Friday 23 December 2011

Exposure Competition

Penelope Davies

This is a monthly competition that I entered on December 22nd 2011.

Many Thanks if you voted.

Tuesday 20 December 2011

December Tutorial

PCAD 500 Tutorial - some of the things we discussed:

Inside/outside
Domestic space also as landscape
The mirror as device, reflective surface, a verb: to mirror - as a portal
Film clip French girl dancing
Singing (into) the mirror
Building up memory/experience through photographs

Uta barthes – the periphery, medium format, Vermeer, woman in blue reading a letter paining
Nancy Rexroth IOWA book – Diana camera

Shutter release – hiding – fake, what do you reveal, concealment,

Conceal/reveal

‘doing’ longing, doing memory – performativity of photos

self portrait
medium format – what is it about MF? Big, heavy, camera,

the tree
window - as a device - looking devices

Camera means 'room' in Italian - or 'chamber'

artist Elena Brotherus

Mutant Message Down Under

This is a book by Marlo Morgan .."A Woman's Journey into Dreamtime." I read it a few years ago and remembered it again when I recently picked up "Stuff" by David Miller to make notes for my contextual studies on existential phenomenology.


The Australian Aboriginal’s traditional culture had relatively few material things, but was hugely rich in kinship and elaboration of cosmology.  Australian tribes' "dreamtime" is the time of the ancestors who lie at one remove from people, but whose actions and consequences remain an integral part of the lives of the living, ancestors remembered in myth. They recognise that there are prior forces which have already created the world in which we come to be socialised. But in turn we can come to act upon those forces. The Walbiri retain contact with ancestors through the dreamtime, and re-enact this relationship in ceremony and ritual today. It is the same landscape and order which is used to legitimate the critical relationships of kinship and social order which give individuals a sense of who they are. So both ancestors and contemporary people externalise themselves as culture and recognise themselves in that which has been created. They objectify. And in their myths they possess also a theory of culture that explains this process. (Miller 63)

Miller wrote this as a response to Simmel's theory that the subjective only gains when it can assimilate the expanding objective culture. What we cannot assimilate oppresses us. He wrote essays on the contradictions of the metropolis.  A place where, if we try and relate to too many things, but have no substantial relationship to any one of them, we can become largely indifferent to the world and to ourselves. We are then being reduced, rather than expanded, by the sheer quantity of things. (62) , as the Australian Aboriginal Tribes have drifted towards the fringes of urban life, they may have lost much of their traditional culture and many have ended up reduced to alcoholism.(Miller:62)

Reading Mutant Message I am reminded of the simplicity of life, and the powers of the mind that we have lost through the ages. The ability to think positively is seen as something new, something that we have discovered in recent years. But in fact, there is nothing new about positive thought. The Aboriginal Tribes have been using it for thousands of years. The Tribe in the book follow a path of purity, every thought is considered to affect the lives of all living things. If the mind is hindered by anything less than pure thought, then their whole way of communication with the earth and its resources is lost. They believe that untruths clog up the mind, and that life then becomes difficult. They see all life as being connected, and that sacrifice by animals is given gladly to sustain life, and that everything, including food and water, is given to those of pure thought.

The Aboriginal people who have lost their way of life, and have been integrated into our modern society have suffered because they have different values. In fact they have not integrated well because the lives led by other peoples are alien to them. Their culture has not been recognised and the result has been catastrophic to their existence.

Why one human being should consider his/her life better than another has been detrimental to our society in so many ways. It is a tragedy that so many cultures and peoples have been forced to follow a path that has led to the destruction of many. We can only hope that we do not continue in this vain and that the generations that follow will recognise and respect each culture and tradition as important as their own.

Friday 9 December 2011

Final Reflection and Evaluation for Assignment FD202

FD202 (Visual Narrative)
A narrative is a story that can unfold anywhere at any time.
My intention was to tell a story through the use of the photograph and the mirror as objects of memory, family history and nostalgia. I intended my narrative to show how the object links the past to the present, and how the object of family history connects me to my ancestors. The second aspect of the narrative was to take the objects out into the landscape and to shoot my images close to home. The landscape is an important factor as it too connects me to my ancestors.

