My Artist's Statement

“Just another Face in the Crowd”

My Urban Environment project was initially based on people. I was interested in the habitual movement of people in their urban environment. I then became interested in the concept of “The destruction of beauty”. Moving from the country to the city I felt an immense pressure to be beautiful. All these advertisements surrounded me and smothered me with products and ways to make me beautiful, I just felt so drowned. I then began to think of this pressure and how it can lead to a person’s own demise. I took the Barbie doll, in my opinion, a symbol of absolute beauty, of what we all should look like. So, I burned them, I burned babies to show my frustration and to demonstrate the concept of “the destruction of beauty”.

After this, I began to pay close attention to the human form to answer “Why”, why we do this to ourselves and just to satisfy a general curiosity as to how we move the way we move and why. After a shaky progress review I began to take matters to my own hands, dropping in on a life drawing class back home to really understand the concept of the human form and movement of the human body. During this time, I also felt a deep isolation and was compelled to express it through paint. In studying the human form I came across hands. I found the hand to be exceptionally interesting as hands hold us together, make us feel strong, offer us comfort when we need it most, they can be used for encouragement. However there is another side to hands often found in the urban environment, the violent side, hands can be used to hurt, to hurt people too. I wanted to highlight this problem also through my study of the human hands. I also took inspiration from Kathy Prendergast to cross-reference my work and create something new and wonderful.

I was altogether truly inspired by Berlinde De Bruykcere, her wax sculptures of the human form inspired me to create a series of heads that I then places around Limerick city to highlight aspects of the Urban Environment. I then decided to use different materials also. I experimented using chocolate, jelly, butter, etc. after this I was further inspired by De Bruyckere’s use of old battered plinths and unusually furnishings to display her work. I then used the confessional booth in college and my vintage blanket to display my wax figure heads.  I then also became interested in light and darkness and, shadows and contrasts of the faces.

Finally I believed these faces ensured me with a wonderful aspect to my project called “Just another Face in the Crowd”. Highlighting how people are often lost, forgotten and left behind due to personal vanities and the destruction of beauty within the urban environment. I also began a series of textile studies to coincide with the human form. I honed in on the idea of the ribcage, it acts as an entrapment and a cage for protection, survival, almost as if it protects the hub of the body, where most of the precious activity goes on, just like In an urban environment where it is a hub of precious activity for its surrounding area. I hope my enthusiasm and energy to my project has been depicted to you today and I hope you share that enthusiasm also in my work.

Just Another Face In The Crowd

After a strong inspiraiton from Berlinde De Bruyckere, I bagan working more with the mould I had of the human head. I began making moulds in various materials such as chocolate, jelly, butter, glue, candel wax etc. I found this to be highly interesting and a great study of the human form. I then placed the heads all aorund Limerick city to highlight various aspects of the Urban Enviornment, in this way,I was bringing something somewhat man-made into an organic setting, this contrast is highly interesting.  Also Berlinde De Bruyckere is renowned for using unusual pliths and places to display her work, she uses old cabinets, blankets, battered plinths etc I took her inspiration a went to the confessional booth in college with my vintage blanket and photographed the heads in there using different light sources. This created a wonderful array of shadows and light adn dark contrasts over the heds that I will later work with.

Asking "Why?" : The Human Form

Asking "why?" was a massive part of my project. As it is primarily based around people I decided to work with the human form. I wanted to see how we worked and why me moved and made decisions the way we do. I then began work on the human form, working with the patterns of the brain, the eye, folds of skin, the hands etc. I began to dissect them, recording their insides, how they work in my notebook and discovering how we all move and work. I began to focus in the ideas of the hand. Hands touch us all in every way; they often lend a helping hand, a means for stability and connected us all, physically. Couples hold hands to show perhaps affection and belonging, contentment. Parents hold their children’s hand as a means of protection. I wanted to explore this connection further; taking apart the human hand, using my influence from Cathy Prendergast and creating new forms. I cross-referenced works of Cathy Prendergast in relation with my own, to creation something new. I also picked some flowers form my garden, something so innocent and pure, a true reflection of beauty and crossed it with the hand of a human being. Hands, although as helpful as I said, can also be the cause of pain for so many, they can hit, scratch, claw, hurt the human, and this violence in particular can be seen more prominently in the urban environment. In this way, I hope to highlight such a problem.

