BA2 Fine Art - Reflective Journal

For documentation, I decided to photograph some of my textile pieces in a more traditional, domestic setting. I chose the 50s as I felt this was the most appropriate housewife/domestic era, and worked really well with the apron pieces. I did research into the clothing style, hair and makeup to try and get it as accurate as I could. Luckily, a fellow art student had quite a vintage looking kitchen which we could use to shoot in, which further helped to emphasise this theme.  I think this works really well, and gives strong context to the pieces, they start to become more than just pieces of art. I also like the contrast of the traditional setting and the more modern text on the apron. Furthermore, it's interesting to see how art can change once placed in a domestic space. They become utensils, everyday objects, rather than carefully crafted pieces of art. I think this is something that I want to explore further, and I would like to start to blur the ...

Once I had finished my previous textile pieces, and noticed how heavy handed they looked, I decided to explore the idea of embroidery. I had been looking at Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party and was inspired to look into this area of art. I went out and bought some embroidery kits with different designs and chose a floral design to match the imagery that I had been looking at throughout this project and changed it slightly to fit my within my own ideas. I planned to do one side flowers, and the other text inspired by the words that I had been working with within my prints and previous textile pieces.  I followed a design plan a closely as I could for the floral part, changing things that I didn't think would fit for the design I had in mind. It had been a while since I had done cross stitching, so I was impressed at how quickly it came back to me, and how I managed to get the flowers looking like flowers. I did make a few mista...

In addition to the last photoshop experiments, I decided to combine the text pieces and the gender pieces together into one image. I chose to use the insult text first as I felt this would be an interesting contrast of negative text and a positive image. The effect was different on each piece depending on the pattern that I used for each one. For example, for the more blue toned pieces, the text was a lot more bolder and yellow in some areas, and more transparent in others. Whereas with the more pink toned piece the text was largely transparent in the background, and slightly bolder on the image.  Each one is successful in it's own way I think. They each work in their own way, and the effect is powerful. I also like  not having all the text visible as it draws the audience in to read the text they cannot see straight away, and the text that is visible is just as strong and powerful and helps establish how these words are still powerful and hurtful to women, and ...