It is a personal narrative to recognise those who came before me, to respect their existence in the world and to thank them for giving me life. The use of the photograph becomes a reminder of my own mortality. Cecil Beaton said that “the proof of the photograph as memory or history is nearly always at stake” (Campany: 95). In looking at the photograph, I see my own family history. Barthes said that “the still image in film creates a pause” (Campany: 96). It is the same in life, when you look at a photograph you ponder on it, you give the photograph time.

I have attended all the lectures and considered my own personal identity with regard to family and memory.  In the lectures we were given tasks to familiarise ourselves with the aspects of narrative in film and photographs which helped to clarify what was expected for the assignment.

I was influenced by Roger Ballen’s interview; some of his sentiments struck a chord in me. He talked about the “human interior” and looking at life “according to your own reality.” The quote that I used for both FD201 and FD202 came from this interview. It is “Nothing in time is ever the same.” Life is never static, and in relation to my project using the landscape, the photograph and the mirror to show the connection between myself and my ancestors, I am trying to convey that my belief is that those who come before us have an influence on our lives, and that this influence is an inspiration to progress and develop in life. I believe that we have a moral obligation to those who came before us to live the best life we can.  Each of us is given the opportunity to put right the wrongs of the past so that equilibrium ensues.  Life for me is a journey about learning. To stop learning is to stop living.

I researched into Duane Michals work. He uses narrative to make sense of death, time, youth and desire. He wanted to capture ideas instead of images. Using a well-known children’s story “The Bogeyman” he uses light and dark to great effect. Light surrounds the child, the room is dark and menacing and the shadow is the bogeyman. The effectiveness is in the simplicity of the story and the mood is captured through the use of light and dark. I looked at his book “The House I once Called Home” which steered me towards family and memory. He wrote “our little lives are thus, perfect in their pain and happiness” (Michals 2003). He returns to a time that no longer exists except in his memories. The house is now in disrepair but the daily activities that took place inside it remain constant in Michals memory.

After my mother died, and a few years later my father retired, he sold the house which had belonged to my grandparents, and where I had grown up. I was not able to return to the village for ten years after this. I felt such a great loss; my mother’s death, and then to lose the home I had so loved that held so many happy memories was something I found difficult to bear. To this day I regret that I did not consider buying the house myself because I am still sad that it is no longer in our family. It held so much of our family history. Unlike Michals, I have no wish to see it as it is now; I prefer to remember it exactly as it was. The Mirror in my narrative is an important part of that memory because it was a constant in my life. It hung above the fireplace and never moved. Now that I have it, it once again hangs above the fireplace. To me this is its rightful place.

It was now time to choose a film that I liked. My first thought was to use “Ryan’s Daughter” directed by David Lean. This has always been a firm favourite with me. It is a beautiful romantic tale capturing breath taking scenes of Ireland’s land and sea. But after watching the film again and procrastinating for far too long about what I could take from the film, and how a narrative would take shape from it, I cast it aside.  I grew frustrated with myself and my gut feeling was that this wasn’t the right film for me to use.

I knew already that I wanted to capture a narrative to include personal memories. I had started to seek out old family photographs at home, and I remembered “Blade Runner” made in 1982. When I had first viewed it, it had had a big effect on me and had become one of my favourite films.  It captures the essence of what makes us human. It is a dark and intense film. The photograph plays an important role in it.  My interest grew in how the photograph is used in film. There is a quote from Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes he writes that “ultimately photography is subversive, not when it frightens or repels or even stigmatises, but when it is pensive, when it thinks. The still image in film creates a pause” (Campany: 96). This mirrored my thoughts around the photograph. When I look at a photograph, all else ceases to exist as I ponder the narrative in front of me. The photograph I have in my possession of my Grandparents, may not tell me what they were like, but in looking at them I feel close to them and I think about what I know of them from other family members.

I began shooting digitally with my Nikon D300 first taking photographs of trees, and then taking my family photographs out into the landscape and pegging them on to the trees. I liked this idea. The tree as the “Tree of Life” and the photographs organised into two sides of the family. I had also now shot black and white images of the cemetery and central park with my 35mm camera. I wanted to stay “close to home” as I felt this was in keeping with my subject. On showing my sketch book at the first Group Crit, the consensus of opinion was that the black and white images were more suited to my narrative because the photographs I was using to photograph were in the main black and white. It was suggested that I continue to shoot and develop my narrative.

