When I went
on a solar print workshop a few months ago I used old family photos as the basis
for some designs and I want to continue using these as source material for this
project
We all have
a stash somewhere of old photos, some of relatives and friends we recognise and
others who we don’t have a clue about who they are. As time passes they just
become faces. We may know their name, if it is written on the back, but we don’t
know anything about them.
I also think
most families will have a scattering of heroes and villains in amongst the
majority of the ordinary people who make up their ancestry. Their stories may
have been completely fictionalized in the telling and retelling, or just
forgotten over the years.
I want to
combine these two ideas, the hidden stories and the almost anonymous figures.
I’ve decided
base my images on the children’s rhyme “Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy, rich man,
poor man, beggar man, thief”. We’ve probably all got some of these amongst our
antecedents.
I’m not sure
yet what structure to use. You’d think I’d learn from experience and sort this
out first. It would avoid a lot of problems further down the road! However, at the
moment I’m contemplating a series of unbound images jumbled together in a
box/container the same way that the original source photos are kept, although I
also quite like the idea of a frieze of dancing dolls.
This is
Agnes Hall. I decided to divorce her from Thomas.
Hi Jac,
ReplyDeletethis all sounds great. Love the images and your thought processes. Apologies for not commenting sooner. I thought I'd left a comment already, but sometimes if I comment from my iPad it doesn't seem to go through. Hope you are enjoying this strange little piece of time, pre-Christmas and New Year when time seems to have a different rhythm to the rest of the year.
Gald you like them. Its great to have time just to play with images and materials. Hope I can keep up the momentum when term starts again
DeleteI love your project too. Deciding the structure first may solve future practical problems but it can also limit your possibilities. I usually feel more comfortable when the structure adapts to the artwork and not the other way around.
ReplyDeleteI wonder why you decided to 'divorce' Mrs Hall from her husband. You are giving her a new life, new freedom and probably some new worries too. Looking forward to more.
I divorced her intially just to get a silhouette to play with (I'll post the images when I've photgraphed them) but your comment has made me wonder if theres a story in there.
ReplyDeleteI love where you are going with your ideas Jac! It's interesting…at what point does idea and artwork meet structure? I usually start off with deciding media then experiment, but at the same time I always have a vague idea of structure too. But then the structure usually has to adapt to my artwork! I hope I haven't confused your decision! Hey, just follow your gut instincts and good luck! :)
ReplyDelete