27.

Horrible news making it a very sad day.

Early night, will be shit waking up and realising it wasnt a bad dream.

Rest in peace Amy xxx

(images sourced online, photographer unknown)

crafty

Just going through files and pictures, when my computer died last year I had weirdly bought a harddrive a week before. I know I lost some stuff so now Im a little obsessive about backing up! Anyway most of the below is stuff I made in this past year at college, just thought Id throw it in.

The first real cast piece I made. Cast of my own arm, idea of the piece was jesus/salvation/ but with our own ways of coping, medication, self harm, finding our own salvation.

more religion inspired work. I was never great at using materials and i full on SUCK at sewing but throughout my college course I ended up using textiles alot more than I thought I would.

Headstone imprints made with clay and then a plaster pour. I wasn't as focused as I should of been for a while in college and looking at these now, I want to go back on this and do some more but actually catching more words and detail. Task for the future...

Textiles piece using wax and powder dyes. Inspired by the meat and fat sections from photographs I took at the butchers. The piece was a bit of a fail but it had sections that were ok... loved working with the wax for its  ability to create boundaries and cut off points for the dye but once wax is dry. on material, paper, whatever, once it starts cracking, and flaking off, I'm over it.

Cast of my own face that I made. Sat in front of the tv with straws up my nose, face covered in mod roc.. not the best of looks! Its actually REALLY weird seeing a cast of your own face, personally it was like, urgh, jesus, is that really what I look like! I was looking at John Wayne Gacy and the idea was to carve my face cast down to near enough the skull. Gacy buried his victims under his house and the remains were just bone. The sculpting was going well until it just cracked right through the centre. GAME OVER.

Don't know if I posted this before or not, but yeah, the back of the pigs head, waiting for the mod roc to dry over the alginate. noice.

Fabric piece using image maker on satin. The satin was great as the imagemaker came straight off it and if you've ever used imagemaker you know getting a clean finish is a mission. I had to work with and on the imperfections to make that part of it. The image i used is the one below. 

back of a pigs head leaking blood. I changed the colours in photoshop in order to disguise what the image actually was. I wanted to create a fabric piece such as a scarf that someone would wear, liking the colours and the design, but unaware of the image they would cover themselves in.

Wreath I made a while back for my friends birthday. Yeah, that's how we roll..

and finally something from years ago that I saw on Agata Cardosos Blog. We've been friends for a long time now and is probably the only person alive who knows how my head works and how i function. We've always wrote letters and made each other things and she posted this a week or so back, something Id made her a few years ago and written a note on the back. But yeah, go check out her blog, a great great artist who I owe alot to. <3

various shots....

(just so you know, i just happen to find quite a few dead birds, its not a hobby or anything..)

But fresh lilaced moorland fields cannot hide the stolid stench of death...

I had just finished reading One of your own: the life and death of Myra Hindley by Carol Ann Lee when I started this piece. Regarded as the most factual and comprehensive book on Hindley, I managed to read it in a few days (which is good for me as I usually suck at getting into a book and keeping with it). 

As a child I had heard about the moors murders and heard the odd comment on Hindley whenever she was on the news or in the papers, without really knowing much about it. Then Marcus Harvey had made the painting of the iconic mugshot using childrens handprints, which I thought was a genius move, if not for the piece then for exposure and controversy atleast. Typically whilst on display it got attacked with eggs and paint and had to be housed behind protective glass.While this woman was involved in terrible crimes, whats more interesting to me is how this image still creates a strong reaction. The mugshot photo is a part of our history and culture, having an emotive power to it, and being instantly recognisable. She was hated more for the crimes being a woman, it wasnt a thing a woman would, or should do. Women should be nurturing and protective of children and Hindley turned that on its head. From speaking to my mum about the murders she said it was so shocking because it was the first big thing to happen that took away the 'safety' from that era. 