I was in agreement with the opinions raised during the Group Crit and decided that I too preferred the black and white images. The digital images did not seem appropriate for the mood I wanted to convey. The black and white images seemed to convey a better sense of time. I used both 35mm film and 120mm film and shot several films.

I also decided that in order to improve my photographic skills, using film would be the better option for me. I have continued to struggle with exposure but I find the more I practice using film, the more I enhance my skills. I like the poetic license film offers, I feel there is greater scope for creativity with film as opposed to digital. The more I use film, the less inclined I am to use digital.

I continued to shoot in black and white film now turning more to 120mm film because I love using my Mamyia 67 camera. It gives me a thrill when I see the images I create from it. I was now getting a little frustrated with pegging the family photographs on to the trees as they kept blowing away and I could not organise them in a way that was pleasing to my eye. The trees were too tall for me to display them as I wanted, and the images didn’t work aesthetically. To get all the photographs in the frame I had to take long shots, and I wanted to be closer to the photographs. At this point I was looking at Erina Brotherus work for the FD201 assignment and saw her “Bathroom” narrative. This gave me the idea to use the mirror I had inherited from my father that had first belonged to my grandparents. 

I was excited about this idea. The Mirror was a constant in my life as I grew up and holds so many memories for me. I felt that this was the link between the past and the present that I was looking for.

I now turned to look at philosophies relating to the landscape. In linking the past with the present and taking my objects out into the landscape, I have learned that in my phenomenological experience of landscape, that I have a sense of self as “being in the world.” I do not distinguish a difference between myself as a human being, and the world as a place I am detached from. My ancestors worked the land as farmers, they were part of it, and I too consider myself to be part of that land. The land is not separate form me. Of the philosophies I have read, I am inclined toward Maurice Merleau – Ponty’s Existential phenomenology that “the self is not simply in the world … the self is of it” (Wylie: 151). Descartes argues that we are thinking beings “I think therefore I am” (Wyllie: 146) and that our sense of self can deceive us; that the senses cannot provide a basis for certainty and that “thinking is the essence of being human.”(Wylie: 146). Martin Jay’s philosophy is that it is our opinions and the opinions of others that define the perspective of what it is to exist as a human beings. He says that “we define ourselves not as creatures in a world but as points of view upon it, as spectators looking at it from a distance.” (Wylie: 145).

Merleau – Ponty’s philosophy makes more sense to me. I agree with Descartes that we are thinking beings, but I do not agree that our senses deceive us. Thinking is only part of being human. In my opinion our senses are an important part of the human existence. If we could not see, hear, feel, touch, listen, what would happen to our emotions. If we could only think, wouldn’t we be quite boring and unfeeling. To me thinking is more on a par with practicality, pragmatism and common sense. Without emotion I don’t think that I would see the beauty of nature as I do. I could think “yes that is beautiful” but it wouldn’t be the same to me if I didn’t sense the beauty of something.

I do not agree with Martin Jay’s philosophy that we are spectators looking at the landscape from a distance, because to look at it we also have to stand in it. No matter where you are standing you are always part of it.

I took the mirror and my photographs out into the landscape, I had found a location to use when I had walked and searched in Central Park a few days previously. I wanted to find somewhere quiet where I would not encounter too many people and dogs. Central Park is quite a busy park at any time of day and dogs do have a tendency to be nosey. I had found a clearing with three trees that was a little away from the path which meant that people wouldn’t walk across me.

I spent a couple of hours shooting the mirror from different angles and placing my photographs both on the mirror and on the trunk of the tree. I was enjoying the experience and although there were people walking by, and I know that they did stop to watch, no one disturbed me. I didn’t take much notice of them because I was engrossed in my task. I turned and smiled on occasion but although people looked a little perplexed, they didn’t ask what I was doing.

These images were the best of all the film I had shot and I knew that in these two films I would have something for my narrative. I knew that I already had a selection of tree images that I could use for my narrative and now I had images that I liked of the mirror and photographs. But there was one more film I wanted to shoot before I made my final selection for my sequence. That was to photograph the mirror and the photographs in our Living Room, where the Mirror was hung above the fireplace. These would add the ending to my narrative; it would be a “coming home” shot.

I was pleased with the results though when I was sorting out all my images for my narrative, most of the interior shots were a little too formal, too contrived, too set up. The one chosen for my final was a darker shot where I had not set up anything but just left the room as it was.

