I didn't want the problem of sleeping on trollies to be too obvious in my work, I wanted to leave room for interpretation, and I wanted a metaphor to be used to say what I wanted to say.  I wasn't sure how to do this so I came across an artist/activist called Hank Willis Thomas who's great at displaying hidden meanings through visual metaphors as well as not making his message overly obvious.  Here's some of his work.

By looking at these, I thought of combining the trolley with the characteristics of an iron maiden which is a medieval torture device.  I used this as a metaphor for discomfort and suffering.

I started the project with the 3 week camera less photography project we got at the start of the year.  I want to make woodcuts of these later on so I drew the figures onto assotate which was then placed on top of the light sensitive paper which was exposed to light for a few seconds in the dark room.  The images themselves are based on the ordeals the people in the trolley stories had to suffer through.  They look like woodcuts which is why I picked this medium.  

The photograms are heavily influenced by german expressionist woodcuts as I wanted to capture their despair as well as their appearance.  A german expressionist in particular that I took to immediately is Kathe Kollwitz.  Her work captures expression and feelings very effectively which is what I wanted to do.  Here's some of her work.

The photogram of the old woman on the trolley is largely influenced by this particular image (above).

Conrad Felixmuller, another expressionist printmaker also influenced my work, although not as much as Kathe Kollwitz.  I took elements of both their styles of drawing.  Here's some of his work.  Both these artists deal with war and the expressoin of sorrow.

He does portraits of the aristocracy of the time of World War 1.  Since these people lived wealthy lifestyles, there's not a lot of sorrow conveyed here.

Since the brief I set for myself mainly deals with advertising what's wrong with the society that we live in, I thought I'd focus on something close to home.  Since my dad's a doctor, I've a lot to work with regarding the faults in Irish healthcare.  I found some websites regarding the amount of people who have to sleep on hospital trolleys every year because there's a shortage of beds (this is in the hundreds).  I found some pretty shocking stories.  Some examples are the following, an 87 year old woman sleeping on a trolley for 57 hours before getting a bed, a man dying on a trolley from lack of immediate treatment for the condition he was in, a woman left on a trolley for nearly 3 days etc.

Here're the links to the websites to these stories.

http://www.irishhealth.com/article.html?id=7584

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/hospital-trolleys-behind-record-figures-lies-much-unnecessary-suffering-1.2055841

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/doctor-first-saw-very-urgent-aande-patient-when-he-was-found-dead-on-a-trolley-299775.html

http://www.clarechampion.ie/elderly-womans-57-hour-trolley-ordeal/

http://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/11714776.Woman_s_anger_after_waiting_60_hours_on_a_hospital_trolley_before_she_was_given_a_bed/?action=complain&cid=13587346

I reckoned this would be a good place to start.

Print processes

The print processes I wish to utilise during the semester are Relief, Intaglio and a bit of Screen Printing.

Resources (Books, websites, magazines etc.):

1.      New Skateboard Graphics (Library Book)

2.      Street Sketchbook (Library Book)

3.      A History Of Skateboarding Art (Library Book)

4.      Realism In 20^th Century Painting (Library Book)

5.      Fantastic Art (Library Book)

6.      German Expressionist Woodcuts (Library Book)

7.      Engravings by Hogarth (Library Book)

Artist Research

Sego

Sego is a graffiti artist based primarily in Mexico City.  The word “Sego” is his artist name which is short for his surname Segovia.  He chose this for its sound and brevity.  It was from this artist that I got inspired to create surreal creatures that only existed in my imagination.  I’m very much a fan of his preparatory blue pen drawings as well as his finished graffiti pieces.  Before he begins a spray painted piece (usually on a wall), Sego likes to draw detailed versions of his dream like creatures using blue pen.  I was drawn to these as I want to do something very similar to this in my own practice.  This style of drawing also fits perfectly well with metal plate etchings which is one of the print media I intend to use a lot during this semester.  Sego stands out to me because his artistic style evolved over practice, repetition and passion rather than through academic teaching.  Since he’s not professionally trained, he maintains that this approach has kept his work “Honest”.  Sego named his series of remarkable creatures “Dream Guardians” and he allows the viewer to interpret them in their own way.  The images allow us to imagine how they live and what they do. 

For me, it’s important to look at Sego’s work because of the ideas he has and how he executes them both through pen drawings and through spray paintings.  His approach is very similar to how I want to execute my own ideas through my own practice.  I will also be drawing a great deal as well as doing various etchings.  The colours he achieves are very similar to how colour in etchings turn out as well. 

Here are a few of his “Dream Guardian” spray paintings.

Here're the first two artists I started looking at.

