A-Z: Ida Applebroog

Ida Applebroog is a American painter who lives in new York. Applebroog is known for a variety of things including painting, sculpture, books and films that explore themes such as gender, sex, violence and politics. She has received many honours including the MacArthur Fellowship ‘’genius grant’’. Although I find her work to be very dark and somewhat disturbing, I think it is relevant because of how dark and disturbing the topics she works which are. 

A-Z: Fiona Banner

Fiona Banner is an English artist that gained a lot of attention after being short listed for the turner prize in 2002. Her work includes sculpture, drawing and installation, although text is the main ingredient of her work. Banner uses text to get over a message as directly as possible about the topic. I attended the Yorkshire Sculpture park in September of 2014 and saw  her work there, I was immediately impressed by the sheer size of the Chinook piece that was rotating from the ceiling of the large exhibition shape. The exhibition gave and instant idea of large scape some of her work could be.

A-Z: Coco channel

^{Gabrielle Chanel was a French fashion designer who founded the world famous Chanel brand. Chanel has been credited for releasing women from the fashion usual’s of the time, such as corsets, and giving fashion a more casual and sporty style. Chanel’s style and visions were so popular that they have been made into various ranges of handbags, accessory and fragrances, which the Chanel No. 5 fragrance becoming the most iconic. She has become that iconic that she is the only fashion designer to be listed on Time magazine's top 100 influential people of the 20th century.} 

^{I admire Chanel because of how she managed to over write the traditional style of corsets and women only wearing what was acceptable, and give women a new sense of freedom to express themselves in their fashion, which at the time was maybe the only was women were able to express themselves due to what was socially acceptable.}

Micro and Macro: part two

Butterfly charts:

Micro and Macro: Part one.

Define Macrocosm:
From Greek 'makros kosmos' meaning great world.
i) a complex structure, such as the universe or society, regarded as an entirety, as opposed to microcosm, which have similar structure and are contained within it.
ii) and complex entity regarded as a complete system in itself.
Define Microcosm:
From Greek 'mikros kosmos' meaning little world.
i) aminature representation of something especially a unit, a group or place regarded as a copy of a larger one.
ii) man regarded as epitomising the universe.

For this project I chose to look at winged insects, practically butterflies, moths and dragonflies. I was very interested in to structure of the wings and how they aren’t just made of one part; they are made of millions of tiny scales, like little pixels which create the amazing colours and patterns seen on both butterfly and moth wings, and sometimes also dragonflies.

From here I perceived the project as being about a link between the large and small, which led to an interest on how the patterns and you could say ‘eyes’ on butterfly wings are used to make them seem larger or even like a completely different species. To me this was the link between the small (the scales; patterns) and the large (the eyes and disguise given).

I looked into Tracey Bush’s butterfly paper cuts and decided that I wanted to use mainly just the silhouettes of the insects layered with the different images and patterns I created from my studies.

Final major project evaluation.

My final major project theme is japan. I decided to do japan for my final major project because I am very interested in their traditions and art. I started researching into japan but not concentration on my subject of japan, but when I came across a images of a Japanese tea house I realized that I wanted to look mostly into tea houses and their geishas, but also native Japanese plants, as they are used greatly in Japanese interior design. And I chose to create a kimono as my final piece, but a very simple but effective.

To start collection secondary research about japan I used the web page https://gb.pinterest.com/ to gather images and ''pin'' them onto my account. I used these images throughout my project to create my sheet work and my sketchbook. To collect my primary research I went to the Leeds royal armory where they had a section on traditional Japanese armor, which worked well for my as I was looking mainly into traditional Japanese art.

I pieced together my research onto A2 mood boards, which I then used to create 2 visual sheets where I developed the images on my mood boards into my own images and patterns. From these visual sheets I created three development sheets. On each of my development sheets I used a different plant as my focus.

I decided to use my cherry blossom development sheet to create my final design as I thought my other two ideas had too much block color, and my cherry blossom idea was more delicate and interesting.

originally I wanted to make my kimono from heavy silk, but when I added up the cost of how many meters of heavy silk I’d need, I realized that I didn’t have enough money to make it from heavy silk. So I had to decide to make my kimono out of silk, even though this is not traditionally the correct material to use.

In the project I experimented by doing a piece of fabric making, which is where you create fabric out of strips of different fabrics by sewing them together.

Throughout this project I have en-counted a few problems the main one being money, but to solve this I simply used the cheapest fabric, which Is cotton, rather than using silks or satins, even though this held me back on the amount of experimentation I could do when doing my samples, also it meant that I couldn’t make my kimono out of heavy silk like I wanted to. Also while trying to do my blog, I was unable to upload photographs of my work, which has affected my blog greatly.

If I had no time constraints I would have made a traditional kimono out of heavy silk and created a design that would have covered the whole of the kimono rather than just the bottom half and the sleeves.

Throughout this project I have been looking at the Japanese painter and wood cut artist, Hokusai. I found his work useful in my project because I was looking at traditional Japanese art, and Hokusai’s work is a large part of traditional Japanese art and is largely recognized all over the world.

I think what went well in this project was my sheet work and the final design I developed from them. What didn’t go so well was the my lack of money which resulted in me not being able to use the correct material, and also I would have like to do a lot more work into my sketchbook. So overall I could have used my time a little bit better and concentrated a little more on my sketchbook.

Originally in my project proposal I wrote I wanted to study mainly into plant and tea room interior, to create a set of floor pillows for a tea room, but I was then told I should push myself and create a kimono which was a good coincidence as I had just started looking into geishas. I found this project a little more challenging as past projects because of the amount and size of work, also I didn’t structure my time properly so I had a lot of work to do all at once, but as an overall I really enjoyed this project and its outcomes.