So now it was time to try to construct my narrative. This was a complete nightmare. I discarded the 35mm images because towards the end of my time for this assignment, I had concentrated on shooting with 120mm film and I had more of a variety of images to choose from. In total I had shot 8 films in black and white and 4 films in colour.

From the total number of images I had shot, I narrowed them down to about 35. But from this 35 I looked and looked at them until I became completely stressed out. I just couldn’t work out which ones would work together. I left them displayed on a board on the floor for days until I reached the end of my tether and took them into college to seek help from my lecturers and peers who gave me some much needed support and encouragement. Now I was able to see more clearly what my narrative would be. I played around with them for a little longer until the final decision was made. What a relief.

My choice in choosing to photograph in black and white gives the subject more depth as it conveys a sense of time passing. I don’t feel that colour would have been as successful.

The images were scanned in the Digital Dark Room using the Hasselblad Scanner. I chose not to edit my images in Photoshop because I prefer to leave them as they were originally shot. I like the rawness that this conveys. I think that the strongest images are numbers 2, 3, 4 and 5. The reason for this is that no 2 is complemented by the mist that lay on the graveyard the morning I shot it, it has an ethereal quality. No 3 is compositionally strong and again, because of the early morning rain, it gives it an air of the past.  No 4 catches the dappled light on the tree which intensifies the photographs, and your eye is not distracted by the tree in the background because of the depth of field. I feel that No 5 is a strong image because I have filled the frame with the branches of the tree which I think aesthetically is very effective.

I am very happy with my final choice. I have enjoyed the experience that this assignment has given me. I feel that I have achieved my intention of creating a narrative that shows the link from the past to the present through the use of the mirror and photographs; and my attempt to show the connection of the landscape as an important aspect of my ancestral line.

The Mirror

  

Final Reflection and Evaluation for Assignment FD201

FD201 (Inside/Outside)
Our task for this assignment was to produce two images that had been inspired by our chosen Coen Brothers film. One image was to be shot on location creating a mood, and a second image creating a set within a location and introducing a figure. This assignment took me on a long journey.

I chose “Hudsucker Proxy” (1993) as my film, my thoughts centred on the Hula Hoop and how I could develop the concept as an idea for this assignment. I was transfixed by the idea of the circle and began to think about what it was that appealed to me.

I looked at Sarah Lynch’s work, I had researched her last year; she says of her work that “it is concerned with the philosophy of being. It questions issues concerning our existence with the “self.”(Newton: 35) This led to my questioning my own existence in the world and the circle depicting the cycle of life. Hudsucker Proxy was set in 1958/59 and I recorded the timeline relating to my family in the 1950’s. I looked at various aspects of 1950’s life, politics, history and toy crazes. It was a time of change; one of the film’s catch phrases was “the future is now.”

In thinking about my family, I came back to the cycle of life connected with nature and the landscape. I began to take photographs of the circle in nature, and the circle in any other place I could find it looking for inspiration. At the same time I had been reading David Campany (2008) and there was a quote from “Film” in a line spoken by Samuel Becket (1965). He said “we are doomed to live with our own self-awareness. The more traces of ourselves we destroy, the more acutely we sense ourselves.”  I considered how much of ourselves do we really allow others’ to see. I do not always find it easy to disclose too much of myself, but as an artist I think that it is really important to release what goes on inside because it allows the creative self to develop and grow. I think that this is part of that process for me.

I continued to take photographs but now moving on to film. The assignment stipulated that we had to use medium format transparency or film or high end digital. My preference is medium format; I was using this for both FD201 and 202. I attended all lectures and workshops which I found useful and helpful, and began looking at other photographers and artists work as well as some philosophies concerning landscape and academic texts relevant to our chosen discipline.

During Reading Week I had decided to visit my family in Wales. This would give me the opportunity to begin photographing the landscape and begin to develop my photographic ideas. I had now decided that this would be a personal project about my longing to return to Wales; my first image would be a landscape shot and my second a self- portrait. I had considered using my daughter as a model for the portrait but felt that as this related to my own feelings that a self-portrait would be more appropriate.