Artist Research

Banksy

When I first thought about political satire and finding out everything wrong with our society, the first person that came to mind straight away was Banksy.  Banksy is an English graffiti artist and political activist.  His Identity is questionable but his artwork is fantastic.  Banksy creates work that’s forces the viewer to think.  He combines dark humour with graffiti and he works in a stencil style that’s unique to him.  He’s not an average traditional artist in the sense that his work is usually never shown in an art gallery.  It’s not supposed to be there.  It’s not supposed to be in a small room boxed off from the rest of the world.  Instead, Banksy chooses really obvious, in your face type places to display his artworks, primarily on the sides of buildings but his spray paintings are enormous and take up the whole wall more often than not. 

For me, it’s important to look at his work for two reasons.  The first is because of the style.  His artworks include very blocky colours and deep contrasts.  There’s no blending involved.  These are aspects directly related to woodblock printing which is one of the media I intend to work with.  The second reason is because of the various messages he conveys through his images.  Through basic images and simple slogans, Banksy’s work conveys not just humour, but it also manages to address serious political issues indirectly.  In doing so, it allows the viewer to make their own assumptions and interpretations on what the work is all about.  This is exactly what I intend to do. 

Here are a few of his thought provoking as well as comical images.

I started the semester off by coming up with my own concepts for my self initiated brief.  Here're the word documents outlining my brief, the artists I started off researching and the various books I've read cover to cover since I started the year.

Conny O’Connor K00185158

2^nd Year Printmaking

Self Directed Brief Concept

The project framework I plan on starting off with is similar to what I did last semester.  My idea is to take the most controversial issues of the world we live in and highlight their hypocrisies and injustices through satire and printmaking.  An example of what I’m talking about is a French satirical cartoon drawn up by the Charlie Hebdo newspaper in Paris when Islam extremists shot and killed 11 cartoonists for drawing satirical cartoons of Muhammad as well as their various acts of violence and beliefs.  In response to this unjustified and brutal attack, a surviving cartoonist drew a new cartoon depicting an Islamic leader holding a fire arm over a dead cartoonist.  The caption is “He drew first”.  The cartoon caused a public outcry and a wide spread hatred for not regular muslims but Islamic extremists. 

I want to work in this manner as puns and play on words have always come easy to me.  I like the clever use of the word “drew” both meaning drawing the cartoon and drawing a gun.  This cartoon is humorous in a dark way and it highlighted not only the injustice of what happened but it also made the public completely against Islamic extremists.  It’s true that a single picture can speak a thousand words.  It also proved that a simple cartoon can change more than a bloody massacre ever could. 

Here’s the cartoon I’m talking about.

This cartoon is one of a few that I’ve looked at but it’s what I’ve started off with.  I plan to start watching the news regularly and draw up satirical cartoons of everything wrong with the society we live in today.  The hypocrisies of our world both baffles and interests me.  The worlds governments supposedly looks after their people and does what’s best for their own countries, yet a lot of the time, the politicians in these positions are fuelled by nothing more other than corruption and greed.  I want to focus mostly on Irish issues as they’re closer to home, but there’s a myriad of things wrong here too.  Here’s a few.  Hospitals often neglecting patients even though their duty is to look after them, people in a position of power who deserve a long jail sentence let off by the judge in exchange for money, various criminal acts where innocent bystanders have been killed and so on.  The point of my work will highlight the fact that we’ll never live in a perfect world, but if we can’t change the way things are we can always laugh about them.  What else are we supposed to do?

Other than poking fun at social issues, I’m very interested in imaginary and mythical creatures inspired by various books, movies, poems and so on.  I’ve always enjoyed drawing animals, deep sea creatures, hybrid animals like the Liger and pre historic living creatures from an early age.  The enormity of many of these great animals astounds me.  These include dinosaurs, mammoths, enormous dragon flies, early evolved sharks etc.  The concept of drawing surreal beings fuelled by imagination is remarkable to me.  Films like “The Lord of the Rings”, “Harry Potter” and “King Kong” as well as poems like “Dante’s Inferno” inspire me to imagine amazing creatures that can’t possibly survive in our world.  Myths that interest me include Bigfoot, Yeti’s, The Loughness Monster and so on.  I want to create prints of these types of living things that allow the viewer to use his/her own imagination to determine what they are and how they live.

Lastly, I’ve recently become interested in graffiti art and the concept of abstraction.  I enjoy the idea of not focusing on a concrete and recognisable image, but rather concentrating on the lines and colours themselves and the deep contrasts that exists between them.  I like the idea of making the viewer use their own imagination to think of what the work means to them.  It could be a memory, a face of someone they know, a feeling they recently experienced or literally anything.  I’m looking forward to exploring these various concepts through Intaglio and woodcut.