Anyway after completing my final major project of college entitled 'its all ugly underneath' and having actually left college, I felt the need to keep busy and keep on working. The final major project had only cemented the fact that I like to use contrast within images or themes, either quite jarringly or harmoniously and so to make this piece, i needed to soften the blow of using the mugshot image. I hate to describe my work, usually its just bang, there it is, make it out as you wish, but with this, I know people have used the image to make art before and I didnt want to be seen as someone just out for quick shock value. Thought did go into it. The five children and the five angels for the five victims. The three birds, the one on the shoulder for Ian Brady and the two lower down for Myras sister Maureen and her husband David Smith. The lyrics at the top of the piece from one of my favourite Smiths songs 'suffer little children' (written about the moors murders - which was greeted with controversy when released on their debut 1984 album 'The Smiths') and the except from the poem 'The two' by WH Auden which was referenced in 'One of your own' after being quoted in Ian Bradys book 'the gates of janus'.  

Anyway heres the song by the smiths, Ive chosen this video of the song as it gives a brief history of the moors murders.

art foundation year finished! - distinction!

It seems weird having finished college to go back and try and put some words with this so I'm going to try and keep it short. As the photos show, I had cast a pigs head for my final piece of my final major project, to be exhibited at the end of our course. It was the second attempt at the cast after having a disastrous first try but admittedly that was down to not having the right materials but that's another story.

I had been unsure right up until the week before the deadline of how to present the cast. I had toyed with the idea of spray painting it with a white gloss to give a clean and finished look to it. Through sampling and experimentation I found for this piece, the gloss to be a no go. I would loose far too much of the detail and I would be going back on my own theory of why I made it, what it would represent or the message I wanted it to convey etc. To be fair, in the end, it looked good. I had wanted to include 'blood' and a butchers sign to link it into the rest of my project and at first was unsure how to do this and when I looked at the cast on the plinth, with the sign I had made (I COULD NOT FACE going back into the butchers and asking for one of their signs, I was just DONE with trips to the butchers) I was worried it looked 'off' or cheap, but then, that's the way it is, meat shoved onto plastic trays with a little plastic sign shoved in front telling you how much per pound or kilogram or whatever the weight metric is. So I went with it and for the most part I think it worked. 

Casting and sculpture is definitely an area I want to work more in and maybe even specialise in. Photography will always be something that I'm excited about but as has been suggested to me, I could work to tie the two together, make casts, make sculpts, to then incorporate into photos or use in photo shoots. And I like the sound of that. Hopefully university will give me more chance to go further with it.

Also, this should have its own post but I'm over it already. The pig head, as was displayed at my exhibition was turned down for an alumni exhibition of past students, teachers etc from college at a small cafe which has a gallery space. Alongside two of the photos Ive already posted on here of dead birds legs on top of a photograph of lillies I had taken some time ago, the three submissions I made were deemed 'unsuitable for the cafe environment'. Wow, first dose of censorship! Knew it'd happen but not straight off the bat. I understand the organiser of the exhibition had been told to keep things 'safe' but for the reason 'they may put people off their food' is ridiculous. The pig cast, ok, I can maybe see.. theres 'blood' but doesn't that just TOTALLY back up my theory of the cast - THIS IS HOW YOUR MEAT LOOKS BEFORE YOU BUY IT IN ASDA ALL NICELY WRAPPED UP. Is it a vegan or vegetarian cafe? no. But whatever. At the end of the day, the photos weren't blood splattered or graphic, the cast didn't have entrails falling out of it but 

it was a case of picking your battles, and this wasn't one of them. It would of been non productive and a waste of energy. And despite further bollocks of that exhibition (I submitted three more pieces, one large framed photograph : nice, safe, and two smaller framed collage prints, again, safe, not crude, no bad language or body parts included) the large photo wasn't included because they couldn't hang the frame right and the two collage pieces were shoved in a cabinet in a corner. But fuck you right back as I sold one of the collage prints, and it was my first ever piece to be sold, which I am really proud of (i didn't know what that 'pride' shit felt like) . So I'm glad I didn't just throw the towel in after my first pieces being rejected, I wanted to be part of the exhibition and it was the case of adjusting your personal settings to fit in somewhere not on your frequency, which is always a bit of a compromise but, lesson learnt I guess, keep pushing forward.

Just to finish, what remained from the two pigs heads I ended up keeping. One full skull, top and bottom and one lower jaw.