Mind Games

For my research project in college, I've been working with various mediums, including printmaking and knitting.  Here's the three images I'll be using for my presentation next Monday. This first image is of "Ode a La Biévre" by Louise Bourgeois. While some of her work disturbs me, I really love the cloth books she has produced. This one is especially interesting, with the combination of text and imagery, as well as each image being so very different from the others. 

The next image is one of my desk. I was finding it hard to pinpoint 3 images that sum up my research project. So, I talked to my tutor and she suggested taking a photograph of my desk. So this is my studio space in college, which I use a lot! My work for this project can be seen on the wall - there's a knitted 'S', which exemplifies my explorations in knitting patterns and there's a woodblock print of a sewing thread spool and a needle, entitled "Before the Stitch". 

 

The last image is the one I'm least happy with, because it demonstrates a work in progress.  One of the interests I identified in my project was the mind.  Duane's brother, Leigh, had his brain scanned recently and got to keep the x-rays, so I converted them into a screenprint, with varied success. I hope to have more prints completed soon.  This print was featured in the exhibition "Support" for the IADT open day.  

Society's Abyss.

The statement I put up beside my piece:

From the selection of concepts I randomly choose Composition, Society, and Dante's Inferno.  From my research I developed a poem which follows the same rhyming pattern (Terza Rima) as Dante's Inferno and is written in Gothic Rotunda style.  Like the hell of Dante's inferno, Witch Hunts have been omnipresent in Western culture for centuries.  While Dante's Inferno deals with Divine Judgement of the sinful after death, the Witch Hunts are an example of misplaced societal judgement before death, thus highlighting society's own downfall or capabilities to endlessly repeat mistakes.  The mirror is a tool often used to discover the mark of the devil on accused people.  I use the mirror to discover the words of the poem.  The poem is faded and nearly illegible, just as the horror of the tortures used in Witch Hunts has faded due to desensitisation.  The editions are bound to become a Book of Spells, a play on the religious Book of Kells. 

Here are the photos of the completed art work:

The Poem reads:

Swinging from a man-made rope

Or roasting on a bed of wood;

Cruel judgement tore away the hope

Increasing the wrath of "common good" 

And still today we see the sky

Lighting up, 'cos those who could

Ignited another witch todie.

Nighttime hides the ones who come,

Justice cloaking sinners sly:

Uneasiness to the beat of Hitler's drum

Sounding out fears ill-founded;

'Though what good can come from 

Innocent and soul divided?

Condemned by their peers,

Every victim's life upended,

Silenced by the age-old fears

Of spells cast and poisons evil.

Fleeing the taunts and angry jeers -

Mass hysteria caused upheaval-

Often suspects flee from kin

Darkened by mentation medieval

Evading torture to begin

Rebuilding lives and dreams beside

Neighbours too accused of sin.

Day after day, far and wide,

Across the plains of ground and time,

Yesterday has been denied

When the sinless fall to impossible crime;

Ignorance is no longer bliss.

Tolling bells together chime

Cacophonies of laws remiss -

Heralding the killing spree.

Hunts of witches cause this 

Unfair disregard for history

Nullifying the need to pray.

These injustices of witch hunts can be

Seen in societies of modern day. 

copyright 2008 by M.M.W. (Marjolein Wouters)

Completed College Work since last post

Hm, I haven't been on this blog in so long. I've finally decided to return and now shall post a mountain of posts for updating my life on this!!

First off, here's the completed piece for my project from 2nd Year. I was very happy with it myself and had positive feedback from tutors, family and friends. 

Now I'm back in college after a fun-filled summer.  I don't have a picture of my final piece for my Chance Project. Here's all the workings.  It's very seasonally-appropriate. I had a lot of fun producing this work even though it was tough going with lots of late nights.  The final piece is a combination of literary and artistic ability- a print of a poem.  The concept is based around modern day witch hunts.  I'll give more information when I've posted the photos of the final piece. 

Here, I'm using scrim (muslin) to clean the ink off the copper plate and push it further into the etched lines.

The old printing press looks so lovely and I love being so hands on with my work. It's just a pity that it is so heavy to turn and that I had to roll it through four or five times for each print so I ended up with a very sore back for the whole of last weekend.

Embossing is a technique I hadn't used before in print so it was fun to play around with the image. The pentagram was printed from the internet and then I transferred the image to card to use as my embossing device! The press had to be adjusted so that a mark wouldn't be left on the blankets (the wads of material that cover the work while its being printed). 

The completed piece is very striking. This is the best photo I have at the moment but there'll be more to come!

 

College Work

This Week I have been very busy in college. I'm incorporating knitting into my project. It's a self-directed project and assessments are next week so I'm busy knitting away.

I've taken scraps of the material used in canvas making before its been made and cut into strips. I've sewn these strips together and rolled them into balls.  I'm using my purple US13 needles and knitting 18 rows on 15 stitches. I'm planning on making a large canvas once I have enough squares.  Here's a few of the balls. 

For notebook and experimentation I also knitted with plastic.