Pathway - Bestowed Grace Pictures

Bestowed Grace - Photoshop Development

Playing with different locations for "communion" that bestows grace / a sense of belonging

I like the contradiction, it's pretty graceless!

I wanted to consider what unites us - faith, political leanings, socialising, eating together.

Pathway Stage - Bestowed Grace videos

Bestowed Grace - Development

These videos are experimenting with the idea that "communion" can happen when consciousness is altered. Meditative states in church, singing either hymns or at concerts, sharing a dancefloor on a night out - all of these bring people together. I want to think about the qualities of that communion and show parallels with becoming one with god and becoming one with drunken revellers.

Exploratory Phase - Fashion

Exploratory Phase - Fashion

I was confident going into this week. My tall, sometimes fat body has often been awkward to dress and I have developed an eye for fit and proportion that makes charity shopping a lot easier.

My research included Gareth Pugh, Graeme Armour and I have a very strong affinity for gothic aesthetics. 

Bin bags, plastic cups and coat hangers felt a little like a safe choice, but I was challenged by the tutors to make 60 different samples. That really made me think outside my box of preconceived ideas, and improved my mannequin a lot. While the overall shape and feel was similar to how I envisaged it, there were some significant developments that came from experimenting. I would very much like to work in the fashion discipline more, but have felt drawn to other areas by subsequent briefs.

I swapped samples with another student to see how a fresh pair of eyes would hold and use these items. We also used video to capture how the samples moved while in motion.

Exploratory Phase - 3D

Exploratory Phase - 3D

The theme for 3D week was "Fragment" or "Fragmentation".

We were inducted into the plaster casting and ceramics rooms, where I cast a selection of objects. My favourite to work with was an old cow bone I found on the banks of the Thames. 

I found the medium of plaster and the archetypal image of a bone being bleached white and chalky sat together nicely in my mind's eye. I experimented with fabric inclusion and other different ways to fragment or fracture my plaster bones.

I think the jewellery pieces represent a fear to deviate from my comfort zone this early in the course. Having said that, I would never have considered casting bones for commercial jewellery pieces, so I'm glad I had the opportunity to see how my past and present thinking worked for or against each other. 

I have begun to work with more of my mudlarking finds in jewellery, so this week has had an impact of my professional sphere already!

Pathway - NottsForgotten

Pathway Phase

NottsForgotten Contest

This competition was open to students and architects from Nottinghamshire. The goal was to revitalise an underused are of Nottingham City Centre.

I decided to go with the idea of a street food market. I have seen this phenomenon take off in London since I first experienced food carts in Portland, Oregon ten years ago. Ready to eat street food traders are a very common sight at every "farmers market" that starts around London. 

The benefits of this idea include a rotating roster of traders, meaning variety and return visits to try new traders, the use of the Wing Walk car park site can be retained for parking revenue on weekends and evenings, and the location being just off Hockley is very in keeping with the "hipster" atmosphere of the area. 

I began by experimenting with some different logo ideas, first in brainstorming and then roughly mocking up some different options.

The final branding I settled upon is below. I like that there is a cognitive dissonance created between the word "Park" and the double yellow lines which designate no parking areas. I hope this creates enough of a "hook" to stick in people's minds. 

Pathway - Standard

Pathway Phase - Response To Italy

The Standard

The spectre of Brexit-related fears really hung over me, even in Rome. I have friends who are scrambling to apply for the right to remain, who are living with the anxiety of not knowing what their immigration status will be in two years. These citizens and likewise, Britons abroad, all face huge uncertaintly. 

The rallying cry of Leave voters is to create a second golden era where we have "control". It smacks of Imperial ambitions to me, and empires can and have fallen in the past. I wanted to capture a feeling of faded glory, biased nostalgia.

I photographed Cormorants basking on the Tiber and they reminded me of the Eagles used on Roman battle standards... which was appropriated by Nazis. 

Above are some photographs of my sketchbook while I developed ideas and experimented with materials, and below is the final piece.

Pathway - Hands

Pathway Phase - Response To Italy

Hands

While the conflation of dolls with the objectification of women is a very familiar idea, I wanted to focus specifically on hands.

I wanted to work with the idea of women's contributions being undervalued, especially in Catholic communities where gender roles are strictly imposed by certain interpretations of the Bible.

Hands are very important to our sensory perception of the world. 

They are like a doorway between our external and internal worlds, for most of us they are the primary way we enact our will by manipulating and interpreting the physical realm around us.


They are used with Ouija boards to communicate with dead spirits, they are pressed together in prayer to communicate with Holy spirits.

I've felt constrained by family ideas of what women have to offer and how we should behave, so I initially visualised the hands escaping from a birdcage. I was encouraged to sit with the idea and I did some free form / brainstorm writing on the back of a Wetherspoons menu one evening which yielded some interesting results!

The phrase "The Devil Makes Work For Idle Hands" popped into my head. This was a pivotal moment where new ideas began to develop.

 My research also featured folk lore connected to fertility symbols and wishing or praying to water spirits. The tension between Celtic cultures where women held a higher status than their Roman counterparts has, I feel, contributed to the subjugation of fertility as a creative force worthy of respect and Divine status. 

When I juxtaposed that with the sale of indulgences prior to the Reformation, and the existence of Magdalen Laundries in Ireland, my idea completely changed.