultavators were cleared, to leave what can be seen as an empty nature. Furthermore, we ourselves are in a sense products: the pollution of industrial society is to be found not only in the water and in the air but in the slums, the traffic jams, and not these only as physical objects but as ourselves in them and in relation to them. In this actual world there is then not much point in counterposing or restating the great abstraction of Man and Nature. We have mixed our labour with the earth, our forces with its forces too deeply to be able to draw back and separate either out"

I feel that this part of the essay relates strongly to my sculpture, "Gaia 3017".

In summary, here, Williams is discussing the separation between humanity and nature. He hints towards nature being more of a function than an interaction, and that we lack a proper relationship with it. Instead, we use it to our advantage, and leave products of pollution in our wake.

Gaia 3017 is the personification of this idea, that humanity is too far gone, and too hooked on using nature for their own selfish desires, to ever draw back and redeem it. Raymond Williams published this essay in 1980, so this view has already been present for almost 40 years, with no signs of improvement, or even acknowledgement. This begs the question of just how the state of the Earth will decline, if we continue to selfishly convert nature to waste products. 


https://wcerion.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/williams-ideas-of-nature.pdf

Influences of Surrealism - The Uncanny

When I entered this semester, I did not anticipate that the work I was going to make was going to be surreal. I entered with the mindset that my work was going to be sophisticated and different to my usual style (often surreal, colourful and heavily patterned) , which I thought was immature.

Little did I know that I was going to do a full circle, as my final pieces are still very surreal, and very colourful!

I have learned to embrace it, as it is a reflection of myself and a 'sign' that this is the direction of art I was naturally meant to take.


I enjoy the ambiguity, the confusion and the freedom that comes with surrealism. I have always gravitated towards the surreal.

I think one of the most important things about surrealism, is that it very often provokes interesting reactions, because it can be very difficult to understand. If somebody looks at my work and says "oh, that's weird" I'll give them a big smile and say thank you!

If something is 'strange', I'll usually be able to find a way to like it after the initial confusion. I think surrealism is flowing naturally in my blood, no matter how hard I might try to stray from it. And that's just fine.


I'm a big fan of Salvador Dali, who is the king of surrealism. Although his work was not an influence to mine, his tutor, Sigmund Freud, may relate to my work.

This piece was referred to as "uncanny" by a viewer, which I thought was very interesting.

I started to research Sigmund Freud's explanation of "the uncanny" and found a few very interesting quotes, taken from his book "The Uncanny" published in 1919.

“uncanny effect is produced by effacing the distinction between imagination and reality”

“when an inanimate object becomes too much like an animate one”

"Freud provides a list of things that are uncanny: “dismembered limbs, a severed head, a hand cut off at the wrist, feet which dance by themselves” (14).  Each of these items, whether animate or inanimate, produces an uncanny effect. They are all a part of a whole, something cut off from a familiar object. The complete object is familiar, as are the individual parts, but only when attached to the original collective."

(the above analysis came from https://wiki.uiowa.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=74615767#id-"TheUncanny"-uncanny and I found it very interesting.)

When compared to these quotes, my sculpture seems to fit the definition of "uncanny" perfectly, especially when photographed (as photography is naturally more ambiguous).

The sculpture is created of familiar items, that you can see a thousand times just walking through a town. Artificial flowers, and a mannequin head. They are incredibly simple items, compiled into a piece of art that is much more difficult to understand.

Mannequin heads are uncanny by themselves, as they are essentially just plastic severed heads made to be as realistic as possible.

I am interested in this quote particularly 

“when an inanimate object becomes too much like an animate one”

I wonder if perhaps my sculpture would have been less "uncanny" without the addition of fake blood. I feel that the dripping of blood brings the mannequin to life, as blood is our life force and a thing that is familiar to all of us whether we like it or not.

Freud, and many other researchers of the uncanny collectively believe that "the uncanny" provokes feelings of discomfort, and sometimes fear.

“that what is ‘uncanny’ is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar”

(quote taken from his book "The Uncanny" published in 1919.)

If my work is frightening, then that's just fine with me. It has been referred to as "pretty, and scary.... pretty scary!" by a peer beforehand.

It goes above and beyond what I was originally going for. My original intention was to shock, but fear is a different and much more powerful emotion to employ. If my work is capable of evoking such emotion, then I would call it a success.

Reflections

 Experimentation:

Taking inspiration from my previous work, and the idea of using photography as a final outcome, I decided to experiment with some surreal photography/photo editing.

I used a photo editing application to create all of these interesting, reflective images. I think that it adds to the surrealism of the piece, whilst balancing discord with perfect symmetry.

It's not always clear to the viewer where the photo ends, and where the photo editing begins. This ambiguity is interesting to me, because I can imagine the confused responses of my viewers.