The images I shot in Wales were a record of the places where I had grown up, places that I was familiar with and which depicted memory and nostalgia. They conveyed a sense of my return being “out of reach” and some showed a sense of loneliness and have certain darkness to them.
During my tutorial after my return from Wales it was suggested that I might like to look at Elina Brotherus’ work. I borrowed a book from the University Library titled The New Painting (2005). I found her work an inspiration and I responded to Brotherus’ ideas of “everyday things,” “beauty close up” and “home”(Brotherus: 7) as ideas that appeal to me because we can miss so much of what is around us if it becomes too familiar or we take it for granted. I am of the opinion that it is not always necessary to look very far from home to find a space where a photograph can be made that conveys an emotional response. Her landscapes are harmonious and painterly, using colour to depict mood. Her work is influenced by classical painters such as Vermeer and Caspar David Friendrich. “She goes to great lengths to study traditional painting right down to the individual brushstrokes.” (Brotherus: 5). I am very much inspired by classical painters like Leonardo Da Vinci, Piero Della Francesca and Vermeer though I have not yet studied them in any great depth. But I do think that classical art can contribute to contemporary art in a very positive way, and this is something that I am interested in researching further in the future.  Brotherus’ interior portrait studies are reminiscent of Vermeer and I looked at these as ideas for my figure image.

I began to think that the process of an idea can take a long time to reach its true outcome. It can take many twists and turns. Usually what happens is that a thought can exist as something very small, and as the idea is developed, many different things connect with the original idea to help it to grow, and sometimes reach an outcome that can be quite surprising. The unexpected might happen to take you in a completely different direction to your initial thought. This is the beauty of being creative. You don’t really know where an idea is going to take you. I had begun with, in essence, the Hula Hoop from Hudsucker Proxy, which developed into the circle as the circle of life, and was now taking me into the realms of emotion. Where would I go next? “the act of artistic creation begins long before the camera is actually held in position and an image fixed, starting instead with the planning of an idea.”(Cotton; 21)

I was had been trying to depict longing and loneliness in my images. My next shoot took me to Dartmoor. After visiting a derelict building somewhere on the other side of Tavistock, Fliss and I headed on to the moors. By now it was very cold, I was shivering and it was very close to sunset. I had to shoot intuitively and in some haste. Thinking that it had probably got too late for a good exposure, I didn’t hold out much hope that these few images of a “lonely” tree would be successful. However, the finished prints were good, but my thought was that the image was just another tree on Dartmoor. When I showed these images at the Group Crit, everyone agreed that the third shot of the tree had the quality that I was aiming for. I looked at them again and realised that this had the mood and the essence of melancholy. The colours are subtle, the tree is lonely, there is darkness and coldness in the surrounding landscape, and I decided, that this could actually be my final image. I realised too that although I had been thinking about longing, isolation and loneliness, maybe the actual emotion that was at the heart of me was the true Welsh characteristic of melancholy. This was a kind of eureka moment. Cezanne wrote that “the landscape thinks itself in me, and I am its consciousness” (Wylie: 1). This quote mirrored the sentiment I was looking for at this time.

I shot two transparencies and one film for the interior self- portraits. Again the first two films were dark and I thought I wouldn’t be able to use them. I love ambient light and had not wanted to create too much controlled light on the images. I used only a large reflector which didn’t really make any difference to the finished images. I don’t think that I placed it in the right position to reflect light into the corners that needed it.  For the third film I used a model light facing it into the darker areas of the room and slightly facing me. But this gave too much light and didn’t give the images the mood I wanted to create... But the same thing happened to these images as had to the Tree images on Dartmoor. When I showed the darker images at the Group Crit, everyone said that these were the ones I should consider using. I particularly liked the blurred image and chose that as my final to accompany the tree on Dartmoor image.

With my final images chosen I scanned them on the Hasselblad Scanner in the Digital Dark Room, lightened them slightly on Flex colour, sized them and handed them in to Creations for printing. With hindsight I think that I should have lightened the self-portrait a little in Lightroom or Photoshop just to bring out more detail in the corner. But they are printed now and there is nothing I can do to improve them.

I am happy with my final choices. After a little frenzied confidence crisis during last week, which I have promised myself will not happen again, I can say that I have thoroughly enjoyed this assignment and would have been happy to continue working on it for a little longer as I feel that I could have done more. But a deadline is a deadline; if I had been preparing work for an exhibition I would only have the time allocated to complete the work and no longer.

