3rd year semester one (little shits and giggles)

 

At the beginning of this year I was given the task of deciding on a topic that I could base my project on. After numerous brainstorms and many ideas, I decided on “humorous childhood memories”. I chose this topic as I wanted my project to be fun and light hearted, as well as being something I would really enjoy doing.

 I started by reminiscing my childhood memories with my sisters and my mum, writing down descriptions of each memory, collecting old baby photographs and drawing pictures and elements of those memories.

 

 

Just a few of the memories that i loved the best;

 



When Kayleigh was 3 years old we wrapped her hair in a towel and showed her in the mirror,

She screamed with laughter for ages.

 

Kayleigh always tried to walk around the house with a bucket on her head, a baby pink bucket! Very in back then!!

 We always used to dress up what kid didn’t!

We dressed up Emma one day, as a pregnant women, with big boobs!

She was 6 years old.

My first day of 1^st class I didn’t want to leave my baby sister at home, so I obviously put her in my school bag to bring her with me. But I got caught! Damn!

 My sisters and I loved doing handstands on the couch, Emma is so talented she didn’t need to use her hands, she just used her head!!

 We used to fall asleep anywhere and everywhere Shar once passed out in front of the fire with a huge dodo in her mouth and was wearing big dirty socks on her feet!!

 My sister fell off the swing one time and broke her two front teeth!

Till this day every Christmas we sing “all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth”

 Kayleigh fell asleep one day sitting up! i think it was because she had only recently learned how to sit up! The novelty would soon wear off, walking would be next!

Instead of building bricks, we used to build houses with briquettes, like a boss!!!

We were on a day out to a fancy garden. We were getting a lovely family picture taken, at the last minute my uncle grabbed my little sister and hung her over the side of the bridge it was so funny!

We went on a ghost train with dad one summer, Bad Idea!We all came out crying hysterically! Scared shitless we were! Mam just pissed herself laughing!! Nice!!

Anytime we ate jelly and ice cream, all of it ended up all over our faces!

Shar fell asleep with her favourite furry blue blanket. Kayleigh felt tired to, so decided she wanted to sleep on shar’s face!!

Shar and I convinced Emma one day that a huge puddle of dirty water was “holy water”

And she drank it! We were so mean!

 I got stuck in a tree one day. My little sister who could barely talk at the time had to go get mam “tree mammy tree ceena tree”Awh sisterly love!!

Kayleigh loved to sit on the hoover while mam used it!! She loved the fan on it blowing wind through her hair! She found it fascinating!

Every summer since we were young we always have played on hay bales! One of the simple joys of living in the country side!

Kayleigh when she was one, knocked a huge 6foot Christmas tree over we spent the whole of Christmas Eve looking for another tree!The strength of a one year old! Amazing!

We used to get towed around by a quad in a huge red sandpit! No Barbie’s for us girls!

In Spain, my sisters and I floated too far out to sea on a blow up bed! I had to get off the bed and paddle us all back in. I saved my sisters, they only had minor injuries! A sting of a jellyfish!

Sitting on the front wall! Watching a motorbike go up and down the road! It does a wheelie in front of us then Poof! Emma is gone! She fell backwards off the wall!

When it rains, we played the raindrop race game! We would pick a raindrop each and see which one hit the end of the window first!

In Spain we all dug a huge hole in the sand and buried ourselves neck deep in it. We also used to put armbands on our feet! Weird!!

I bit my cousin on the cheek for no reason as a baby my granddad gave out to me! My cousin still has a mark on his cheek oopppss! My bad!

When my sisters and I shared a room, we had 3 beds fairly close together, we used to try jump to each bed, most of the time we didn’t make it! Talking about it makes my head hurt still!

Back in the day, comfort had to be mixed with water! Mam had done this in a milk bottle, left it on the bench and when dinner came round, she had mashed up my potatoes, a little bit of butter lots of milk and a pinch of salt yummy!! Or so you might think I wouldn’t eat them and I loved my potatoes! Mam made me eat them up until she realised what she had done! She tried to poison me! She was the one who nearly died she could not believe she used comfort instead of milk!!





Ok maybe alot of childhood memories there but.... oh well!!

 

From these descriptions and photos, I thought up of a lot of different ideas. I wanted to make a handmade memory book with text and illustrations. But I found this very difficult to enjoy which showed in the making of the book. I wasn’t interested in this idea as I got more into the making of it. I would really like to come back to this idea in the next semester and push it forward, so I can make it enjoyable and interesting for myself.

 

Some ideas and sketches;

 

my wood block prints with a touch of experimentation!

 

 

My handmade, hand binding book fail!!

