Artists - Research

I've been looking at the following artists:

Ai Wei Wei

Ana Teresa Barboza

Richard Billingham

Christian Boltanski

Louise Bourgeois

Adam Fuss

Leon Golub

David Wojnarowicz

Jenny Holzer

Margaret O'Brien

Nancy Spero

Timorous Beasties

Kara Walker

Wallpaper of Silhouettes

I am also working on an image of silhouettes. I want to create a wallpaper of domestic scenarios - if you look at it from a distance you will think it's a floral normal type wallpaper, but to look at it closer you will see that it's not all that it seems. This is what I'm starting with. Again, work in progress:

Will update as I go along

Stitching

I really wanted to work with stitching as it is usually thought of as a woman's craft, and wanted to do it with a twist by using quotes from men regarding their abuse.

I'm working on a cross stitch piece. Here are some photos of it, but still work in progress.

Report on the National Study of Domestic Abuse

I worked on the report on the National Study of Domestic Abuse 2005 - this was the most recent report I could access. It was compiled by the National Crime Council in association with the Economic & Social Research Institute (ESRI).

The findings on this report really surprised me! It was reported that 6% of men suffer severe domestic abuse. That is on average of 1 in 17 men.

I wanted to work with these figures. Domestic life can be represented by images of houses. My idea is to work with images of houses, 17 in total. I want to keep 16 of the houses in black & white, while keeping 1 in a bright colour.


Here are some of my images:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I want to be able to present the 17 houses in a cluster or in rows. I'm still working on this at the moment and will upload more info as I go along.

 

New Project

Start of 3rd year and another project.

I started looking at people who were unable to communicate / express themselves and are open to abuse and violence. The elderly, children, the disabled, men and women. There are various types of abuse: verbal, physical, psychological and emotional.


I started looking at domestic abuse. Shockingly 1 in 5 women in Ireland who have been in a relationship have been abused by a current or former partner (O'Connor, M, & Kelleher Associates, Making the Links, Women's Aid, 1995). National Research by the National Crime Council found that 1 in 7 women have experienced severe abusive behaviour. Internationally at least 1 in 3 women, up to one billion women, have been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in their lifetimes (Ending Violence against Women, L. Heise, M. Ellsberg, M. Gottemoeller, 1999).
Statistics Information


I started looking further into domestic abuse against men. This is less documented. In my research I came across some helpful websites:

Amen - a support and information service for male victims of domestic abuse

The National Office for the Prevention of Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based violence

A Voice for Men

Men as Victims

Hidden Hurt

The Observer News Article

Help for Abused Men

I spent quite some time researching and working on men's own testimonies. What I focused on initially was the use of implements that women used on their partners:

Kettles of boiling water
Baseball bats
Scissors
Hair straighteners
Baking implements
Drumsticks
Irons
Drills
High heeled shoes
Candlesticks
Pokers

I wanted to create a wallpaper from images of these implements.

 

 

Here is the wallpaper image I created:

 

 

My aim is to screen print this onto material to create curtains out of them. I also want to print this image onto men's shirts. I aim to also work on top of these images on the shirts by cutting and stitching text.

 

Images to follow.

 

Artist Michael Mararians

Came across this artist. Love it!! Check him out

Artist Michael Mararians

Black Daisies - Digital Image

Black daisies symbolise the destruction of innocence.

I just wanted to show my inverted daisies. I used PhotoShop for discarding the colour from my photo and enhanced the contrast in tone. I then inverted the black and white and got y black daisies. I used this format for printing the daisies for screenprint. I just enhanced it a bit more for a digital image. Here's how it turned out:

Embossing

 

I worked on an image of rag doll faces - one happy, one sad. I drew these out on a woodblock and cut them out to use for embossing on prints.

 

 

 

I tried embossing onto some of my prints

 

 I then worked back into the embossing with some embroidery.

 

 

 

 

I loved doing these.

 

 



Multimedia - Photoshop / Illustrator - Activity Book

For our multimedia class we worked on our own projects and were able to enhance our photographs etc.

I had decided to make an activity book of my images. I made jigsaws out of my photographs, made a board game and drew some pictures to colour in, along with my word search games I had already made. Here are some pictures of what I made:

 

With this board game, I left 2 of the rockets blank. The player will write in one happy emotion and one sad emotion. Roll the dice....

 

These are some jigsaw I made out of my photos using PhotoShop:

 



 

 Here I did some simple drawings to be coloured in:

 

 

 

With Illustrator I worked on an instruction manual type of how to make the paper shoes I made.

Final images to follow.

Plaster of Paris

 

I wanted to work with the material of plaster of paris like what I had used with the doll and her broken arm. I got some shoes and had a bib from my drawing project. I coated them in plaster of paris and waited for it to dry.

 

 

 One dry I started writing children's thoughts and comments onto the shoe. I chose to just do one shoe as seeing a solitary shoe gives you a feel of loneliness, possibly an air of abandonment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paper Shoes

I wanted to make children's paper shoes with combining some of my daisy silkscreen on tissue paper along with children's own words on violence.

 

I first made the toe part of the shoe by mixing PVA glue and water and placing layers of tissue paper on a round object and spraying the mixture in between the layers. I then let it dry over night.

 

 

I then cut the shape in half and added tabs onto the inside.

 

 

 

I wanted to have the children's words in child like writing and couldn't ask them to write them down, as some of the thoughts are shocking! I asked some of my friends to write down the children's thoughts by using their non-dominant hand.

 

I cut out the base of the shoes from some card and also from the written thoughts. I glued the text to the card.

 

 

 

 

I then cut out the side panels and added some stitching around the edges.

 

 

 

Next, I collaged some of my screened daisies on the base of inside of the shoe base, glued the toe part to the base of the shoe and continued with gluing the side panels on too.

 

 

I then collaged more screened daisies onto the toe part.

 

 

Finally I then added a mini pom pom on the side as buttons.

 

 

Here are the soles of the shoes