The biggest lesson I have learned from this assignment is that it is really important to shoot as much film as possible when I’m working on a project. I have to be prepared to start shooting as soon as I can when an idea materialises. Taking more photographs is the key to developing the idea. But I don't believe that the destination is more important than the journey.


Melancholy (1)

 Melancholy (2)







A Link to my Art College Blog

The Musings of a Mature Student
All images Copyright of Penelope Davies.
Friday, 9 December 2011

Work Completed for December 2011 Deadlines

I've handed in both assignments and I'm happy with the work I have completed for them. I enjoyed both the academic and practical side of the assignments, and even feel that my presentation yesterday afternoon went well. This is not something I would normally feel confident about.

This year I am beginning to develop may creativity in more depth and with a more conceptual approach. We are being encouraged to consider our artistic identities, and this is very exciting for me. I felt that I was able to talk about my work with more confidence because I have understood the philosophies and academic texts that I am reading which are relevant to my work. I am also finding that there are aspects of traditional and contemporary art that influence me, and this is something that I will research further in the future.

I am no longer afraid to disclose my innermost thoughts and feeling because I consider this to be an integral part in reaching my potential as an artist.










Wednesday 23 November 2011

New Collection

We have each been asked to bring in a box and make a new collection for this week's session. I procrastinated for a few days, but was unable to think of anything that I could or wanted to collect.

There may be more than one reason for this. Firstly I have been trying to "declutter" my home of the  "stuff" I already have and my spirit was a little unwilling to bring more "stuff" into our home. Another reason is that everything I have collected over the years has a meaning attached to it. A memory of a happy time, a sad time, a memorable time etc, so that the object becomes more than just a "collection." I do have objects that I bought purely because I liked them when I saw them. But to collect something just for the sake of collecting did not seem to appeal to me.

As I pondered over this dilemma as to "what should I collect, "  I decided that I would place photographs that I have taken this week, into my box. My whole being at present is focused on the two deadlines we have in approximately two weeks time, and as this work is part of me, and I am enjoying the process of photographing and contextualising my imagery, I felt that these photographs were appropriate to bring in as my collection.

The themes for my two assignments are "Longing." and "The Circle."  I have been shooting on both 35mm and 120mm film as I am developing a greater love for film; my preference for digital experimentation is waning. The subject matter for my imagery is more suited to film. It evokes a feeling of "times past."  I have a love of landscape photography and of colour, I find the colours of transparency film unbeatable. I also love to shoot in Black and White film, I have chosen Black and White for my Narrative Assignment.

The first assignment is to be in colour, one a landscape image, the second an interior image including myself as the figure. In the imagery, I hope to reflect my longing to go home, my sense of belonging to Wales, and to my ancestors who have always been part of the Celtic Culture. For my second assignment I am shooting in black and white film, it is an eight image narrative based on a similar theme to the first assignment, but following the story of my family using objects our in the landscape.

These are some of the images I have shot

Barbed Wire

A Letter from Mam

Reflecting the Land

Four Generations

Tuesday 15 November 2011

Choosing an Object

Maddie has asked us all to bring in an object to Thursday's session. Something that we are unable to throw, or give away.

I had been unable to decide what my object would be even though I have plenty of objects to choose from my many treasures and artifacts. But nothing that I can think of that I have considered giving away. But when I woke up this morning, I knew exactly what I would take.

I have a sparkly evening dress that I have never had the occasion to wear. I bought it at Camden Market in 1989; over the years, there have been countless times when I have "almost" given it away. But I have never been able to part with it. Now I no longer think about giving it away because it has become for me, an "art" object. I love the dress and I wish I could wear it, but apart from never having had the right occasion to wear it, I don't think I would ever have the confidence to wear it. It's a dress that to me, has the look of the "femme fatale." It is elegantly cut, tight fitting, and needs someone tall and perfectly shaped to wear it. I feel that I can only dream of wearing it.

This is the dress

Sunday 13 November 2011

The Comfort of Things

This is a book by Daniel Miller (2008) which is listed on our Contextual Reading List. Normally I don't sit and read our academic resource books from cover to cover, but this one is different.  I have read three of the essays so far and I am thoroughly enjoying them. They are "Empty" "Full" and "Home and Homeland." There are thirty essays in total and I'm looking forward to reading all of them.