 

 

 

During this semester, we also had an edition project to complete, I chose to do a silkscreen of my sisters and I doing handstands on the couch because this is one of my childhood memories that is still very vivid in my mind and it’s also a very light hearted, playful image which is why I chose to do it for my edition using the silkscreen process.

 

 

3 colours.

 

finished 5 colour edition print.

 

My main idea now which I’m having such a great time doing is the toy box timeline. I started with drawing out three toy boxes a baby toy box, a teenage toy box and an adult toy box. From these drawings I am in the middle of creating silkscreens of these toy boxes, I have the teenage toy box done and I will finish the other two toy boxes next semester. Using these drawings and silkscreens as inspiration I made 3d wooden toy boxes and painted them differently to portray the different  time periods in my life and I also filled them with items from the different periods of my life baby, teenager, adult that I am now!

 drawing (baby toybox)

 Slikscreen (teenage/gothic years)

 drawing (adult toybox)

 (black and white slikscreen)

                                                                           (5 colour slikscreen)

I then decided to push my silkscreens even further and make the toyboxes into 3d sculptures. this is a bit of the process of making the toyboxes......

 

 finished toybox sculptures...

 

 

 





BITS AND BOBS!! over the last 2 years

second year self intiated project spring 2012

ok so i havent posted on this in months and months! but sure what can ya do when theres a hole in your shoe!

FAGS AND FLOWERS

dedicated to jack's granny.

I have done this self intiated project on my granny that passed away. She was known to me, all my life as Jack’s granny. She was born on the 29^th of October 1927 and died the 21^st of October 2011. It was very important to me to do this project because I wanted to celebrate her life and portray the memories I have of her. I am extremely like her in loads of ways! We are crazy, caring, strong, and stubborn and we even smoked the same cigarettes. She loved flowers and gardening. I worked in a florist for two years. She thought me how to knit and sew, she was an amazing women and she was my inspiration for this project.

 my collage i done to get the creative flow going

 my granny on her wedding day

her baptism cert and i have written the last conversation i had with

her on this to! it was such a funny memorable conver!

these are some pages from my sketch book!

this is a representation of the statue my granny had of mother mary

it scared the living shit outa me when i was younger

it still does!!

 small collage i like collaging and intend to do more!!

so my last conver with granny was a funny one when she was in hospital.

she kept thinking the tube between her fingers was a fag and kept telling me to put it out in the ashtray!

granny always had a fag in her hand!

granny loved cutting out paper outfits for dolls

this was the start of her interest in sewing,knitting and dressmaking.

one of my ideas was to make a book from when she was very young to very old

with the colthes she would of wore to her interests eg the knitting basket and fag in her hand!

i had a lot of ideas for this project but i was a bit all over the place with it!

which was hard and annoying as i wasnt getting lots of work done as i didnt no where to start.

so i started printing wood blocks.

(wood cut)

all the things that reminded me of granny

flowers,knitting, hair slides,cigarettes and a browny yellowy comb!

experimenting with different coloured paper and doillies!

a series of 6 small woodblocks

that i sewed together to create a colourful patchwork quilt

like the one i was working on with her when i was in 6th class. 

these woodblocks are little snipets of what granny liked

smoking,jigsaw puzzles,floweres and her comb and

also a siloette of her on her wedding day.

newprint prints they ripped i quite like them.

dollies with my six prints on.

plus an embroidered picture of a hand smoking

and embriodered roses around the top middle print.

MULTIMEDIA

 this is me experimenting with photoshop

 these are slightly frightening to me

 but theres something about them i like

these pieces are silloettes of granny but instead

of black silloettes i used her baptism cet and the

patch work quilt she help me start. 

as you can prob tell i really didnt no where i want to go with this project.

but i kept coming back to the hand and the tubes.

i had to realate my images to me and also to an audience .

so i started sketching hands and lots of them here are just a few!

and these are my woodcuts and finished prints.

if you havnt guessed already i love the woodblock process!

 my wood block!

my print!

(this reminds me of the last conver i had with granny when she was in hospital)

wood block!

my print!

(this one reminds me that me and my gran were so alike, we even smoke the same cigs)

woodcut!

(really dark as there so much ink on it)

print!

(granny loved knitting and dressmaking i still have a cardi she knitted for me when i was little)

i also did a silkscreen which i also love doing

i learned to seperate the tones of an image on photo shop

making slikscreening a million times easier!

slikscreen print

(iv drips also reminds me of gran in hospital and how hard she fought for us all)

I feel this project was the make of me it helped me so much

it made me learn so much about art

it was such a hard project to do. flustrating even!

as i really wanted to make gran proud

but i also wanted to make myself proud

and i did it!!

and passed which is always good!