Photo Shoot

The blood on my mannequin unfortunately faded.
I wiped it off, and started over with acrylic paint.
I tried my best to mimic the natural flow of liquid.

 I feel that using acrylic paint was a much better idea in the end. It dried quickly, and the use of my small paintbrush also allowed me to add details above and around the axe blade, for extra depth.

I even dotted some "blood" onto the nearest flower, to very subtly merge the discord with the beauty of the piece.

Then, I began to experiment with lighting in a dark room.

I achieved a range of interesting images.

I focused on lighting the piece from the left hand side, to illuminate the colours of the flowers and cast interesting shadows from the foliage. I also enjoy the idea that the "happy" side of the piece is lit, whilst the "darker" side of the piece is quite literally darker.

This makes it even more difficult to notice the blood and the axe amongst the scattered lighting, further illuminating the metaphorical ignorance of man.

This image is especially interesting to me due to the single shadow cast across the mannequin's face. It reminds me of  Jess Riva Cooper's work, where she incorporates 3D flowers with 2D paintings, across and around the face. The 2D shadow could mimic a painted marking on the mannequin's face.

Some of these images are difficult to understand due to how close they are to the details of the mannequin, alongside the harsh lighting. I think that they create interesting, ambiguous pieces.

Whilst I was taking photos, I experimented briefly with a scarf.

I thought that wrapping a scarf around her "neck" would make her look slightly more human, by concealing her imaginary body.

The effect is interesting here. Draping the scarf over the axe made it look like she had a broad shoulder. Whilst the scarf is not ideal, and I could have done with a simpler, plain scarf, the idea was still there.

As a brief experiment, I draped the entire scarf over the top of the sculpture. This left a small, interesting window to the throat section of the sculpture, showing only some flowers and some blood. This created an incredibly ambiguous, incredibly difficult to understand photograph.

My favourite images of those that I have taken today are these:

Photography

Using Photography in my final outcomes: (key point)

Throughout the creation of my sculptures, I kept in mind how the audience would be viewing them. I thought about how to entice the viewer to travel around the sculpture, and how to distort/control their view. Although, there is only so much that I can control when a person can physically approach and view (even touch) a sculpture.

There are many imperfections in my sculptures that I cannot control or remove. I fear that they may ruin the effect of the sculpture.

For example:

^
What I wanted the audience to see
(vibrant, freshly "spilled" blood)

^
What they would actually see,
after the blood has dried/reacted over time.
v

From underneath, you can see that the blood has dried, and you can see the mess of hot glue that is keeping the axe in place.

This ruins the effect of the "floating" axe in her neck, and the realism of dripping blood.

Photography, on the other hand, allows me to completely 100% control what the viewer is seeing.

Images like this one*

*allow me to fully control what the user is seeing, from the correct angle, in the correct lighting, etc etc. The blood appears fresh and realistic, and you cannot travel behind the sculpture to see its imperfections.

Photography would be interesting to incorporate into my work, due to the fact that I can photo edit to my hearts desire to create a piece even more surreal than they are currently, if I wanted to.

Although, I don't think I would go down that route, as I have worked hard to construct this piece to be naturally, physically surreal to the naked eye.

I enjoy the idea that photography leaves many questions, as photographs are "proof" of something's existence, but can also be edited to create something that isn't real at all. I think that this sculpture makes it incredibly difficult to tell whether it is real, or whether it has been photo edited. It creates an ambiguous piece.



Anne Hardy:
I could relate this idea briefly to the work of Anne Hardy, who constructs entire rooms as sculptures, but only displays the photographs. They are surreal pieces that provoke questions as to whether it is real or not, as the room itself was never open in the flesh. No visitors allowed, only displays of photographs from the room.

These rooms are very surreal, and often disorganised, like a chaotic series of paintings. You can imagine that the experience of entering the room would be incredibly different to viewing the image. But the image allows you to see all that the artist wanted you to see, and you can still create your own interpretation of the effect of the room.

I find it interesting how the rooms were never open to the public, so it could have been argued that they never existed, if they weren't immortalised in photography.

I am interested in the idea that cameras never lie (although, photographs can be edited).

I'd like to have a series of images to display my sculptures in the way that I intended them to be, alongside the physical outcomes. 

Such as these images above, which were all temporary moments, that I have now captured.

I also like the idea of using photography, because I can crop them to certain size and hide the fact that it is just a head/just a face.

Originally, I would have liked to work on an entire lifesize, full-body mannequin. Unfortunately I did not have the means to do this, so stuck to the attainable bust mannequins. Photography allows me to construct the small heads in different ways that make them appear large and powerful.

I plan to experiment with lighting and composition in order to create a series of interesting photographs.