Empty is an essay about George, a 77 year old man who lives alone in a flat, has no possessions, no keepsakes or mementos around him, no cherished memories to make him sad or happy. There are no photographs, no ornaments or nick knacks, nothing to gage what kind of person he is, no hints as to what his life has been about. And this is the tragedy of George's story. There have been very few interventions in his life. From childhood he has been dictated too, his parents were strict authoritarians who allowed him no freedom, friends or space to use his imagination. After the death of his parents, he lived in an institution where his meals were cooked for him and his life once again was ruled by those he both relied on to take care of him, and who dictated his every move. He had no independent thought process to enable him to live a life of his own. At the age of 77, George finds himself living alone in a flat and has no idea how to deal with this.

The emotion I felt on reading about George, was an overwhelming serge of sympathy and sadness, and a feeling that a precious life has been wasted because no one had guided him or shown him that he was allowed to live his own life and that it could have been so full of riches in all manner of ways.

Instead George waits for his time on earth to end when in fact it has never really begun. This is truly a heart breaking story. It made me feel so appreciative of the life I have.

A few objects of my own that I cherish because they remind me of people and places.

A Picture Collage of Memories and Time


My Mother's Tea Set, 
 a gift given to her for her contribution to The Concert Party she played the piano for.

Music filled our Home

Friday 11 November 2011

Evocative Objects

I have chosen to study Evocative Objects for my Contextual Module. I'm interested in how we attach ourselves to things and objects, and how this is linked to memory and nostalgia.

I am not a collector, but I am most definitely a hoarder. My mother used to believe that you should keep everything for seven years, and if in that time the item or object had not been used, then it was acceptable to throw it away. This belief has remained with me; if I do throw something out, I will admonish myself if I then find some time later, before the seven years have passed, that I need that object.

I do not like throwing anything away, although sometimes I do force myself too. If I didn't our home would have no room for us. Its funny really because I don't like chaos, and I need space to work and think, so all this "stuff" that I have, does occasionally have an adverse affect on my creativity. Hey Ho ...what can I do.


This is a mirror I inherited when my father died in March 2010. I don't know how old the mirror is, but I do know that it has been in our family since my grandparents (on my mothers side) were married in the early 1900's.

I am currently experimenting with the mirror as an object for a narrative that I am working on for one of our projects.
    

Our first session with Maddy was both interesting and thought provoking. I thoroughly enjoyed the activities and discussions. The group shared a little information about each other by describing our notebooks and pencil cases.

The key word in the sessions was "phenomenology." I have not understood this term yet but I will research the word and its meaning. Edmund Husserl (1859 - 1938) is a philosopher whose work Maddy suggested we look at.







Friday 21 October 2011

Transformations and Representations

A Lecture by Lucy Leake .... Things that threaten humanity....

This lecture concentrated on how Monsters are part of our lives. From am early age some of us are introduced to The Bogey Man; nursery rhymes contain characters such as The Big Bad Wolf etc,  we watch films that scare us and monsters are part of each of our lives in some way.

For this module we would be looking at the origins of monsters, the freak shows of the Victorian era, Mary Shell's Frankenstein and other sources.

Key Words
Others
Monsters
Science
Feminism
Difference
Technology
Gender
Culture
Threat
Fairy Tales

Lucy's Blog  - monsterslurkeverywhere.blogspot.com

Narrative Spaces

It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story
(Native American Saying)

The lecture today on Narrative Spaces was very interesting.  The above quote made me think of the many generations of Native Americans who passed their stories on to the following generation. It is sad that this is a dying art. We are so used to the technological advances of our society that discussion and conversation is giving way to media intervention. We are more isolated as we sit at the computer, more inclined to surf the net than talk to people.

But having said this, there is a resurgence of interest in finding out about our ancestors. Television programmes such as "Who Do You Think You Are" have become popular.

Tina mentioned :-

Narrative and memory
Places having a narrative
Narrative on bodies (i.e. The Maori Tribes, Ethiopian Tribes)
Memorials (9/11)
Family Albums
Narrative in Fine Art (Boltanski's Holocaust)
Autobiographies

This Module interests me because I have been considering my distant ancestors in Wales and how I am part of them.


Y Ddraig Goch a ddyry Gychwyn (The Welsh Dragon will show the Way)