I am working once again with the human form, working with textures and textiles that relate to the human form, using the idea of the muscles, the folds of the skin, the bones etc. Also, I am working with the conclusion to my main message of the destruction of beauty in relation to the urban environment I am doing a series of paintings to reflect the isolation I often feel while living in the urban environment and being succumbed to the ideology of “Commercial Beauty” and the effect it causes; destruction.

Burning Barbies

While I was designing and painting my big piece I was experimenting with Barbies in order to explore the concept of "destroyed beauty". In my mind, Barbie was almost the idolized product for beauty and was a “model" for perfection for everyday women; however this need for perfection and beauty often led to the woman’s own demise. This idea of “decay” and “destruction” of things beautiful can be reflected within the urban environment I see around me. How there were buildings, plant life, people who once were all beautiful have been destroyed and decayed over time.

Its Been A While.

 

After a severe personal shock I found myself lost in this project to be honest. I lost complete focus and direciton in my project. I find myself only really and truly coming out of this "funk" about two or three weeks ago. Now, I can see where my errors were in my project and link all my work I had previously done together and show my train of thought throughout the ast few months. This body of work now is a culmination of "The Destruction of Beauty" I wanted at the start of my project. Living in the country all of my life and moving to the city for the first time this September, this was something I personally noticed more. Walking down the streets and all over town there are billboards, posters, advertisements, and signs all around me bombarding me with products and methods to “make me beautiful”. At first I found it truly over-whelming as I was completely exposed and vulnerable to such severe advertising. I felt drowned by it. I wanted to show my reaction to all of this “commercial beauty” in relation to the urban environment and show how beauty can be ugly and often lead to destruction. I placed my mouldins of the faces aside while I took some references from the sketches I took of people around Limerick City and used them in a collage to create a big piece. I wanted to show the destruction of beauty from a series of pictures depicting the motions of the stuggle of women to "be beautiful". In this  sense I used an image of the mother and child taken from a sketch, to show the beginning, and natural beauty. The three other images that follow are a depiction of the struggle of women in an urban enviornment. The lower image on the page is taken from a sketch of a homeless woman, however I've made her naked in order to show her vunerablity and isolation.

Face-To-Face

So, I've been bopping away on my project. I wanted to experiment with different types of media and try new things. I decided to make a moulding of my face. As I'm doing people and working with the ideology of "destroyed beauty" and "commercial beauty" in relation to the Urban Environment. I made my way down to the tech guys, after nabbing Mike Fox in the corridor, and met the lovely Pat, whom I plagued my ideas to. As there wasn't an Body Double moulding available at the time I had to go find a mannequin to mould a face of. They didn't have any in the fashion department in college so I made my way to town. After about 2 and half hours begging and pleading through the shops of Limerick, I was JUST about to give up when a lovely shop assistant let me borrow one. I legged it back to college, trying to get in before the workshop closed. Finally, I began learning how to make the moulding of my beautiful mannequin’s face with, I think it was called PTV.. I probably have that wrong now.. Anyway, so Pat explained to me how to make the moulding and the next day I bought some plaster Paris strips to add the plaster shell of the moulding to keep it together.

After leaving it all set, I peeled away the mould and its shell and proceeded to paint wax into it. This was a very quick and easy way to make a duplicate of the mannequin’s face and it looked deadly.

Next, made a plaster moulding using the same mould and got an excellent result. I then painted this moulding and proceeded to stick on leaves and burn wax onto the face to show the natural ability a face and a person should have and the waxy, plastic exterior that many of today's society behold. I then peeled off the leaves and some of the paint to show effects of destroyed beauty.

In the end I was seriously pleased with the result and the faces are now an integral part of my project. HUGE thanks to Pat and Mike for all their help! :)

Beginnings

Ok, so after debating over various ideas that interest me in relation to the brief titled "The Urban Environment", I decided that people watching was something that interested me very much. I wanted to study the movement and habitual actions of human beings in relation to their urban enviornment. I then wanted to develop this further and so honed in on the idea of  "Commercial Beauty" in an urban environment and the idea of destroyed beauty in the urban environment. My project is based soley around the human being. In my first few weeks, I sketched out a few ideas I had for pieces, but I soon realised that was not the right route to take. I began to observe my urban environment, directly and sketch people in Limerick City. I also moved on to working with different mediums and creating a casting of a manniquins head to which I moulded a wax and plaster copy from. I have also started recording conversations within the urban enviornment, often spending hourse just sitting on a step in town recording the nouvelle gossip and news of  Limerick's Urban Enviornment. All in all, the project is going well, I now have a clear and concise view of what I want to investigate and express throughout the various mediums of art and design.